The Three Taverns Part 3

BURR

Then you concede his Majesty? That's good, And what of yours? Here are two majesties.

Favor the Left a little, Hamilton, Or you'll be floundering in the ditch that waits For riders who forget where they are riding.

If we and France, as you antic.i.p.ate, Must eat each other, what Caesar, if not yourself, Do you see for the master of the feast?

There may be a place waiting on your head For laurel thick as Nero's. You don't know.

I have not crossed your glory, though I might If I saw thrones at auction.

HAMILTON

Yes, you might.

If war is on the way, I shall be -- here; And I've no vision of your distant heels.

BURR

I see that I shall take an inference To bed with me to-night to keep me warm.

I thank you, Hamilton, and I approve Your fealty to the aggregated greatness Of him you lean on while he leans on you.

HAMILTON

This easy phrasing is a game of yours That you may win to lose. I beg your pardon, But you that have the sight will not employ The will to see with it. If you did so, There might be fewer ditches dug for others In your perspective; and there might be fewer Contemporary motes of prejudice Between you and the man who made the dust.

Call him a genius or a gentleman, A prophet or a builder, or what not, But hold your disposition off the balance, And weigh him in the light. Once (I believe I tell you nothing new to your surmise, Or to the tongues of towns and villages) I nourished with an adolescent fancy -- Surely forgivable to you, my friend -- An innocent and amiable conviction That I was, by the grace of honest fortune, A savior at his elbow through the war, Where I might have observed, more than I did, Patience and wholesome pa.s.sion. I was there, And for such honor I gave nothing worse Than some advice at which he may have smiled.

I must have given a modic.u.m besides, Or the rough interval between those days And these would never have made for me my friends, Or enemies. I should be something somewhere -- I say not what -- but I should not be here If he had not been there. Possibly, too, You might not -- or that Quaker with his cane.

BURR

Possibly, too, I should. When the Almighty Rides a white horse, I fancy we shall know it.

HAMILTON

It was a man, Burr, that was in my mind; No G.o.d, or ghost, or demon -- only a man: A man whose occupation is the need Of those who would not feel it if it bit them; And one who shapes an age while he endures The pin p.r.i.c.ks of inferiorities; A cautious man, because he is but one; A lonely man, because he is a thousand.

No marvel you are slow to find in him The genius that is one spark or is nothing: His genius is a flame that he must hold So far above the common heads of men That they may view him only through the mist Of their defect, and wonder what he is.

It seems to me the mystery that is in him That makes him only more to me a man Than any other I have ever known.

BURR

I grant you that his wors.h.i.+p is a man.

I'm not so much at home with mysteries, May be, as you -- so leave him with his fire: G.o.d knows that I shall never put it out.

He has not made a cripple of himself In his pursuit of me, though I have heard His condescension honors me with parts.

Parts make a whole, if we've enough of them; And once I figured a sufficiency To be at least an atom in the annals Of your republic. But I must have erred.

HAMILTON

You smile as if your spirit lived at ease With error. I should not have named it so, Failing a.s.sent from you; nor, if I did, Should I be so complacent in my skill To comb the tangled language of the people As to be sure of anything in these days.

Put that much in account with modesty.

BURR

What in the name of Ahab, Hamilton, Have you, in the last region of your dreaming, To do with "people"? You may be the devil In your dead-reckoning of what reefs and shoals Are waiting on the progress of our s.h.i.+p Unless you steer it, but you'll find it irksome Alone there in the stern; and some warm day There'll be an inland music in the rigging, And afterwards on deck. I'm not affined Or favored overmuch at Monticello, But there's a mighty swarming of new bees About the premises, and all have wings.

If you hear something buzzing before long, Be thoughtful how you strike, remembering also There was a fellow Naboth had a vineyard, And Ahab cut his hair off and went softly.

HAMILTON

I don't remember that he cut his hair off.

BURR

Somehow I rather fancy that he did.

If so, it's in the Book; and if not so, He did the rest, and did it handsomely.

HAMILTON

Commend yourself to Ahab and his ways If they inveigle you to emulation; But where, if I may ask it, are you tending With your invidious wielding of the Scriptures?

You call to mind an eminent archangel Who fell to make him famous. Would you fall So far as he, to be so far remembered?

BURR

Before I fall or rise, or am an angel, I shall acquaint myself a little further With our new land's new language, which is not -- Peace to your dreams -- an idiom to your liking.

I'm wondering if a man may always know How old a man may be at thirty-seven; I wonder likewise if a prettier time Could be decreed for a good man to vanish Than about now for you, before you fade, And even your friends are seeing that you have had Your cup too full for longer mortal triumph.

Well, you have had enough, and had it young; And the old wine is nearer to the lees Than you are to the work that you are doing.

HAMILTON

When does this philological excursion Into new lands and languages begin?

BURR

Anon -- that is, already. Only Fortune Gave me this afternoon the benefaction Of your blue back, which I for love pursued, And in pursuing may have saved your life -- Also the world a pounding piece of news: Hamilton bites the dust of Was.h.i.+ngton, Or rather of his horse. For you alone, Or for your fame, I'd wish it might have been so.

HAMILTON

Not every man among us has a friend So jealous for the other's fame. How long Are you to diagnose the doubtful case Of Demos -- and what for? Have you a sword For some new Damocles? If it's for me, I have lost all official appet.i.te, And shall have faded, after January, Into the law. I'm going to New York.