Page:Captain Craig; a book of poems.djvu/96

We were glad to be on earth, and we rejoiced
No less for Captain Craig that he was gone.
We might, for his dead benefit, have run
The gamut of all human weaknesses
And uttered after-platitudes enough—
Wrecked on his own abstractions, and all such—
To drive away Gambrinus and the bead
From Bernard's ale; and I suppose we might
Have praised, accordingly, the Lord of Hosts
For making us to see that we were not
(Like certain unapproved inferiors
Whom we had known, and having known might name)
Abominable flotsam. But the best
And wisest occupation, we had learned,—
At work, at home, or at "The Chrysalis,"
Companioned or unfriended, winged or chained,—
Was always to perpetuate the bead.

So Plunket, who had knowledge of all sorts,
Yet hardly ever spoke, began to plink
O tu, Palermo!—quaintly, with his nails,—
On Morgan's fiddle, and at once got seized,
As if he were some small thing, by the neck.
Then the consummate Morgan, having told
Explicitly what hardship might accrue
To Plunket if he did that any more,