CAPTAIN CRAIG
You may not feel you cannot wholly feel—
How droll it was : I dreamed that I found Hamlet-
Found him at work, drenched with an angry sweat,
Predestined, he declared with emphasis,
To root out a large weed on Lethe wharf;
And after I had watched him for some time,
I laughed at him and told him that no root
Would ever come the while he talked like that :
The power was not in him, I explained,
For such compound accomplishment. He glared
At me, of course, next moment laughed at me,
And finally laughed with me. I was right,
And we had eisel on the strength of it :
'They tell me that this water is not good,’
Said Hamlet, and you should have seen him smile.
Conceited? Pelion and Ossa? pah . . .
"But anon comes in a crocodile. We stepped
Adroitly down upon the back of him,
And away we went to an undiscovered country
A fertile place, but in more ways than one
So like the region we had started from,
That Hamlet straightway found another weed
And there began to tug. I laughed again,
Till he cried out on me and on my mirth,
Protesting all he knew: The Fates,' he said,
'Have ordered it that I shall have these roots.'
But all at once a dreadful hunger seized him,
And it was then we killed the crocodile
Killed him and ate him. Washed with eisel down
That luckless reptile was, to the last morsel;
And there we were with flag-fens all around us,
And there was Hamlet, at his task again,
Ridiculous. And while I watched his work,
The drollest of all changes came to pass.
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