This crab's wiser, it strikes me—no twist but implies life—
Not a curl but's so fit you could find none fitter—
For the brute from its brutehood looks up thus and eyes life—
Stoop your soul down and listen, you'll hear it twitter,
Laughing lightly,—my crab's life's the wise life!
X
Those who've read S. T. Coleridge remember how Sammy sighs
To his pensive (I think he says) Sara—"most soothing-sweet"—
Crab's bulk's less (look!) than man's—yet (quoth Cancer) I am my size,
And my bulk's girth contents me! Man's maw (see?) craves two things—wheat
And flesh likewise—man's gluttonous—damn his eyes!
XI
Crab's content with crab's provender: crab's love, if soothing,
Is no sweeter than pincers are soft—and a new sickle
Cuts no sharper than crab's claws nip, keen as boar's toothing!
Yet crab's love's no less fervent than bard's, if less musical—
'Tis a new thing I'd lilt—but a true thing.
XII
Old songs tell us, of all drinks for Englishmen fighting, ale's
Out and out best: salt water contents crab, it seems to me,
Though pugnacious as sailors, and skilled to steer right in gales
That craze pilots, if slow to sing—"Sleep'st thou? thou dream'st o' me!"
In such love-strains as mine—or a nightingale's.
XIII
Ah, now, look you—tail foremost, the beast sets seaward—
The sea draws it, sand sucks it—he's wise, my crab!
From the napkin out jumps his one talent—good steward,
Just judge! So a man shirks the smile or the stab,
And sets his sail duly to leeward!
XIV