Monologues and Dialogues
I
CARLO
"The dog that saved the lives of more than ninety persons in that recent week, by swimming with a line from the sinking vessel to the shore, well understood the importance as well as the risk of his mission."—Extract from a Newfoundland paper.
I see no use in not confessing—
To trace your breed would keep me guessing;
It would indeed an expert puzzle
To match such legs with a jet-black muzzle.
To make a mongrel, as you know,
it takes some fifty types or so,
And nothing in your height or length,
In stand or color, speed or strength,
Could make me see how any strain
Could come from mastiff, bull, or Dane.
But, were I given to speculating
On pedigrees in canine rating,
I'd wager this—not from your size,
Not merely from your human eyes,
But from the way you held that cable
Within those gleaming jaws of sable,
Leaped from the taffrail of the wreck
With ninety souls upon its deck,
And with your cunning dog-stroke tore
Your path unerring to the shore—
Yes, stake my life, the way you swam,
That somewhere in your line a dam,
Shaped to this hour by God's own hand,
Had mated with a Newfoundland.
They tell me, Carlo, that your kind
Has neither conscience, soul, nor mind;
That reason is a thing unknown
To such as dogs; to man alone
The spark divine—he may aspire
To climb to heaven or even higher;
But God has tied around the dog
The symbol of his fate, the clog.
Thus, I have heard some preachers say—
Wise men and good, in a sort o' way—
Proclaiming from the sacred box
(Quoting from Butler and John Knox)
How freedom and the moral law
God gave to man, because He saw
A way to draw a line at root
Between the human and the brute.
And you were classed with things like bats,
Parrots and sand-flies and dock-rats,
Serpents and toads that dwell in mud,
And other creatures with cold blood
That sightless crawl in slime, and sink.
Gadsooks! It makes me sick to think
That man must so exalt his race
By giving dogs a servile place;
Prate of his transcendentalism,
While you save men by mechanism.
And when I told them how you fought
The demons of the storm, and brought
That life-line from the wreck to shore,
And saved those ninety souls or more,
They argued with such confidence—
'Twas instinct, nature, or blind sense.
A man could know when he would do it;
You did it and never knew it.
And so, old chap, by what they say,
You live and die and have your day,
Like any cat or mouse or weevil
That has no sense of good and evil
(Though sheep and goats, when they have died,
The Good Book says are classified);
But you, being neuter, go to—well,
Neither to heaven nor to hell.
I'll not believe it, Carlo: I
Will fetch you with me when I die,
And, standing up at Peter's wicket,
Will urge sound reasons for your ticket;
I'll show him your life-saving label
And tell him all about that cable,
The storm along the shore, the wreck,
The ninety souls upon the deck;
How one by one they came along,
The young and old, the weak and strong—
Pale women sick and tempest-tossed,
With children given up for lost;
I'd tell him more, if he would ask it—
How they tied a baby in a basket.
While a young sailor, picked and able,
Moved out to steady it on the cable;
And if he needed more recital
To admit a mongrel without title,
I'd get down low upon my knees.
And swear before the Holy Keys,
That, judging by the way you swam,
Somewhere within your line, a dam
Formed for the job by God's own hand,
Had littered for a Newfoundland.
I feel quite sure that if I made him
Give ear to that, I could persuade him
To open up the Golden Gate
And let you in; but should he state
That from your legs and height and speed
He still had doubts about your breed,
And called my story of the cable
"A cunningly deviséd fable,"
Like other rumors that you've seen
In Second Peter, one, sixteen,
I'd tell him (saving his high station)
The devil take his legislation,
And, where life, love, and death atone,
I'd move your case up to the Throne.
II
OVERHEARD BY A STREAM
Here is the pool, and there the waterfall;
This is the bank; keep out of sight, and crawl
Along the side to where that alder clump
Juts out. 'Twas there I saw a salmon jump,
A full eight feet, not fifteen minutes past.
Bend low a bit! or else the sun will cast
Your shadow on the stream. Still farther; stop!
Now joint your rod; reel out your line, and drop
Your leader with the "silver doctor" on it,
Behind that rock that's got the log upon it.
There's nothing here; the water is too quiet;
You need a pool with rapids flowing by it:
Plenty of rush and motion, heave and roar.
To turn their thoughts from things upon the shore;
The day's too calm—I told you that before.
Just mind your line! I tell you that he's there.
I saw him spring up ten feet in the air—
Twelve pounder, if an ounce! Great Mackinaw!
Look! Quick! He's on! The "doctor" in his jaw......
Snapped! Gone! You big fool: worse than any fool!
What did you think to find here in this pool—
A minnow or a shiner—that you tried
With such a jerk to land him on the side
Of this high bank? That was a salmon—fool!
The biggest one that swam within this pool;
The one I saw that jumped twelve feet—not lower;
Would tip the scales at fourteen pounds or more.
Lost—near that rock that's got the log upon it,
Gone—with the leader and the "doctor" on it.
III
OVERHEARD IN A COVE
(The Old Salt Talks Back)
Swiles=seals.
Quintal=cwt.
THE SCHOLAR (recovering from heroic seizures)
Existence in this little town I find
Much too constricted for an ample mind;
Unheeded on these vain and deafening shores
Might Wisdom cry aloud her precious stores—
Wisdom for whom the Universe unseen
An illustrated page has ever been;
Who but initiates may understand
The forms and pressures of her amorous hand!
Her thoughts that wander through Eternity
Would perish here beside this muddy sea,
For no divine afflatus ever reaches
The men who dry their fish upon these beaches.
THE SALT.
Your poor old dad and granddad, long since dead—
God rest their weary souls—were born and bred
Upon this shore, as fine God-fearin' sort
As ever brought a leaky ship to port.
They never put up any braggin' claims
To learnin'—couldn't more than write their names,
And yet, no dealer born could take 'em in,
In things of common sense, like figurin'
Accounts, or show them any solid reason
Why number one prime cod might any season
Drop in price, while the fish remained as good
As ever, and a quintal always stood
A quintal; and there never was a strait
Or gulf or cape they couldn't navigate;
And fair or foul it made no difference.
They had no learnin', but the chunk of sense
The Good Lord gave 'em for their calculation,
While other men who learned their navigation
From books, got drowned; so you for all your letters
Have got no call for sneerin' at your betters.
THE SCHOLAR (with condescension).
But, my dear man, I feel I must admit
To such a native modicum of wit,
By this, plus luck, if such a thing there be,
A man may wrest his living from the sea;
But on the troublous sea as on the land.
Note what we owe the scientific hand.
The world's dark secrets have been opened out
By men who forged their faith from honest doubt.
Who rounded out the universe for us
But Galileo and Copernicus?
Who gave us chart and compass, sextant, log,
And apparatus for detecting fog
And wind and currents? Who gave us thermometers?
Again, I ask; who, prisms and barometers?
THE SALT (snortingly).
A man that owns a hand can use a log,
An idiot with one eye can see a fog
When it is comin'.
THE SCHOLAR.
But no wit surmises
The calculated way the wind uprises;
The place it comes from, whereunto it goes,
Nor tell you to the mile the rate it blows,
A full seven days ahead. But Science draws
Exact determinations of the laws
That govern wind and waves; though, to be sure,
In charting atmospheric temperature
She may, for uninformed mentalities,
Use terms like unexplained contingencies.
But still, when all her facts are massed together,
Unerring is her forecast of the weather;
In our metropolis we have a man
Who plots it every day.
THE SALT (fired by reminiscence).
Like hell he can.
Whenever that fool bulletin comes out,
With cock-sure talk about the heat and drought
That's bound to last a week, I always ask
The missus for me flannels and a flask
Of gin to keep me goin' through the day.
And when it says—"Look out for frost, 'twill stay
Three days or more," I know we'll have a spurt
Of heat would boil a man inside his shirt.
Its everlasting fable—"Fair and warm"
Means "brewin' for the devil of a storm."
THE SCHOLAR (with righteous warmth).
This open and unshamed prevarication
Perturbs my soul with moral agitation.
A votary of Truth I shall abide,
That Wisdom of her child be justified.
THE SALT.
And let me tell you this: a half a brain
Can tell a nor'-east wind will bring a rain.
A sun-hound in the evenin' or a ring
Around the moon—there is no safer thing
For prophesyin' weather; as for cold,
You boasted that your man up yonder told
That frost was comin'. Why, sure, a skunk knows
That and more; three months ahead he grows
A chunkier tail.
THE SCHOLAR.
Your language, my good sir,
Is rank: but, waiving that, I must aver
With emphasis that human life is longer,
As knowledge grows from more to more, and stronger,
With every age, the race. Take medicine,
And note its triumphs. How shall I begin
To glorify that heavenly art enough,
Since Aesculapius.
THE SALT.
I calls it bluff,
This doctorin' business. There's Jim Hennessey's lad.
When he was young his father thought he had
The makin's of a doctor in him. I,
Inquirin' like, asked him the reason why.
He said the lad was handy with a knife,
The way he'd carve a rabbit up alive,
Or a young robin, maybe, just to see
What the innerds were like.
THE SCHOLAR.
Anatomy!
A subject of minute research.
THE SALT.
Then Jim
Put no less than six years expense on him.
When he came back, some said it was decline;
He called it asthma, but he had the sign
Of a gone man; the neighbors were afraid
To have him in; their children, so they said,
Might catch the wheezin' off his chest. One case
His dad got for him—more to save his face,
I said, but let that bide—Jim got his son
A case of Jack spavin—a wicked one
I will allow it was—in Hazzard's mare.
The boy put on a apron, then a pair
Of rubber gloves, and then he said he'd freeze
The leg and dose her up with fumes to ease
The pain; and afterwards he'd operate.
Then sew her up and leave the rest to fate.
He did his honest bit—at least he tried;
The mare kicked down the stalls before she died.
THE SCHOLAR.
But your example only serves to show
What dire results from ignorance may flow.
He had no skill for equine malady—
No special training.
THE SALT.
Just what Hennessey,
His father, thought. So the old man, grown wise,
Gave him another year to specialize—
This time in spavins.
THE SCHOLAR.
How does this impugn
The Science by which man is made immune
From all those fearsome, devastating ills,
From cholera morbus to domestic measles,
That swept the cosmos? Tell me, has not man
Added by this to his allotted span
Two decades?
THE SALT.
I don't see it with my eyes.
This generation's dyin' off like flies;
And why? Each mother son of them and daughter
Are bred on arrowroot, with milk and water.
They're all a scraggy lot; too much spoon-fed;
Wants water bottles when they go to bed;
Smokes cigarettes and drinks vile, home-made wine.
Rhubarb will corn 'em; so will dandyline.
'Tis not the same as what it was. I know,
Away back in the sixties, when our crew
Was home from swilin' and a regular streak
Of thirst had struck us, how, one night a week,
And after lodge was out, each man would take a
Good, long and steady swig of old Jamaica,
And never feel the worse on it. 'Twould blow
A colony like you to Jericho.
As tough as staragons, they had no call
For other medicine. A swig was all
They asked for, and a swig was all they got.
It cooled them off when they were dry, and shot
Them up, when they were cold. And, say, what can,
Within a lifetime, come to any man,
Except a burnin' fever or a freezin'?
THE SCHOLAR.
Your argument is void of rhyme or reason;
Your observations on disease, mere chatter.
THE SALT.
Maybe 'tis so; but I looks at the matter
Quite different wise. I holds that not in strength,
Nor muscle, nor in gumption, nor in length
Of days, are young folks like they used to be.
I minds how in a blinkin' storm at sea,
When both the captain and the mate were drowned,
Under a double reef we had to round
The Cape, on a lee coast, and, undermanned,
And the taffrail blown to bits, the youngest hand
On board, Sam Drake, took his turn at the wheel.
He couldn't see the mainmast—had to feel
The schooner's course, yet brought her down the bay,
With every shred of canvas swept away.
THE SCHOLAR.
Is not the clamant menace of the sea
Silenced by steam, by electricity,
By gasoline?
THE SALT.
My notion's still the same,
That folks were better off before they came.
More swiles were taken in the spring; more fish
Were dried upon the flakes, and if you wish
To get my views on gasoline, I think
The racket of the engine and the stink
Is drivin' all the cod out of the bay.
'Tis gettin' hopeless quite—no fish, no pay.
But there's a worse account I feel like makin'
Against new-fangled notions. They are takin'
The backbone from the lads—initiation
You called it—
THE SCHOLAR.
No. Allow my emendation—
Initiative! However, I understand.
THE SALT.
Maybe you're right; maybe you're not. 'Tis sand,
I calls it; but no matter what 'tis called,
With any kind of little snag they're stalled.
They'd starve and die with plenty all around 'em.
I minds when our supplies ran out we found 'em,
Sometimes when we were in the bush, with tea
And baccy gone—no drink or nothin'—we
Would fetch a kettle full of juniper
And boil it for an hour or so, and stir
Barbados black-strap with it—
THE SCHOLAR (in deep spiritual reflection).
Do I see,
In its archetypal form, Zymology,
That most potential art?
THE SALT.
Yes, sir, the brew
Would grow a jumper on your chest. We'd chew
The dried sap of the spruce, and then we'd take
Dried tea-leaves with the chips of bark and make
A powerful, fine smoke. You never saw,
I suppose, a man rig up a lobster claw
With quid, to get a drag when he had lost
His pipe? I needn't ask. That never crossed
Your mind. I'd like to see a good round score
Like you, a-headin' all for Labrador,
Stowed in a fore-and-after with the sea,
A-ragin' through the scuppers. It would be
A sight for Satan, every time the ship,
With not too much of ballast, took a dip
To come right up again with soakin' jibs—
To watch your queasy stomachs and your ribs
In need of oilin'.
THE SCHOLAR.
Trivial your words,
Your passions bestial. The irrational herds
Roaming the plains would scorn such thoughts as these;
The ox, the zebra and the ass appease
Their several hungers, earth-born as they are—
Without afflatus, without mind—with far
More worthy satisfactions. What care you
(recurrence of symptoms)
For the primrose by the river's brink, the blue
Within the violet's eye, in fine, for flowers?
Eating and drinking you lay waste your powers,
The world being too much with you. Have you felt
A presence that disturbs you? Have you knelt
At Nature's shrine, bathed at her crystal fount,
And found her central peace? Say, do you count
By figures or by heart-throbs? Have you never
Listened to brooks that babble on for ever?
Sermons there are in stones; alas, they stir
You not.
THE SALT.
Shame on you, you idolater,
For worshippin' stocks and stones. I see you took
All your religion from a bot'ny book,
And a dry, small lump it is, by every sign
That I can see, you heathen. I gets mine
From another kind of book. You don't need learnin'
Neither, the kind that kills the soul's discernin'
Of spiritual things. That's what our parson said,
And he had learnin', too. It killed him dead
Before he gave it up, like a dry rot
That puts the blight on damson plums—that's what
It is. Give me what makes a critter whole,
And pours the blazin' glory on his soul,
And saves him from the horrors.
THE SCHOLAR (on the verge of a paroxysm).
A most rude
Conception of the spirit's growth—mere food
For sucklings, for the race at those low stages
Of history that form the world's Dark Ages.
From your contentions, then, must I assume
That in your mind's horizon is no room
For formulæ that dominate our times;
For laws that tell how by successive climbs
Our common human nature has become
The paragon magnificent for dumb
And erring brutes? Millions of years have passed
Between the first crude cycle and the last,
In which, despite the bludgeonings of chance
And fate, has man his own deliverance
Wrought out; survived the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. In the eternal rocks
Engraven is the epic.
THE SALT.
Pedley's lad,
When he came back from learnin', was as bad
As Hennessey. I might say worse, for he
Lacked any bit of skill that Hennessey
Might seem to own if he got started right.
Pedley, for so his old man thought, was quite
A brainy boy when growin' up. He'd shirk
Any and every job that looked like work.
He wouldn't run, he wouldn't walk; he'd fetch
A book, and then for hours at a stretch
He'd squat down on the wharf—takin' the air,
I said it was. He wouldn't read. He'd stare,
Then drowse, then stare again, just like a sheep.
Whose brains the wise God only gave for sleep,
When Jeff, his younger brother, might be seen
Shapin' the model of a brigantine,
Or doin' something handy, steepin' bark,
Or renderin' out the liver of a shark.
Well, when the old man finally understood
He could do nothin' with him, for the good
Of his soul—the last thing left—he thought he'd send
Him off to join the Church; thought if he'd spend
Ten years wearin' a collar or a satin
Gown, and got crammed right to the neck with Latin,
And the seven tongues, and all the other learnin',
He'd be a thumpin' wonder on returnin'.
He was. As bad as you for gall, he'd chin
The Lord out of his job, on points like sin,
Damnation and the rest of it. He told
Us how the world—I can't just mind how old,
He said it was; but just to illustrate
His point, he took a pencil and a slate,
Marked five in the left-hand corner near the top,
And added zeros till he had to stop
For want of room, and added more by tongue,
Then ended, claimin' that the world was young.
Just like a mushroom, so to speak; and when
He thought he'd finished his explainin', then
Our pastor put a poser to him straight.
Just how, he asked him, did he calculate
It out?—the parson, I'll allow, was rough
On questions—Was the slate not big enough?
Did he run out of zeros? Was he sure
He had the tally right? A zero more,
What mattered it, and how did he arrive
By any kind of reckonin' at that five?
It looked so lonesome by itself. Would not
Another zero do instead? And what
Do you allow his answer was? I've heard
Some blasphemy against the Livin' Word
Within my time—the Livin' Word that says
The world's bin waggin' now, omittin' days,
Six thousand years; but Word and Church and Lord,
The evidence of the Fathers and the Sword
Of the Spirit, everything—he cast them out
With one deliberate, sacrilegious clout.
He told us—and it sounded like a boast—
He told us—are you listenin'?—that the most
Of all his facts he got from skulls; from graves
Of savages that one time lived in caves;
From skeletons of serpents, elephants;
I think he mentioned bugs and bees and ants
And frogs' backbones and such, but most of it
He got from skulls so old that not a bit
Of chop was left upon the jowls. He said—
Grantin' the man who owned the skull was dead
So long, the crown had rotted—yet he'd tell
The story from the jaw-bone just as well.
THE SCHOLAR (delivering le grand coup).
Thanks to the scientist's imagination,
The point is proven to a demonstration,
Your patriarchal history is a fable,
A groundless fiction like your Tower of Babel,
Your Samson or your Jonah. Had you sense
To follow while I forge the evidence,
How from the void of dancing vortices,
The human mind has wrought its destinies,
You'd gather what the Universe discloses.
THE SALT (with profound disgust).
I'm done with you, my lad—I stands by Moses.
IV
THE PASSING OF JERRY MOORE
(Juniper Hall answers the critics).
Did Jerry get through the gates of gold,
To join the white-robed Saints, that basked
In the glory of the Father's fold?
That was the question each man asked,
As Jerry lay with his cold feet
And his cold hands under the sheet.
The last man, known as Juniper Hall,
The life-time pal of Jerry Moore,
Spoke—as soon as he had the floor—
And said he disagreed with them all.
He thought the judgment of Doran,
That sanctified and solemn man,
Put altogether too great store
Upon the words of Jerry's speech,
As Jerry sat in the rain and swore
At the fish that rotted on the beach.
Why shouldn't a man, who day by day
Had seen the clouds wipe out the sun
And botch the work his hands had done,
Pour out his soul in a natural way,
On the chance of ridding his chest of it,
And tell the Lord what he thought of it all—
The rain, the fog and a hungry fall,
The rotten fish and the rest of it?
Then Juniper asked why Solomon Rowe
(Who handed out to sinners gratis
Timely advice such as might flow
From him, a saint of ten years' status)
Should so denounce what occupied
Old Jerry's mind the night he died.
He had spent the day in mending a net
And splicing a rope; without a thought
About the way a sinner ought
To make eternal peace, he ate
His three good hearty meals and went
To bed. He took no Sacrament;
He had no dying pains; he gave
No groans; nor called the Lord to save
His soul; but in his dreams he talked,
With a sort of chuckle in his speech,
Of a shoal of caplin on the beach,
And of the punt that he had caulked,
And other things that he had done.
The case was proved, for Jake, his son,
Who lay beside him on the bed,
Had vouched for all that Solomon said.
But Jerry's life from the day of his birth
Was only meant for the jobs of earth,
Like caulking punts and mending nets,
And catching fish to pay his debts.
He would shout like a man with gospel soul
At the saving news of a herring shoal,
That swarmed down the bay in the spring,
And no one louder than Jerry could sing
As he'd barrel 'em up or smoke 'em,
His rough, red hands, a-reeking with brine,
And his clothes with a mixture of turpentine,
Of tar and cod-liver oil and oakum;
What wonder then that in his sleep,
As he dreamed about that caplin shoal,
The thought should so have tickled his soul
And made him laugh, instead of weep,
Like the saints that get so short of breath
In the last hour before their death?
Besides, it's claimed he had not met,
For want of savings, a just debt
He owed to Rowe before he died.
But, then, as he had often said,
The reason why he had not paid
It off—the Lord had never dried
His load of cod; but Solomon Rowe
Had owed a hundred dollars or so
For years, though the sun had always shone
Upon the fish of Solomon.
Then Juniper thought that Watchnight Percy—
The one who spoke of the Lord's great mercy—
Though his heart was right, yet, on the whole,
Was over-anxious for Jerry's soul.
Was Jerry's chance, like that of the thief,
Merely the miracle of belief,
That in the final midnight hour
Springs from the Lord Almighty's power
And heavenly grace? Juniper could
Not argue this point for want of light
So left the question as it stood,
To deal with the claim of Christopher Wright.
Much that was spoken by Christopher
Had a measure of truth, said Juniper.
It was true that Jerry, with his mind
So bent on worldly things, might find
Beyond those gates of pearl and gold,
Within those heavenly pavilions,
Where white-robed angels by the millions
Bask in the glory of the fold,
No angel who would undertake
To wean his thoughts from earthly things,
And fit him up with a pair of wings;
Or—still more hopeless job—to make
Him change his manners and his speech,
So that those lordly potentates
Might not be shocked, as Jerry's mates
Were often shocked upon the beach.
All this, he said, and more beside
May yet be true of the man that died—
(Jerry, who swore when the mood was on.
And worried the soul of Solomon;
Jerry, the most consistent liar
That ever told a fish-yarn when,
On a wintry night, a crew of men
Were gathered around a tamarack fire!)
"I do not care," said Juniper,
Looking direct at Christopher,
"What Gabriel may think of Jerry,
Or (turning around to stare at Joe)
What the sins were that Doran might know:
Or whether he laughed in his sleep and was merry
In the hour of death, as Jake, his son,
Who lay beside him in the bed
Reported the news to Solomon
Of what the dying man had said."
Thus Juniper spoke, his eyes a-glow,
His bony fingers pointing at Rowe.
Then we felt a deep hush fall
Upon the room, as Juniper Hall
Spoke to the dead man under the sheet,
Just as a common man might greet
A living friend. "Well, Jerry, old mate,
They may talk as they like—now that you're cold—
Of those who enter the Father's fold,
Through mercy and grace. They may talk of the fate
Of your soul. They may shake their heads and groan
For fear God's mercy was not shown
To you before you died. I know
Nothing of what the angels do,
Or where the souls of dead men go;
But I'll take my chance in saying that you,
Who always did your day's work well,
Had far too good a soul for hell.
I do not know the kind of luck
That came to Christopher and Joe
And saved from the fire the soul of Rowe,
Nor how the balances are struck
At death; but I'd like to state
If things like contra accounts are stored
On the shelves of the upper Courts of the Lord.
Who judges the hearts of men, that your slate,
Jerry, should tell by a clean score
How you were head of a life-boat crew,
With no one as good at the stern oar,
And always on hand when a storm blew;
And tell how you pulled young Davie Cole,
(Who sits on that bench) out of a hole
In the slob ice one bitter night
In March when Davey was frozen through,
And lugged him ashore with his face as white
As the lip of a ghost, and brought him to,
With no one around to lend you a hand.
Yes, Jerry, old mate, if you never reach
For want of faith the angels' land,
Without a sea, without a beach,
Maybe the Lord in His good grace,
May find close to the boundary
Of heaven and the outer place,
A strip of shoreline by a sea,
Where the winds blow and where you,
As skipper of a life-boat crew,
May throw a line across the deck
Of many a crowded, foundering wreck.
And on fine days when not aboard
Your skiff, but lying up, the Lord
May find odd jobs, perhaps a sail
To mend, that in a Galilean gale
Was torn, or one or two old punts
That He and Simon Peter once
Used on the lake; or say, 'Here's bark
And oakum, oil and pitch, all that
You need; go—caulk that leaky ark
That went aground on Ararat.'
And when you call your gang together,
Some night in raw December weather
(The gang made up of your lifeboat crew,
And other spotted saints of God,
Exiled to that shore with you
Because, while on the earth, they trod
On both the broad and narrow ways)
To tell your yarns before a blaze
Of balsam piled on tamarack—
That night, I swear, I will come back
(As stoker from the outer land
On special leave from Lucifer)
To start your fire with my brand;
I swear it now," said Juniper.
V.
THE HISTORY OF JOHN JONES
The sun never shone,
The rain could not fall
On a steadier man than John.
A holy man was John,
And honest withal.
His mates had never heard
Drop from his guarded lip
An idle word,
But twice—first, while on board his ship,
When he had lost his pipe, he swore,
Just a mild damn, and nothing more;
And once he cursed
The government; but then he reckoned
The Lord forgave him for the first,
And justified the second.
And he was temperate in all his ways,
Was John;
He never drank, but when Thanksgiving days
Came on;
Never in summer on a fishing trip
Would he allow the smell on board his ship;
Only in winter or in autumn,
When a cramp or something caught him,
Would he take it, for he prized it,
Not for its depraved abuses,
But for its discreeter uses,
As his Church had authorized it.
The sun had never shone
On a kinder man than John,
Nor upon
A better Christian than was John.
He was good to his dog, he was good to his cat,
And his love went out to his horse;
He loved the Lord and his Church, of course,
For righteous was he in thought and act;
And his neighbors knew, in addition to that,
He loved his wife, as a matter of fact.
Now, one fine day it occurred to John,
That his last great cramp was on;
For nothing that the doctor wrote
Could stop that rattle in his throat.
He had broken his back upon the oar,
He had dried his last boat-load of cod,
And nothing was left for John any more,
But to drift in his boat to the port of God.