THE FREETHINKER

London, England

6 July 1913

(pages 428-429)

A Score of Epigrams

Tolstoy.

Weary of being a progenitor,

Tolstoy found children were against God’s law:

Fatigued with courts, he found his God again:

Bored epicure, he found God vegetarian:

Author and teacher for a whole life long,

He found that God thought novel-writing wrong:

Sated with love, when his old reins grew slack,

The Devil was an aphrodisiac:

The vainest egotist for centuries

Mistook his ennui for the world’s disease.

The Journalist.

Such far-fetched metaphor! Such stern invective!

Such brilliant verbiage! Such noble rage!

If he’s a worm, why are you so vindictive?

Because, old man, they pay me by the page.

God and I.

If I were God, I’d not accept the apology

Offered for my existence by theology.

Chesterton.

Our Chesterton doth bless and damn,

According to his Beer and Joint:

He is our age’s epigram,

Excepting that he has no point.

The Lady Novelist.

“You may decry them, but you find my novels

Enjoyed at once in palaces and hovels.”

“True, Hut and hall two kinds of rooms are rich in—

One never mind, the other one’s the kitchen.

And, by the way, your sales would rise like vapor,

Were you but printed upon thinner paper.”

The Theologians.

“God is a spirit.” Then the stern Freethinker:

“I’m a Teetotaler; you, Sir, are a drinker.

It follows then that Catholics are fuddled,

Whereas the Protestants are merely muddled;

Protestants have one spirit, though it stinks,

Whereas the Catholics all mix their drinks.”

However fair the theologic weather,

The Pope and Mr. Foote can’t dine together.

How sad it is that cranks in drink and food

Militate so against true brotherhood.

Christian Poets.

The theory that life on earth’s a proem

Prevents the accomplishment of any poem.

Christian Doctrine.

When Doctors differ, where to find salvation?

Our Paul backs love, and Origen castration.

The Jew.

The star-lit desert did my fathers range,

And found their God. For me the Stock Exchange

Serves as a temple. Sheep and Goats? My prayers

Divide all mankind into Bulls and Bears.

“Punch.”

When poor old dotard Punch sacked E. T. Reed,

He showed why he’d so sadly run to seed:

He’ll not employ those artists that can draw,

But those that live according to the law.

An Epitaph.

‘Gainst scorn and blows

And all his mortal pain

Not once he rose,

So cannot rise again.

The Scandal.

The violet, who shyly droops her head,

Sleeps out at night, in a mixed flower-bed!

To the Philistines.

That part of mankind that is most delectable

Respects most those who are not too respectable.

Degeneracy.

Olympus ruled, and Art was firm and rigid,

For love was free: now a reverse is come—

Our poets, sordid in their lives and frigid,

Write their “free verses” in a London slum.

The Philanthropist.

All day he ponders with a smile seraphic

Unwanted Babies and the White Slave Traffic.

At night he teaches, unctuous and demure,

Christian young men the Art of Being Pure.

Rationalists.

Religion’s lies

We fight with all our faith;

We dogmatise

Only on Life and Death.

The Mourner.

“History’s writ in blood!” Of course, old man.

D’you think your God’s a vegetarian?

Tact.

“They slew their tactless Poet.” “Tactless they:

Thanks to his martyrdom, he lives to-day.”

Our Novelists.

Does everyone who writes to-day a story

Dwell ‘twixt the surgery and lavatory?

Nietzsche.

Nietzsche, who laid on all the gods a ban,

Succumbed at last—and to the Superman!

Strains Dionysian replaced the Orphic,

Apotheosis of the Anthropomorphic!

Victor B. Neuburg.