CAPTAIN CRAIG
"They are not ordinary frogs at all,
They are the Frogs of Aristophanes"
"'God! how he laughed whenever he said that;
And how we caught from one another's eyes
The flash of what a tongue could never tell!
We always laughed at him, no matter what
The joke was worth. But when a man's brain dies,
We are not always glad . . . Poor Carmichael!'
"'I am a sowbug and a necrophile,'
Said Pretzel, 'and the gods are growing old;
The stars are singing Golden hair to gray,
Green leaf to yellow leaf,—or chlorophyl
To xanthophyl, to be more scientific,—
So speed me one more stein. You may believe
That I'm a mendicant, but I am not:
For though it look to you that I go begging,
The truth is I go giving giving all
My strength and all my personality,
My wisdom and experience—all myself,
To make it final for your preservation;
Though I be not the one thing or the other,
Though I strike between the sunset and the dawn,
Though I be cliff-rubbed wreckage on the shoals
Of Circumstance, doubt not that I comprise,
Far more than my appearance. Here he comes;
Now drink to good old Pretzel! Drink down Pretzel!
Quousque tandem, Pretzel, and O Lord,
How long! But let regret go hang: the good
Die first, and of the poor did many cease
To be. Beethoven after Wordsworth. Prosit!
There were geniuses among the trilobites,
And I suspect that I was one of them.'
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