The black beard scowls and says to me
“Human frailty though you be
Yet shout and crack your whip, be harsh;
They’ll obey you in the end,
Hill and field, river and marsh
Shall obey you, hop and skip
At the terrour of your whip,
To your gales of anger bend.
The pale beard smiles and says in turn
“True, a prize goes to the stern
But sing and laugh and easily run
Through the wide airs of my plain;
Bathe in my waters, drink my sun,
And draw my creatures with soft song;
They shall follow you along
Graciously, with no doubt or pain.”
Then speaking from his double head, etc.
The rather scriptural setting of what the pale beard said was probably suggested by the picture I had formed in my mind of the conscientious objector, whom I somehow sympathetically expected to be an earnest Christian, mild and honest; as a matter of fact, he turned out to be the other kind, violent and shifty alternately. He was accordingly sentenced by Major Tamburlaine and Captains Guise and Bajazeth, to the customary term of imprisonment.
And by the way, talking of Marlowe and Shakespeare;—
Here ranted Isaac’s elder son,
The proud shag-breasted godless one
From whom observant Smooth-cheek stole
Birth-right, blessing, hunter’s soul.
XX
LOGICALIZATION
John King is dead, that good old man
You ne’er shall see him more.
He used to wear a long brown coat
All buttoned down before.
Apparently a simple statement, this rustic epitaph has for any sensitive reader a curiously wistful quality and the easiest way I can show the mixed feelings it stirs, is by supposing a typical eighteenth-century writer to have logicalized them into a polite epigram. The poem would appear mutilated as follows:—