I

I doubt if ten men in all Tilbury Town 
Had ever shaken hands with Captain Craig, 
Or called him by his name, or looked at him 
So curiously, or so concernedly, 
As they had looked at ashes; but a few?
Say five or six of us?had found somehow 
The spark in him, and we had fanned it there, 
Choked under, like a jest in Holy Writ, 
By Tilbury prudence. He had lived his life 
And in his way had shared, with all mankind,
Inveterate leave to fashion of himself, 
By some resplendent metamorphosis, 
Whatever he was not. And after time, 
When it had come sufficiently to pass 
That he was going patch-clad through the streets,
Weak, dizzy, chilled, and half starved, he had laid 
Some nerveless fingers on a prudent sleeve, 
And told the sleeve, in furtive confidence, 
Just how it was: ?My name is Captain Craig,? 
He said, ?and I must eat.? The sleeve moved on,
And after it moved others?one or two; 
For Captain Craig, before the day was done, 
Got back to the scant refuge of his bed 
And shivered into it without a curse? 
Without a murmur even. He was cold,
And old, and hungry; but the worst of it 
Was a forlorn familiar consciousness 
That he had failed again. There was a time 
When he had fancied, if worst came to worst, 
And he could do no more, that he might ask
Of whom he would. But once had been enough, 
And soon there would be nothing more to ask. 
He was himself, and he had lost the speed 
He started with, and he was left behind. 
There was no mystery, no tragedy;
And if they found him lying on his back 
Stone dead there some sharp morning, as they might,? 
Well, once upon a time there was a man? 
Es war einmal ein König, if it pleased him. 
And he was right: there were no men to blame:
There was just a false note in the Tilbury tune? 
A note that able-bodied men might sound 
Hosannas on while Captain Craig lay quiet. 
They might have made him sing by feeding him 
Till he should march again, but probably
Such yielding would have jeopardized the rhythm; 
They found it more melodious to shout 
Right on, with unmolested adoration, 
To keep the tune as it had always been, 
To trust in God, and let the Captain starve.

He must have understood that afterwards? 
When we had laid some fuel to the spark 
Of him, and oxidized it?for he laughed 
Out loud and long at us to feel it burn, 
And then, for gratitude, made game of us:
?You are the resurrection and the life,? 
He said, ?and I the hymn the Brahmin sings; 
O Fuscus! and we?ll go no more a-roving.? 
We were not quite accoutred for a blast 
Of any lettered nonchalance like that,
And some of us?the five or six of us 
Who found him out?were singularly struck. 
But soon there came assurance of his lips, 
Like phrases out of some sweet instrument 
Man?s hand had never fitted, that he felt
?No penitential shame for what had come, 
No virtuous regret for what had been,? 
But rather a joy to find it in his life 
To be an outcast usher of the soul 
For such as had good courage of the Sun
To pattern Love.? The Captain had one chair; 
And on the bottom of it, like a king, 
For longer time than I dare chronicle, 
Sat with an ancient ease and eulogized 
His opportunity. My friends got out,
Like brokers out of Arcady; but I? 
May be for fascination of the thing, 
Or may be for the larger humor of it? 
Stayed listening, unwearied and unstung. 
When they were gone the Captain?s tuneful ooze
Of rhetoric took on a change; he smiled 
At me and then continued, earnestly: 
?Your friends have had enough of it; but you, 
For a motive hardly vindicated yet 
By prudence or by conscience, have remained;
And that is very good, for I have things 
To tell you: things that are not words alone? 
Which are the ghosts of things?but something firmer. 
?First, would I have you know, for every gift 
Or sacrifice, there are?or there may be?
Two kinds of gratitude: the sudden kind 
We feel for what we take, the larger kind 
We feel for what we give. Once we have learned 
As much as this, we know the truth has been 
Told over to the world a thousand times;?
But we have had no ears to listen yet 
For more than fragments of it: we have heard 
A murmur now and then, and echo here 
And there, and we have made great music of it; 
And we have made innumerable books
To please the Unknown God. Time throws away 
Dead thousands of them, but the God that knows 
No death denies not one: the books all count, 
The songs all count; and yet God?s music has 
No modes, his language has no adjectives.?

?You may be right, you may be wrong,? said I; 
?But what has this that you are saying now? 
This nineteenth-century Nirvana-talk? 
To do with you and me?? The Captain raised 
His hand and