“That’s right, father dear,
but how can our eyes
Distinguish in dead men the Good and the
Wise?”
“That’s easy enough to the
stupidest mind:
They’re poor, and in dying leave
nothing behind.”
“Seest thou in mine eye, father,
anything green?
And takest thy son for a gaping marine?
Go tell thy fine tale of the Wise and
the Good
Who are poor and lamented to babes in
the wood.”
And that horrible youth as I hastened
away
Was building a wink that affronted the
day.
THE LOST COLONEL.
“’Tis a woeful yarn,”
said the sailor man bold
Who had sailed the northern-lakes—
“No woefuler one has ever been told
Exceptin’ them called
‘fakes.’”
“Go on, thou son of the wind and
fog,
For I burn to know the worst!”
But his silent lip in a glass of grog
Was dreamily immersed.
Then he wiped it on his sleeve and said:
“It’s never like
that I drinks
But what of the gallant gent that’s
dead
I truly mournful thinks.
“He was a soldier chap—leastways
As ‘Colonel’ he
was knew;
An’ he hailed from some’rs
where they raise
A grass that’s heavenly
blue.
“He sailed as a passenger aboard
The schooner ‘Henery
Jo.’
O wild the waves and galeses roared,
Like taggers in a show!
“But he sat at table that calm an’
mild
As if he never had let
His sperit know that the waves was wild
An’ everlastin’
wet!—
“Jest set with a bottle afore his
nose,
As was labeled ‘Total
Eclipse’
(The bottle was) an’ he frequent
rose
A glass o’ the same
to his lips.
“An’ he says to me (for the
steward slick
Of the ‘Henery Jo’
was I):
’This sailor life’s the very
old Nick—
On the lakes it’s powerful
dry!’
“I says: ’Aye, aye, sir,
it beats the Dutch.
I hopes you’ll outlast
the trip.’
But if I’d been him—an’
I said as much—
I’d ‘a’
took a faster ship.
“His laughture, loud an’ long
an’ free,
Rang out o’er the tempest’s
roar.
‘You’re an elegant reasoner,’
says he,
‘But it’s powerful
dry ashore!’”
“O mariner man, why pause and don
A look of so deep concern?
Have another glass—go on, go
on,
For to know the worst I burn.”
“One day he was leanin’ over
the rail,
When his footing some way
slipped,
An’ (this is the woefulest part
o’ my tale),
He was accidental unshipped!
“The empty boats was overboard hove,
As he swum in the ‘Henery’s
wake’;
But ’fore we had ’bouted ship
he had drove
From sight on the ragin’
lake!”
“And so the poor gentleman was drowned—
And now I’m apprised
of the worst.”
“What! him? ’Twas an
hour afore he was found—
In the yawl—stone dead o’
thirst!”