Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/152

 But always a free creature with a soul? I bring him back, though not without misgivings, And caution you to damn him sparingly.

"Count Pretzel von Würzburger, the Obscene (The beggar may have had another name, But no man to my knowledge ever knew it) Was a poet and a skeptic and a critic, And in his own mad manner a musician: He found an old piano in a bar-room, And it was his career three nights a week, From ten o'clock till twelve—to make it rattle; And then, when I was just far down enough To sit and watch him with his long straight hair, And pity him, and think he looked like Liszt, I might have glorified a musical Steam-engine, or a xylophone. The Count Played half of everything and 'improvised' The rest: he told me once that he was born With a genius in him that 'prohibited Complete fidelity,' and that his art 'Confessed vagaries,' therefore. But I made Kind reckoning of his vagaries then: I had the whole great pathos of the man To purify me, and all sorts of music To give me spiritual nourishment And cerebral athletics; for the Count Played indiscriminately—with an f, And with incurable presto cradle-songs And carnivals, spring-songs and funeral marches, The Marseillaise and Schubert's Serenade— And always in a way to make me think Procrustes had the germ of music in him. And when this interesting reprobate Began to talk then there were more vagaries: