And I read them.
"Captain Carpenter."
I don't know of what I think of that.
It's a sort of a ballad, a sort of in the night.
I wanted it to sound as if it might
have come out of Renaissance England or 16th century
England.
It's about the Captain Carpenter, who people have
asked me, did he represent?
He fought to the end to find that they got him down.
And they said, does he represent the Old South?
No, I didn't think of that, I would say.
Does he represent the old time religion?
No, I didn't think of that.
Well, what did you think of?
Well, I imagine that, unconsciously, I was basing it
on the Don Quixote.
It's like Don Quixote.
The spirit is the same.
Captain Carpenter rose up in his prime, put on his pistols,
and went riding out, but had got well-nigh nowhere at that time
till he fell in with ladies in a rout.
It was a pretty lady and all her train that played with him so
sweetly.
But before an hour, she'd taken a sword with all her main
and twined him of his nose forevermore.
Captain Carpenter mounted up one day and rode straightaway
into a stranger rogue that looked un-christian, but be
that as may, the captain did not wait upon prologue,
but drew upon him out of his great heart.
The other swung against him with a club
and cracked his two legs at the shinny part,
and let him roll and stick like any tub.
Captain Carpenter rode many a time.
From male and female took he sundry harms.
He met the wife of Satan crying, "I'm the she-wolf bids
you shall bear no more arms."
Their strokes and counters whistled in the wind.
I wish he had delivered half his blows.
But where she should have made off like a hind,
the bitch bit off his arms at the elbows.
And Captain carpenter parted with his ears
to a black devil that used him in this wise.
Oh, Jesus, ere his threescore and 10 years,
another had plucked out his sweet blue eyes.
Captain Carpenter got up on his roan
and sallied from the gate in hell's despite.
I heard him asking in the grimmest tone
if any enemy yet there was to fight.
To any adversary, it is fame if he
risk to be wounded by my tongue, or burnt in two
beneath my red heart's flame.
These are the perils he has cast among.
But if he can, he has a pretty choice
from an anatomy with little to lose, whether he cut my tone
and take my voice, or whether it be
my round red heart he choose.
It was the neatest knave that ever
was seen stepping in perfume from his lady's bower, who
at this word put in his merry mien
and fell on Captain Carpenter like a tower.
I would not knock old fellows in the dust,
but there lay Captain Carpenter on his back.
His weapons were the old heart in his bust
and a blade shook between rotten alack.
The rogue in scarlet and grey soon knew his mind.
He wished to get his trophy and depart.
With gentle apology and touch refined,
he pierced him and produced the captain's heart.
God's mercy rest on Captain Carpenter now.
I thought him, Sirs, an honest gentleman, citizen, husband,
soldier, and scholar enow let jangling kites eat
of him if they can.
But God's deep curses follow after those that shore him
of his goodly nose and ears.
His legs and strong arms at the two elbows,
and eyes that had not watered 70 years.
The curse of hell upon the sleek upstart that
got the Captain finally on his back,
and took the red, red vitals of his heart
and made the kites to whet their beaks clack clack.