YEA, as I sit here, crutched, and cricked, and bent, I think of Panthera, who underwent Much from insidious aches in his decline; But his aches were not radical like mine; They were the twinges of old wounds—the feel Of the hand he had lost, shorn by barbarian steel, Which came back, so he said, at a change in the air, Fingers and all, as if it still were there. My pains are otherwise: upclosing cramps And stiffened tendons from this country’s damps, Where Panthera was never commandant.— The Fates sent him by way of the Levant. He had been blithe in his young manhood’s time, And as centurion carried well his prime. In Ethiop, Araby, climes fair and fell, He had seen service and had borne him well. Nought shook him then: he was serene as brave; Yet later knew some shocks, and would grow grave When pondering them; shocks less of corporal kind Than phantom-like, that disarranged his mind; And it was in the way of warning me (By much his junior) against levity That he recounted them; and one in chief Panthera loved to set in bold relief. This was a tragedy of his Eastern days, Personal in touch—though I have sometimes thought That touch a possible delusion—wrought Of half-conviction carried to a craze— His mind at last being stressed by ails and age:— Yet his good faith thereon I well could wage. I had said it long had been a wish with me That I might leave a scion—some small tree As channel for my sap, if not my name— Ay, offspring even of no legitimate claim, In whose advance I secretly could joy. Thereat he warned. “Cancel such wishes, boy! A son may be a comfort or a curse, A seer, a doer, a coward, a fool; yea, worse— A criminal . . . That I could testify!” “Panthera has no guilty son!” cried I All unbelieving. “Friend, you do not know,” He darkly dropt: “True, I’ve none now to show, For _the law took him_. Ay, in sooth, Jove shaped it so!” “This noon is not unlike,” he again began, “The noon these pricking memories print on me— Yea, that day, when the sun grew copper-red, And I served in Judæa . . . ’Twas a date Of rest for arms. The _Pax Romana_ ruled, To the chagrin of frontier legionaries! Palestine was annexed—though sullen yet,— I, being in age some two-score years and ten And having the garrison in Jerusalem Part in my hands as acting officer Under the Governor. A tedious time I found it, of routine, amid a folk Restless, contentless, and irascible.— Quelling some riot, sentrying court and hall, Sending men forth on public meeting-days To maintain order, were my duties there.