Page:Captain Craig; a book of poems.djvu/86

72 Found him at work, drenched with an angry sweat, Predestined, he declared with emphasis, To root out a large weed on Lethe wharf; And after I had watched him for some time, I laughed at him and told him that no root Would ever come the while he talked like that: The power was not in him, I explained, For such compound accomplishment. He glared At me, of course,—next moment laughed at me, And finally laughed with me. I was right, And we had eisel on the strength of it:— ’They tell me that this water is not good,' Said Hamlet, and you should have seen him smile. Conceited? Pelion on Ossa?—pah! . ..

"But anon comes in a crocodile. We stepped Adroitly down upon the back of him, And away we went to an undiscovered country— A fertile place, but in more ways than one So like the region we had started from, That Hamlet straightway found another weed And there began to tug. I laughed again, Till he cried out on me and on my mirth, Protesting all he knew: 'The Fates,' he said, ’Have ordered it that I shall have these roots.'