The Edge of the Evening
(1913)
Ah! What avails the classic bent,
And what the chosen word,
Against the undoctored incident
That actually occurred?
And what is Art whereto we press
Through paint and prose and rhyme—
When Nature in her nakedness
Defeats us every time?
'Hi! Hi! Hold your horses! Stop! . . . Well! Well!' A lean man in a sable-lined overcoat leaped from a private car and barred my way up Pall Mall. 'You don't know me? You're excusable. I wasn't wearing much of anything last time we met—in South Africa.'
The scales fell from my eyes, and I saw him once more in a sky-blue army shirt, behind barbed wire, among Dutch prisoners bathing at Simonstown, more than a dozen years ago.[1] 'Why, it's Zigler—Laughton O. Zigler!' I cried, 'Well, I am glad to see you.'
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