Page:Captain Craig; a book of poems.djvu/64

You cherish it, undoubtedly. Pardee!
You call it, with a few conservative
Allowances, an excellent small thing
For patient inexperience to do:
Derivative, you say,—still rather pretty.
But what is wrong with Mr. Killigrew?
Is he in love, or has he read Rossetti?—
Forgive me! I am old and doddering . . .
When are you coming back to Tilbury Town?"

I could forgive the Captain soon enough,
But Killigrew—there was a question there;
Nor was it answered when the next week brought
A letter from him. After rocketing
For six or seven pages about love,
Truth, purity, the passion of the soul,
And other salutary attributes,
Discovered or miraculously born
Within six months, he said: "The Patriarch
Is not quite as he should be. There's a clutch
Of something on him that will not let go;
And there are days together when his eyes
Are like two lamps in ashes. The gray look,
Which we thought once the glory and the crown
Of your too flexible determinist,
Has gone all over him. And when he laughs,
He waits as if to hear the angels weep: