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The
Book of Oaths
PREFACE
Lies do not matter: they perish by nature: magna est verites et praevalebit. And this is what I mean by saying that I am The Great Wild Beast 666: I mean that I am not a man, but M A N. I publish this Book of Oaths with the idea that every human being without exception (though he will doubtless be outraged by 99 per cent of what he finds) may be able to put his finger on at least one line somewhere, and say: This is the deepest truth for me, in the best expression thereof. I have never found it anywhere else.
A large order!
Before Kissing the Book.
Apologia pro Juramentis suis.
“Swear not at all” the Saviour said. (But what is one to do instead?)
It may be the Almighty loathes My project of this Book of Oaths.
“Your Yea be Yea and your Nay Nay”? I don’t see how to get away
With that—I’d feel myself a villain To offer Collins or Macmillan
A manuscript composed of Naught But those determinates of thought.
It scarcely would enlarge the scope To introduce a ‘Yep’ or ‘Nope’.
By God, no! Oath on oath I lance —And Nazareth must take its chance.
NOUMENA.
It does not matter in the least What mind and body cloak the soul, What masquerade of bird or beast Amuses Jupiter on stroll, What firm or flabby flesh is creased Around the Necessary Whole.
I swear I will no more be fooled By accidents of intellectual Or physical appearance, schooled By life to know them ineffectual. I will not be confused or curbed Or disappointed or disturbed By thoughts that baffle men and blind ’em, And shows that lure, bewitch, and bind ’em. The truth I love lies far behind ’em. I take my fancies as I find ’em.
My falsest friends conceals a Star: God’s in his emptiest avatar: My girls—I do not care one button What meat is; an honest glutton Devours alike beef, pork and mutton. There’s one thing common to all women: Just as all seas are good to swim in. I don not bathe to please and flatter The shores; the landscape doesn’t matter— Swim when you feel dry land too cloddy To cleanse and exercise the body!
It happens that this rare judicial Impartiality aforesaid Releases me from all official Responsibility that bores head; It makes my suitors less evasive And calm, more eager and persuasive. They come, like bitches, at my whistle, And wag their tails and gambol gaily, Properly grateful for the daily Dole, the tough tenderness of gristle.
Scroll the First.
With the Monkey on the Rock.
BABALON.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, Rue not now guilt the Devil’s dagger who draw:
I swear towards the West On BABALON’S bold breast. I swear towards the South On Her mad merry mouth. I swear towards the East On Her Cup fiery-fleeced. I swear towards the North On Her Disk savage-swarth. I swear towards the Height On Her five fingers’ Spite. I swear towards the Deep On Her soul’d smiling sleep. I swear towards the Centre By Her and Him that sent Her.
I Swear this Oath Of Troth To BABALON— My own Sister, and Scarlet Harlot; I am Her Priest The BEAST, To bring to birth On earth My word of awe, The Law Of Will, above Its Love. To BABALON Alone This tempered Oath Of Troth In Her Chaste Cup Seal Up!
THE ROCK.
Seaward my terrace—seaward from the hill— Is open; iris and geranium Fledge it; beyond, the wardens of my will Stand olive, mulberry, almond; stern and still Cypress and ilex. Then uproars its dumb Portent the Rock, the town’s Palladium— Callous to its man-vermin’s good or ill For æons past, for chiliads to come!
The sea’s eternal siege; the sky’s disdain, The earth’s convulsions have not stirred its base. The generations in their senseless pain, Their aimless effort, their blind dreams insane Have left but orts of rubble on its face. Was this a temple? That a market place? Here fortress? Cistern there? Beshew thee, brain! Guess, fancy, rhetoric cannot cloud the case!
Men—cannot thou hold memory of man? Canst thou not read thine own sire’s testament? Scornful I spurn the ruins, and I scan Sea, sky, rock; I scrutinize the plan Of Nature—is some Titan hugely pent Under that bulk in rage by Vulcan rent? Is it God’s throne? An Olympian Altar? Or all unplanned? Gross accident?
I search my heart, I count my life, scar by scar, Explore the ruins of age on age of thought And act—a few years, but full—my fame, my star, My love, a flame, my work, a tower—that are Yet extant. But their meaning? They are naught. I knew not what I did, nor what I sought. Intelligence? Insuperable bar To the enjoyment of all manly sport!
Its ruins fret not, weary not the rock. Eternity ignores Time’s trickle of sands, Space consumes all notion, pens the flock Of stars in silence. The event will mock The agitation of the gods, whose hands Twist, untwist, tangle, disentangle strands To end where they began—shock encounters shock, I build life and I wreck it. The soul stands!
THE OATH.
I swear I hardly dare to swear; For I could never bear to swear The kind of oath I care to swear, In case it were unfair to swear. But, fancy if I were to swear!
SUNSET AT CEFALÙ.
The Sun, our great High Priest and Hierophant Offers a new oblation every night, Transfiguring with transcendental might His cloud-cathedrals that pulsate and pant With rapture of the revel, that enchant Earth till she dances dizzy with delight To that majestic music, by whose might Reels Madness in the chorus corybant.
Screened by the long low promontory Our great High Priest goes forth in all his glory: The altar-lights burn low, leap, flicker, fall! The minster of my mind is vast and dim; In silence still my Soul communeth Him With whom her substance is identical!
A MADRIGAL.
My Lea is my mate, With might in her embrace To raise me to the height of fate Set me before God’s face And from his eyes get grace On her new words to create.
My Lea is my soul’s Twin sister, with the wit To read and understand the scrolls My mind hath subtly wrote Finite and infinite— With her my life-song trolls.
My Lea is the heart That did conceive me, bear me, Suckle me, made me smile or smart, That did not shrink or spare me The truth, that I might dare me The adventure perilous, Art!
My Lea is my child In my will’s image I gat her; For I have quickened in her my wild Fancies, made madness matter, Wakened the sleeping satyr; In her woods—my babe—she smiled!
For Lea is my Saint And Goddess, ever alert To answer me ere I stagger and faint At her shrine, hold from hurt My head, my feet from dirt Of life, and my soul from taint.
My Lea is all in all That my being feeleth or knoweth Or loveth, and she on the royal thrall Her uttermost all bestoweth— So I am the God that goeth Making this madrigal!
ALEXANDER SELKIRK II.
As heaven is perfect, it’s a bet I do not want to go there yet. I am down here in Cefalu, The only oyster in the stew, The only starfish on the shore, The only brass plate on the door, The one silk strand in all these bristles, The one red rose among the thistles, The only lobster at the lunch, The First Prize Baby of the bunch. The pain that one endures from others’ Inferiority one smothers By contemplation of one’s own Superiority of tone. By leave, God, I’ll stay here and doss it In Cefalù where I can boss it!
THE BOOMERANG.
I flung afar the stone, mine heart, And lo! it blossomed with wild wings; It made itself a counterpart Of millions of delicious things.
I watched it go its flaming arc Across the æons of the abyss: And never once it missed the mark, And never once disdained the kiss.
Then when the infinite inane Had been consumed by it, beyond The end—it sought my breast again, A living laughing diamond!
AT DAGNINO’S.
Bring me strawberries and cream! Red and white in prime perfection Of alchemical projection! How it crowns creation’s scheme. Nature through the animal builded Cream—those snowy domes sun-gilded Quintessential and supreme— Through the vegetable fashiones Strawberries, the heart impassioned Of Love’s archtypal dream! Here he mated Matter, Motion, Space, Time, Being, Form, an ocean Married to the Eternal Beam. If on better food the speckless Gods feed, Nature’s getting reckless! O thou poet, to thy theme Too inadequate, the waiter Looks a Ganymede; or greater Bring me strawberries and cream!
THE HIEROPHANTRIA.*
I swear I like to see my harlot Happy with hashish—O my queen! I also like to see the scarlet Break out ablossom through the green!
Ye literary lions, pray compare The ‘bijou rose et noir’ of Baudelaire!
* The symbolic colours of the Hierophant in the Mysteries (of the Outer Order) are scarlet and green.
ENTERITIS.
Truth! Truth’s the Law that rules the Mind, Compels its mode, for god and brute The same. Its compass is confined By reason that is absolute.
How shall I bridge its intervals, Useless, unreasonable, vain? All incoherence must be false —I hear my Lea scream for pain.
Warning or punishment might serve Some turn, but this is idiot, blind, Not whip to flesh, nor word to nerve, My soul abhors the undesigned.
Yet as her unreflecting arms Cling round my stalwart helplessness So keen to espy and baffle harms, So impotent in this distress.
A chill, an inch of gut enflamed, If Truth be there, ’tis Truth blasphemed, If reason, ’tis by Reason shamed!— She clung, and mastering her screams,
She said: “I love you, never yet Loved I so perfectly and purely. Nor thought it possible to set My knowledge of myself so surely.”
Causal? Absurd! No simpler way To man’s heart? Impotent, I must (The actor in the actor’s play, I am one) ‘register disgust’!
I know the arguments. (I made A lot of them myself, in youth) But I shall never, I’m afraid, See what it has to do with Truth!
PROMETHEUS.
In exile, on this burning rock, I die by inches ; from the bleak And bitter sky the vultures flock; My liver drips from every beak. My lidless eyes behold the loose Lewd sneer upon the lips of Zeus.
My parched and aching mouth is curled With an inalienable smile; Beyond His shadow rolls the world Exempt from tyranny and guile; Men warm them by the fire I stole:— The vision satisfies my Soul.
Yea, though God’s vengeance brand (like Cain’s) My brow, and instigate His slaves To scorn and shun me, though my pains Serve for the sport of fools and knaves, I triumph, having that I would: Their freedom, not their gratitude.
These blazing days, these icy nights, Are cooled by Love’s devoted fan And warmed by Love’s intense delights —I would not change with any man My fate; my poverty is worth More than all wealth of Heaven and Earth.
AUGUST IN CEPHALOEDIUM.
It’s much too hot, my prostitute, To cuddle close, God knows; But I like to keep the edge of your foot All night between my toes.
PANTHEA.
Year-long, the breezes bring to me Murmured, the melancholy moan Of the Mediterranean. The lamentation of the sea Speaks of a sorrow not its own, The sorrow Uranian! Myself, infinitesimal Am not myself save in so far As I AM, one attitude Of the Image—immanent in All— So signal back to sea, my Star, This lyric beatitude!
TO LEAH, NURSING ME.
Big Lions often act distressing To Monkeys when they’re convalescing; But when the Big Lions get quite well They eat those Monkeys all to Hell!
ODE TO FORTUNE.
How cynical-capricious The mood of Fate to plan So dirtily delicious An ordeal for a man As setting Fame to trumpet His name in every zone, And then—the saucy strumpet!— To let him die alone.
She put a golden spoon in My mouth when I was born; She brought success, high noon, in The mists of early morn; That in my summer season I faint for lack of food, And taste the wine of treason And bread of turpitude.
Jest on, thou foolish monkey! Be welcome to thy pleasures! My heart hath only one key To its uncounted treasures! My word is done, despite thee, My Will hath wrought its utter Perfection—how, delight thee To throw me in the gutter!
In rags and dirt and hunger, I still am strong and healthy; Age only makes me younger And poverty more wealthy. It proves me loftier mounted Than ever I suspected, That I should now be counted A thing to be neglected.
In this obscurely hidden Old cranny of the planet, I eat the fruit forbidden That grows upon the granite. I find the paths of Pan Most pleasant paths to follow, And goodly for a man In Circe’s stye to wallow.
I do not envy those Who eat at Scott’s or Nichol’s, And with dyspeptic throes Pay down the price of pickles; Nor those who hang with silk And gems the limbs of ladies Who long to do a bilk And wish their fops in Hades!
I eat—Isos theoisin— This honest country fare, Digest it and rejoice in This fierce exciting air; All night I romp and revel With her who loves me, loathes All milliners—“The Devil Take all these stupid clothes!”
Fame’s virtue sleeps securely While Robert Bridges sips His sherry-wine demurely And smacks his lackey’s lips. I shall not tease her tresses, Her sheets I shall not soil, So long as she caresses George Moore and Conan-Doyle.
I want no sword light flipped on My shoulder—while the purse Has power to furnish Lipton With knighthood’s golden spurs, While Sheeny lawyers belt them As earls and Welsh attorneys Rule England—I have smelt them— I’ll go on my own journeys!
While folk still worship Jesus And Mary Baker Eddy, ’Twere folly should it please us To find them getting ready To listen to my Word. What men delight in trusting Is probably absurd, And certainly disgusting!
Then leave me in my nook, My merry maiden, Fortune, ’Twere better sport to look For one who would importune Your merry, or bewail His luck, or curse, or trust his Redeemer to prevail Against your harsh injustice.
For me, the afternoon Has passed in pleasant riming This monologue, the tune Its cheerful cadence chiming. I come of faery folk. I can—if one can, two can!— Enjoy your little joke On me as much as you can.
My hand is on my rudder. I hear a merry note— Milk foams from the black udder Of yonder grazing goat. There’s some on waiting till I Have finished these satiric Stanzas to ask me: Will I Compose a little lyric?
Farewell, Fate; better luck Attend your next endeavour! My prowess and my pluck Are just as good as ever. Your coiffing—well, who cares? This tress is just like that tress. There’s my goat’s milk, and there’s My mistress on the mattress!
CEPHALOEDIUM: A YEAR IN RETROSPECT.
I swear I never found on earth, For melancholy and for mirth, To work in, love in, dream in, (So much fresh milk with so much cream in) A place as has so little tedium And so much fun, as Cephaloedium.
I never saw elsewhere such wealth Of beauty, such seductive stealth Of seas, such skies serene and tender, Such grace of mountain-sides, such splendour Of sunsets, such romantic rigour Of rocks, such rush of virile vigour Of life, such hallowed hours of swoon In chaste caresses of the moon. King Day flings broadcast forth his treasures, Prince Dawn and Princess Gloaming sigh And smile their modest mastery; Nature is nowhere God’s true medium As she is here in Cephaloedium.
Here also I have known the limit Of love and life and how to hymn it, Here I have slept all night with Sorrow And danced with Pleasure on the morrow; Here have I loved and laughed and lusted, Till joy jarred and delight disgusted; Here have I hugged to heart the hated Ape, the abortion animated That fed her foulness on me, clawed Her carrion till the withered bawd Venus Aversa, leering, crept Up to the dunghill where I slept With fetid sorceries to bewitch My brain, until the beastly bitch That writhed within my arms, unsated And glad to hold the man that hated And loathed her, felt my soul revert From its abhorrence, drawn to dirt By her excess, heard words drip Debauched from my apostate lip, To tell her that I knew my loathing Was stripped like a slut’s underclothing From a slut’s soul, that now I kissed her In utter love, my spouse and sister.
Here death wrenched out, and trod before me, My heart, the baby that she bore me; He struck again, he tore apart Our son that lay beneath her heart. Here in one year, no moment waste, All life distils was mine to taste, And I have drunk the dregs; I hold Fearless the goblet of wrought gold And arsenic to Fate fill it Again to brim—I will not spill it! Pleasure or pain—but never tedium! Extremes; I hate the happy “medium”! Here’s luck to life in Cephaloedium.
THE POET’S SEPULCHRE.
I’ll buy me a place of burial on the rock of Cefalù; Flame-stars on green below me, and above gold stars on blue. My spirit walk till cockcrow, till sun peep from the Straits And rest until he pass below Panormus’ mountain Gates. I’ll look to rest where the axle of the Pole-star rides the rim O’ the world-wheel, and Diana sly dips a lissome limb In the lime-stone. As her moonlight yet glimmers faery forth, All this I’ll make my palace in the rock that rears to North, But I’ll mostly turn me Southward, to the hills where oil and wine From the misty slopes sweat gladness, and the earth’s requicken mine! But I’ll let my wraith-eyes centre, I’ll refresh them and repose On the white square house green-painted, with geranium and rose, Iris and daisy, surfeit of glory and grace of flower And herb and tree are about it, its terrace to embower. For on that hill’s bosom, swollen as with milk, in that low hall For a season Lea loved me, and nothing mattered at all. The centuries reel in ruin, but the limestone stirs no jot; It’s there my bones shall dry to dust what most resists the rot; In the generation of liars once Lea loved me true, And I’ll buy me a place of burial on the Rock of Cefalù!
SERVICE. (AL II 52)
I swear to work my work abhorred Careless of all but one reward The pleasure of the Devil, Our Lord.
IV.
FAUNA,
(Mammals not Indigenous to the British Isles)
VAMPIRE.
DIOGENES.
Don’t talk to me of pounds and pence! I’ll Ride Rockefeller on a rail, With my intelligence prehensile Exactly like a monkey’s tail.
THE ORNITHORHYNCHUS OR DUCK-BILLED PLATYPUS.
The Ornithorynchus May sensibly think us Ridiculous creatures With fatuous features, Exactly as we do of him. Let me lead who Would dominate luck, build Success, to the Duck-Billed Platypus; he can Show us how we can Travel beyond de- feat like a John D. (I lay special stress on Your learning this lesson!) How did the Astors Make themselves masters? What was the organ Most useful to Morgan? What proved that Schwab Was the man for the job? How did Carnegie Catch hold of the leg he Pulled so astutely, Persistently? Mutely I muse on the riddle: What's in a fiddle To help Mischa Elman So well to compel him To put him on Easy Street? Why did Fortune's breezes treat Yeaye with such tender- ness? Why should such splendour Envelope your life, etc- etera, Heifetz? What enriched Libby? An Answer, amphibian! Surely, let that tip us Truly, thou Platypus! Thou that dost snort with Contempt, dost retort with Asperity, when the Zoologist men, the Wiseacres, moan that There's one thing alone that Their anguish will pacify; That is, to classify Thee among regu- lar fellows! We beg you, Ornithorynchus, Pray do not think us Rude, but propriety Limits variety!
Smiling, the Platyp- us shakes the broad flat tip Of the bill that experi- ence sanctions. I fear he 's too stubborn to follow The rule of sociolo- gy. Having webbed feet, he Feels equal to Beatty! Miss Farrar! His furs are As comfy as hers are! The moral is this; it Seems fairly explicit. What people suppose is Bad form—well, are noses Alike? If a profit Accrues to thee of it, The boot is applied To the critics back-side! The Ornithorynchus Should bid us bethink us That mere eccentricity Has brought his publicity, A name of five sylla- bles, sonant, to fill a Whole line. He's obscure, he os- tracises all curios- ity-mongers, no shirk, at- tends to his work at His office; his limit He knows. Let us init- ate such an exempla- ry animal, contempla- te his patience & pluck, build Our lives like the Duck-billed Platypus. Let us All dauntlessly set us To labour unnoti- -ced, but dour and devoted, Unmoved by the criti- cs that plague us with piti- ful sneers; it may be that One day men will see that Our “eccentric and misund- erstood work was this und- iscered Pearl they neglected; The stone they rejected, The but of the scorner, The head of the corner! Thy poem, the deep occ- ult Thought of the Epoch.
HIPPOPOTAMUS ABORTION.
(THE ABOMINABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR FUTVOYE* JR.)
I like a man who babbles of lactic Fluid when out for blood In a Spirit of Perfect Love—the tactic Of Professor Norman Mudd.
His voice grates much like a rusty key In the lock of a dungeon: “Blast you, “Dear Lord, you think like a W.C. “With the pipe stopped up—and my a—to you!
“My compliments to the bug your brother— “And you stink as much as you itch, “And with all respect to your lady mother “You are a son of a bitch!
* “Abominable conduct”. Mr. Mudd, stung by his Under-Over, Oedipus, and other complexes accused me of “abominable conduct”. I replied by this oath. I called him Prof. Futvoye Jr. in allusion to the “Brass Bottle of Anstey”, where a similarly recalcitrant professor is transformed into a one-eyed mule, which is the normal appearance of Mr. Mudd.
THE ZEBRA.
The Zebra glories in his stripes. The Highlander is partial to the pipes. Oatmeal and whiskey constitute his diet. He wants to live at ease and die in quiet. He contemplates, with resignation meek-eyed, The Zebra and the splendours of his sleek hide. This admirable animal does not (For his part) bear a grudge against the Scot. Learn from this edifying course of conduct The truth: that neither is duck swan nor swan duck; t- -o value thine own virtue: equilibre “Morale” is inculcated by the Zebra.
THE CAMEL.
The camel has been badly treated By certain literary snobs. I know four camels that competed Successfully for cushy jobs:— The first efficiently completed A bomb so sad foetid It massacred the Boche in mobs. The second signally defeated The Huns by hurling at them heated Fragments of porcelain poker knobs. The third so artfully secreted Such pathos in the songs he bleated That storming parties shock with sobs. The fourth untiringly repeated Stale jokes until he had unseated The reason of the dirty swabs! Apply a fresh coat of enamel To the escutcheon of the camel.
CHIMAERA.
LENIN’S WEEK.
Monday, I’m murdered: Tuesday, I am booked For a paralytic stroke: I die again On Wednesday from my wounds: I go insane On Thursdays: Friday, oh! my food is cooked With arsenic: On Saturday, verflucht! I marry: Sunday, softening of the brain. The week will not be wasted: yet I fain Fancy, there’s something I have overlooked.
What, in the name of Marx? Have I to speak Somewhere? Or shoot myself? No! that’s next week. I’ll have to ask my wife —— Ha!—that unlocks My memory—where’s my note book? I must write It down at once: for otherwise I might Forget to ask her please to mend my socks.
HYENA.
THE SICK WOMAN OF EUROPE.
To all men Mussolini saith: Choose between Castor Oil and Death! Italia, in a sorrier crisis —What between cholera and pthisis! Faces the same decision—urge The patient to accept the purge! To see her need requires no Solon: Sluice Mussolini from her colon!
HYENA.
M. MUSSOLINI SE VERRAIT CONFERER LE TITRE DE DUC.
I always thought it was a pity: “Le mance sono abolite” A dukedom! That is better still Than ten per cent upon the bill.
HYENA.
BILL SYKES GIVES FAGIN SHARES.
Bill Sykes gives Fagin shares—he shows good sense Greed knows the value of experience. And Mussolini is a clever man To make a compact with the Vatican. The brigand is but prudent to provide him With nineteen centuries of craft to guide him. Barabbas seems—to modern minds—a crude ass: He nowadays seeks partnership with Judas.
HYENA.
THE REVIVAL OF SUPERSTITION.
There’s lots of things seem easy to fools That look not so to the wise Mussolini “put God back into the schools” But, who’ll put him back in the skies?
HYENA.
REACTION.
A voice croaked from the Vatican: “Children, make it clear that man Must be a black-hearted brute Or a prostrate prostitute: Children, let the planet know That to kiss my holy toe Is the only guarantee Against abject anarchy! Science, smiles but offers his Popeship not her toe to kiss
HYENA.
ITALIAN NATIONAL ANTHEM 1923.
Praise God from Whom all blessings flow, And kiss the Father’s holy toe, Check Tiber in his Christless course, And do away with all divorce! Teach youth about the Virgin Birth, And that the sun goes round the earth! Bid men to remember to applaud The ferule: Freedom is a fraud. Science is false, and black is white, And Mussolini’s always right!
TWO-TOED SLOTH.
ABSENCE OF BRITISH CONSUL AT EL-OUED.
Lines written in a mournful mood at the absence Of a British Consulate General at El-Oued.
Here men hath mules and camel at his call. What need hath he of Consuls-General?
WOMBAT.
AUSTRALIA.
In all Australia’s immense isle I find no single noble trail With my intelligence prehensile Exactly like a monkey’s tail
THE LEOPARD.
The man who does the leopard’s advertising Confines his efforts to familiarizing The public with on fact — he know what’s What!—“My employer does not change his spots.” Masked by this motto, camouflaged completely Within this character, the leopard neatly, Unostentateously, puts over diverse Deals which would land less capable contrivers Within the precincts of the penitentiary. For something like a quarter of a century. The magnate who succeeds by wise publicity Of fixing on some harmless eccentricity The world’s attention finds his dupes absurder Than he—to let him get away with murder! Tootle thy flute, thou advertizing shepherd! Shew not thy shears! Thy business do not jeopard- -ize by neglect to emulate the leopard!
THE MISSING LINK.
PROGRESS. (Found only in Daytonville, Tennessee)
“Nature and Co. consider the time ripe To issue (with wide margins and large type, On the best wood-pulp paper, edges gilt, The binding fit for any Vanderbilt, To be subscribed on the installment plan) The Modern Great Romantic Epic ‘Man’ ”
Commercial subterfuge. Despite the shape And style, the book is the old classic “Ape”: A bawdy satire, crime and superstition And folly. Here’s the Critical Edition, Enriched with notes, jocosely or morosely, But the text follows the first folio closely.
Her baby had four hands, six fingers each, No feet, no eyes, and hydrocephalus, A rabbit’s face. She said: “I wish to teach What syphilis is apt to do for us.”
But I: “O infinite Isis, Thee I praise — Such wondrous beauty in such wondrous ways?”
Written on the way home from the Maison de Sante, Tunis, on being shown an abortion as per above, Feb. 1925 e.v.
V.
FAUNA.
MAMMALS INDIGENOUS TO THE BRITISH ISLES.
THE RABBIT.
Children wonder whether rabbits Were devised to edify them, Whether their immoral habits Warn us that we shouldn’t try them, Lest our skins adorn the shabby Throats of vulgar Mauds and Mabels, And our flavourless and flabby Flesh appear upon the tables Of the lower middle classes. We shall certainly be asses If we miss this hieroglyphic: “Does it pay to be prolific?”
THE WOLF.
The wolf notoriously lacks Originality and force. Instinctively he hunts in packs; Proudly denominates this course “Democracy”. The worst offence: To weaken on the proposition. He saves the trouble and expense Of undertaker and physician By eating the afflicted unit. He claims that thus he keeps from spreading Disease; the customs knits as few knit Society. He argues (Heading “Ethical Justice” in the “Praxis” Of his most famous moralist) “Efficiency and prophylaxis Eliminate the Bolshevist.” He chiefly fears Initiative, Seeing to what wild music men dance; And knows it fatal to forgive The treason self-styled Independence. The patriotic wolf regards With uttermost contempt and loathing The shameless blackleg who discards The only uniform—“Sheep’s clothing”.
THE DOG.
It makes me ill. It is humil- -iating to confess to you: Philosophy is baffled by The fact that Nat- -ure is too great For men to cir- -cumscribe what Her Least compass draws. I squeal, because I feel to-night I cannot write A monologue Upon the Dog.
I watch my step! With all these ep- -igrams and pro- -verbs treating of The Dog, a pro- -per grasp of op- -portunity Is clearly be- -yond me—I con- -centrate upon The point that bus- -iness always is A many-dis- -ed matter. I’d Prefer to say No more to-day.
THE ALLEY-CAT.
SUFFRAGE.
“Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever” Appears to be a counsel of Sour Grapes. I’ve met the most intelligent, and never Found one with brains beyond the average ape’s.
ASSES.
NIKE APTEROS.
1. John Adams was an Englishman, his senses all a-whirl About the rare perfection of Emma Pease his gurl. John Adams had a noble heart, though common was his clay; And when the war broke out, he went and joined that very day.
John Adams thought: “Hits hup to me to syve from hinfamies “Un’ eard of by these bloddy ‘Uns, yer virtue, Emma Pease.” John Adams up and went to Loos, a place for him too tight, While Emma Pease was virtuous with Mo Levy every night.
2. The Rev’rend Forplush he reproved the atheistic trend Of Science: “Now this wicked world is coming to an end, “Our God will fight for us”, he said, “and prove to every one “That he will send His angels to annihilate the Hun. “For he is certainly by now exceedingly annoyed “At the atrocious doctrines taught by Haeckel and by Freud.” The Rev’rend Forplush he went East, got typhus, and went West. His flock said: “If there is a God, He’s got things badly messed!”
3. The Honourable Dacres had the bluest Norman blood; He traced his noble ancestors far back beyond the flood. Brave men, chaste women were they all—feared the fierce atroc- -ious conduct of the bestial abominable Boche. To keep his household honour safe he offered “Corps et âme”, And left ‘cemin de fer’ to fight for the Chemin des Bames. The Honourable Dacres sleeps in an impromptu tomb, His mother and his sister with the chauffeur and the groom.
4. Professor Balls, historian, hoped that our Haigs and Beatties Would make the German hordes respect the sanctity of treaties. He proved in the ten volumes of his last most famous book That Wilhelm was a blackguard and Ludendorff a crook. He called on time to witness the integrity of Britain— Alas! the final chapter must for ever stay unwritten. He died before he could explain to critical canaille How right we are to saboter the Treaty of Versailles.
5. Aroemus Yonkers, double blue, of Balliol, Rhodes scholar, Indignantly denounced the Hun with all a sportsman’s choler. He went to war with no idea of earning rank and fame, But just to teach the blighters that they had to play the game. He shot his officer because he thought the man an ass, And gained distinction for his skill in handling poison gas. It would have killed him—had he lived—to entertain the thought That peace would push the amateur for ever out of sport.
6. Fritz Rosenbaum that sturdy type of British merchant prince, The thought of losing markets used to make him fairly wince. Prosperity for England was to him so truly dear That he sacrificed his fortune to become a profiteer. Then to stabalize the market he rebuked financial sharks By investing all his millions in a wad of German marks. This patriot saved our markets—had we anything to sell— But the markets and Fritz Rosenbaum have lately gone to hell.
7. The Duke of Fitzcocotte was apprehensive of the mob. He saw the opportunity of getting on the job. By slaughtering the masses by the million he could save The British Constitution and put Labour in the grave. To him we credit D.O.R.A., the destruction of the ‘pubs’, The economic ruin of the farmers and the clubs. He saved the Constitution in that terrifying hour So well that five years later we had Socialists in power.
8. Sir Grabson Jobbs the lawyer with his known acumen saw That the war would win to worship the authority of Law. He knew not that the horror and the hardships of the time Would make men coldly careless of the punishments of crime. When Liberty no longer seemed worth trying to preserve He furnished every scoundrel with the necessary nerve. He has pondered the position with bewilderment—in vain— Since the night that he was blackjacked on his doorstep in Park Lane.
9. Old Doctor Batts the ethicist had frequently deplored The way in which morality was going by the board. “A war” he eloquently urged, “is just the thing we lack “To rouse men's consciences and bring the old ideals back.” Old Doctor Batts is paralyzed: a playful Zeppelin Was bombing his vicinity—a splinter did him in. He notices with “sadness which is much akin to pain” That everyone is crazy for coition and cocaine.
10. Lord Libbard Ramp had always been a staunch Imperialist, A world-war was his only hope for Empire to resist Disintegrating forces (so unhappily beyond His own control), bind Anglo-Saxondom in blood-red bond. “We’ve gained a lot of country uninhabited by man; “We’ve only lost South Africa, Australia, Hindustan, “Egypt and Canada; and — yes! the little old Green Isle— “I don’t see why pro-German swine should wear that stupid smile!”
11. Lieutenant-Colonel Bludgeon saw promotion in his grasp; He practised giving orders with exaggerated rasp. He lost an arm at Soissons, and an eye at Chateau Thierry, And a leg at Salonika: and he thinks it rotten, very, That a Briton should be fighting for “those bally Johnny Frogs”, And he says “By Gad! the Service, sir, is going to the dogs.” His wife has her hair bleached and exquisitely bobbed For his General (an ex-golf-pro)—and he has been ‘demobbed’.
GAZELLE.
To the Belgian shop woman at Touggourt complaining of the Arab: the Retort Courteous.
“The Arab is a lazy cuss, A liar and a thief,” “The Arab is in brief, Par omnibus?”
GOAT.
CELINE-BAR. Oct. 1925
Kill off mankind And give the Earth a chance! She well might find For her inheritance The seedlings of a race Less hideously base.
MOLES.
MEALS WITH THE MASTERS.
RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION.
I went to vall with Edward Clodd And found him busy with a rod Making strict measurements of God.
Observing him with lots and lots Of interest, I saw Charles Watts: Who said: “This Mary Queen of Scots
“Was just a crazy Catholic, “Besides I simply cannot stick “Her swank: the whole thing makes me sick”.
“Mary? The Reverend McCabe (Joseph) woke angry and outgrabe Against the Virgin and the Babe.
He said, “Such births are not legit- -imate; I liked it not one bit Even when I was a Jesuit.
“Oh Mene! Mene! Mene! Tekel “Upharsin! Things of this sort make Hell As incredible as old Ernst Haeckel.
“Philogenous or saprophytic, “It matters little: every critic “Agrees that risk of syphilitic
“Infection must invariably “Follow misconduct!” “Very ably “—as I might almost say, McCably—
“You put it”, answered Edward Clodd, “But don’t distract me with these odd “Ideas—I’m busy mapping God.”
The purr of fat E.S.P. Haynes Thrilled the assembly: “Watts complains “Of Mary Queen of Scot’s reign’s
“Too frequent incidents’s courses “Of violence, the illegal forces “She used instead of heat divorces.
“I could have fixed her up, poor kid, “Finally (exactly as I did “For Crowley, for say fifty quid.”
“I must admit, that Haynes can hustle “But let us hope that all this fuss’ll “Be over soon”, remarked Earl Russell.
“Oh hell! you’re simply wasting breath”, (Said Haynes) “That show at Nazareth! Why, it would tickle me to death.
“You know me—that I never boast— “But I would simply love to roast “That rotten egg the Holy Ghost”.
“I never, could approach the limen (Sneered Robert Blatchford sourly) “Why men “Make all this fuss about a hymen?
“It’s made precisely like a pie-crust. “I’d sooner let my new push-bike rust “Than let my good old marlinspike rust.”
At this indecent cynicism Charles Watts saw gape the vast Abysm Of Hell, and went and asked baptism,
From the old soapy Bishop Ingram (Winnington). “Why, I’ve made my Jing ram” (Blatchford continued) “every thing gram-
“iniverous, every female mammal “From a black beetle to a camel “That I could teach to spurn the trammel
“Of man-made morals”—“Here come off it!” Cried Joe McCabbage: “Where’s the profit “Of talk of this kind?” “Let him cough it
“Up” (interrupted Edward Clodd) “Blatch has not reached the period “Of culture when to measure God
“Suffices his instinctive craving “For joy: he has to keep on raving “About his gift for misbehaving.
At this, instead of cooling off, Blatchford replied, “You bloody toff, “I’ve half a mind to toss you off
“The carpet underneath the table, “And then perhaps with luck McCabe’ll “percieve the point of this old fable
“About the virgin in the stable”— The talk became a roaring Babel. I felt that I was quite unable
To stick it out; I donned my sable Coat and my hat: “I’m on my way, bel- -ov’d Brethren, to a girl called Mabel.
BATS.
POLIZEI.
The dullest Teuton brain can pull The stuff to make the “Harness Bull”.
May make an excellent “Fly Cop”.
I don’t know where they find material.
RAT.
1. Benjamin Charles Hammond, dost Thou remember those august Eyes that once did friendly glance On thine insignificance? Durst thou think with what sad scorn They must now disdainful mourn Thy most cowardly and sly Malice and disloyalty?
2. When thine angel shewed thee one Brave and brilliant as the Sun, Thou wast moved while to adore Him that waged his dreadful war On the hosts that overran The fair halidom of man With the tyranny and hate That only freedom can abate. Then couldst thou thyself behold With a spirit clean and bold
3. Leprous as thy body, dull As thy mind, diffuse and null As thy person was, no less Stood thy soul for righteousness. Thou hast now denied thy Lord:— Hast thou joy of thy reward? Well thou knowest, when his fame Stands in heaven, His noble name England’s glory, that thy seed In these words their shame shall read, Wishing their loathed selves were rather Dear than got of such a father.
4. Live thou, in thy sordid strife, Self-debarred from light and life! Live thou, itch that rots thy skin Ease to viler itch within, For thy children’s sake, ’twere best If thy wretched life confessed That the hangman them begot In adultery, and not Thou the traitor, the obscene Leper! Go! Unclean! Unclean!
HOMO SAPIENS.
They go with gold and muscle tense And precious little common sense Proud of their manhood’s excellence.
They come with aimless vehemence, And every symptom of immense Rapture, regardless of expense.
They leave, devoid of pride and pence, Perceiving life a lewd pretence, And love a jungle dark and dense.
They end by purging their offense At Venus’ altar with incense Of sandalwood—proceeding thence
To Hermes’ shrine, two years to fence Their blood from pallid virulence Of Thine Avengers, Innocence
I murmur; Evolution! Whence This Simian inconsequence Of sapient intelligence?
(“Je vous assure donc qu’elle est belle!) And thank you for your hospitable Reception, Clodd. (Must go, can’t stay, bel-
“-lo caro mio!) Hope you’re able “To stick the very last new label “On God—I’m made of penetrable “Stuff just like Hamlet’s mother—gay belle!— “Bye-bye! When next you need me, cable!”
OX.
OATH THE LAST.
I could have sung much more than I have sung But—“a big ox has trodden on my tongue”.
Scroll the Fourth.
With the Monkey in the Oasis.
MY CYNOCEPHALUS.
I swore a mighty Oath To love my Ape of Thoth; And still I watch the growth Of our eternal troth. The Gods have blessed us both With life that is not loath To sink in silly sloth, Or burst like Behemoth In brutal bliss—Great Thoth! Fortify Thou mine Oath!
This is the Wisdom of the Wilderness That all the ghosts that haunt the minds of men May not endure the Silence, and the stress Of vastness, and the chaste kiss of the Wind. In these huge wastes of Sun and Sand, Life knows Naught besides Death, and Love, his procuress. The Soul immune from all the Shadow-Shows Goes on its unmapped way, affirms its Yes By deep indifference, and solemn deed. In utter darkness, utterly content, Casting forth freely its mysterious seed, Careless, contemptuous of the Event. To work thy will, unmindful of success: This is the Wisdom of the Wilderness.
Oct. 13/23 e.v.
AT NEFTA.
I swear I never want to go Back to the slime of sordid sham Of cities: here a man may know Himself: that ‘I am that I am’. If I possessed Fifth Avenue It would be only one more curse While here, possessing naught, I view And love and own the Universe. Here nothing is of wealth or worth To one, and therefore all enjoy The whole vast realm of heaven and earth That none may ravish or destroy. Here each man, being king and priest, Is free to love and comprehend Life as a proud perpetual feast Where every guest is found a friend. Love is the solemn sacrament Wherein man ministers to Death And life—in every element The two-fold God that witnesseth In Nature that the Truth is one, An hidden spring of living Law, The frame whereon the silk is spun By fate to thrill with joy and awe. The soul that stirs not, neither strives Aught to attain, in all that is Assured of its achievement, thrives By virtue of Truth’s emphasis, I swear I would not abdicate This throne of timeless empery This sovran sphere immune to fate For menial mortality. The sordid throng, the stupid strife, The tasteless triumphs, the deceits Venomed, the sanctuary of life Profaned by foul and futile feet. I would no more be jostled by The hurrying mob with insane lust Scrambling for gold that presently Turns at their touch to bitter dust. My lips shall be defiled no more By kisses venal—venemous, Mine eyes by priests that keep the door Of heaven—the surpliced Cerberus— Mine ears by songs of liveried snobs; Smooth sayings of false prophets, laws Well-oiled, smug lies to dupe the mobs, Dire fears and shames, the worm that gnaws Its bloated bowels, my hands with clasp Of felon friendship, or my tongue With the quintessence of the asp And professed fealty to dung. My soul shall no more soil its Truth At the contagion of the stews, Society—its ageless Youth Shall no more suffer the abuse Of hags and hypocrites, but turn To the vast empire of the sand Whose naked breasts, gold-glittering, burn With lust for the Sun’s flame to brand Its Soul, beget in that wild womb The terror-Truth of Death: to her I yearn, and take of him the doom Of savage love and sinister. Life is a gamble against Fate— A Greek who plays with loaded dice. To you it may seem desperate: I can afford to pay the price, But not the loud cheap counterfeit, The insignificant success, The steady drainage of deceit. I’ll homeward—to the Wilderness! Stark Love and splendid Death for me! And nothing less to dwarf their stature! Eventful in Eternity, And mine as I myself am Nature.
THE BEAN PEDDLAR.
O do not envy any man; But if I did, ’twere him whose will is To take an old petroleum can And a supply of beans and chillies, And set a trellis-work of palm Beside the public way, and squat there All day in charitable calm For passers by to sniff the pot there Boiling and steaming, as they stop, Salaam, and pass the time o’day, And gorge a plateful while they chop Small talk, and go their lazy way, A sou the poorer. Happy man! He guesses not what harsh and knavish Woes that went to make that old tin can Among those mercenary slavish Mongrels across the Atlantic waves Before it reached his green oasis Where Frenchmen are the only slaves, Thanks to the bureaucratic basis! Allah! I crave an old tin can And a supply of beans and chillies, And I shall be a happy man Whose way is even as will is.
THE SICK MONKEY.
I swear to give my whole attention To looking after Leah. I mean to use my monkey-wrench on The nose of mother Rhea, Till Zeus himself, de guerre las, Say: “Aleister, you ass, “Quit! I will mention it to Hermes. To give the worm ease—
“Leah shall eat a dozen steaks, Two dozen cutlets, Three dozen eggs, till something breaks— —You know what gut lets!
“Leah shall drink a dozen bocks, Two dozen highballs, Three dozen brandies, till she shocks Folk with rolled eyeballs.
“Leah shall walk a dozen leagues, Run two dozen miles, Conduct three fierce intrigues In four dozen styles.
“Leah shall type a dozen novels, Pose two dozen sketches, Be Abbess of three dozen hovels With four dozen wretches.
“Leah shall gain a dozen kilos, Stretch two dozen inches; Her breasts shall look like three dozen pillows—
Need four dozen cinches. “Leah shall sleep a dozen hours, Dream two dozen dreams Of boundless bliss in three dozen bowers By four dozen streams.
“Anything else that I can do Joyous and juiceful, Count me as always only too Glad to be useful”
I do not swear to copy fair This plan in every detail. I simply swear to take good care Of Leah’s welfare everywhere — Her sweet head to her sweet tail!
LEAH AT BREKKER.
Who goes to brekker with an Angel Should use a fork of special shape: But I can always find a strange el- -egance in my blue-bottomed ape, Who goes to brekker with an Angel.
My beautiful blue-bottomed Ape Is coffee, crumpets, eggs and bacon In one to me; I breast the tape Of dawn in order to awaken My beautiful blue-bottomed Ape.
THE SOFT SPOT.
There is a soft place near my shoulder Which seems to have been made on purpose For Leah’s head—all night I hold her, While Aphrodire’s sparrows chirp us Their impudently merry chorus Whose timeless twitters never bore us.
Her funny fuzzy hair with henna Is stained a tawny orange colour. It burns and tickles like Gehenna. My epidermis and medullar Means of perceiving the non-Ego Tell me ’twere useless to cry ‘Leggo!’
O soft plump spot below my clavicle! ‘Clavicula Salomonis Regis! Contains less magick. The fierce Slavic Hell Is not so hot, nor Liber Legis More savagely inflammatory Than Leah’s hair in sunset glory!
LEAH AT TEA.
Who goes to take tea with a Magus Need not consider being deaf a loss. But my remarks—men say “You plague us!”— Please my cobalt-sterned cynocephalos Who goes to take tea with a Magus.
My queer cobalt-sterned cynocephalos Pretends to listen—I take my hat off. I’d think the loss of my French chef a loss More easily repaired than that of My queer cobalt-sterned cynocephalos.
LEAH AT DINNER.
Who goes to dinner with the Godhead Will often flounder like a flunkey, But she would hardly deign to nod head; My beautiful blue-crappered monkey Who goes to dinner with the Godhead.
My beautiful blue-crappered monkey From the hors d’ouvre to the cognac Eats with an appetite as spunky As a rock-python or full-grown yak— My beautiful blue-crappered monkey.
WHAT—CICADA? POOH. (Browning)
If I could pinch a diamond Of perfect water, big enough, I would immediately abscond With the proceeds, I’d swill and stuff Here in the Desert far beyond Civilization’s blatant bluff; And listen all day to the tough Old bull-frogs flopping in the pond.
WHY DARWIN SHOULD BE DAMNED.
I wish I had a curly tail To swing myself from bough to bough With sleek companions fair and frail To share my daily chow.
Had I four hands instead of two, What fun inventing an excuse Just as ample as I do For letting them hang loose!
I would I had an orange fur, And two big bare blue moons behind, Both cosier and comelier Than my unhappy kind.
What boon has man to brag about Of evolution—bay the moon! No boon is blessed—never doubt! As being a baboon.
LEAH AT SUPPER.
Who sits at supper with the Devil Can hardly use too long a spoon. But I enjoy a constant revel With my belov’d blue-apsed Baboon Who sits at supper with the Devil.
My beautiful blue-apsed Baboon Is hotter than you can imagine. But I’m the Sun and she’s the moon. Pilgrims; who dares to make his hajj in My beautiful blue-apsed Baboon?
THE MONKEY’S MOP.
My monkey’s fur is stiff and fuzzy, A besom to sweep cobwebs out Of consciousness—I know the huzzy Is wondering at this moment “Does he Love me as much as he makes out?
It glows ecstatic as Agave In sacred sunlight—as I stroke it, With half-closed eyelids, murmur: Ave! Evoe, Iacche! and invoke it.
Its snaky fibre-flames are vows Spent in the shrine of Ra Hoor Khuit, Upon thy beauty I carouse! The thrills of rapture throb and shoot
Through my soul’s sanctuary—Sword Of His High-Priestess, strike thy steel Into my spirit, that my Lord, Freed of his fleshly fetters, reel
Blind into Bacchic rage! Her hair’s Crimson cascade of a serpent flashes Drenches the heart that wills and dares To burn the Universe to ashes.
THE ETERNAL RECTANGLE.
I scribble sonnetts, while my gem Of girls invites the soft and coy Caresses of my Arab boy, My dainty darling Belgasem!
I do not waste a thought on them! I do not grieve that they enjoy The lazy pleasures that annoy The Pharisees of Bethlehem.
O that the world would realize The simple system of the wine: To love things for the things they are. I live and let live! They have had A lovely time—and I am glad. Clouds cannot gather round a Star!
ASTRAEA REDUX.
The love of my lewd little Leah Is a sound and a shrewd Panacea. Whatever my mood may be, she a- -Wakes curly-cued an idea All brilliantly-hued, born to be a Theme mightily-thewed; it makes me a Priest-prophet renewed of Astraea!
THE MEDICINE MAN.
I gave my concubine a dollop Of Laudanum: but what the trollop Needs most of all is a big wallop.
PARSE ‘LEAH’.
My monkey tells me that he face is “tense” I ask her which. With gentle laughter rocks Her body as she smiles her paradox: “Present and Perfect too!” Experience Warns me that further questions surely give The “active voice” and mood—“imperative”.
P.S. She answers my unspoken jest—“To suit your proposal—the conjunctive and the future.”
LEAH INSPIRATION.
My monkey has a curly tail So strong I never knew her to fail (Provided that the bough was tough Enough) By their black hair to hoick up Pale People with Pink Pills (that’s the stuff!) And crack their heads like coconuts (Without exactly being tough Or gruff)
And suck their brains (like snobs with butts Of gaspers) thinking, while she swings, Deliciously immoral things. 'Twas she that made me swear it: “Hence I'll Make my intelligence prehensile.”
ANOTHER ZIGZAG.
I tease my girl, as is my wont. “You contradict me!” “No, I don’t.” “You see, you do!” “Oh, go to hell!” “You know no answer possible.” True, I am a Master of Zigzagginess— As you of scrawniness and scragginess!
O.K.
Old King Crowley was a merry old soul, he Was, he was, he was; And a merry old soul was he Because, because When he called for his pipe, and he called for his pot, He did not, he did not Have to call for his fiddlers three.
For his fiddlers three they dwell in his heart: They do indeed! Their names are Beauty and Love and Art; And he does not need Any alien aid to fill the bowl Of his sunlit soul With music and laughter and glee— All three.
Old King Crowley is happy and holy; And holy and happy is he; And he calls for his pipe and he calls for his pot And he calls for his l’il Monkey. For he isn’t alone on his golden throne; For a golden throne has he In the heart of a rum little yum-yum-yum, And he’s got all he wants in She!
Scroll the Fifth.
The IBIS in the Lagoon.
SERVICE. (AL II - 52)
I swear to work my Work abhorred Careless of all but one reward, The pleasure of The Devil Our Lord.
THE ELEVENTH MUSE.
Pan! give my pen one lyric line To tell the world when I am passed Beyond its sullen shores, that thine Was all my fervour, first and last; That exaltation wild and vast, Intensity of glee divine Thrilled me, and throbbed in me, and cast My soul to Thee, and made thee mine — And hectatomb of protoplasm Lapped in omniscient orgasm!
A CONJURATION OF THE ELEMENTS. (Written during Dawn Meditation. 20.10.25) (Marsailles)
Aiwaz! confirm my throth with Thee! my will inspire With secret sperm of subtle, free, creating Fire! Mould Thou my very flesh as Thine, renew my birth In childhood merry as divine en- chanted Earth! Dissolve my rapture in Thine own, a sacred slaughter Whereby to capture and atone the soul of Water! Fill Thou my mind with gleaming thought intense and rare To One refined, outflung to Naught, the Word of Air! Most, bridal bound; my quintessential form thus freeing From self, be found One Selfhood blent in Spirit-Being!
The previous day and night I nearly died from ptomaine poisoning; or lack of the secret of 4; or both. This was in Cassis; I got into Marseilles by a miracle of will-power. I came slowly round, went to the American Express Company and found a letter promising £70. I found myself flooded with energy and wrote 55 pp. of letters!! Then went to sleep, in aspiration to Aiwaz; and woke at 3 a.m. to find myself in Shavasana, but with my finger tips on my breast. I instantly fell into meditation on the meaning of this will to perfect Union with Him in each of the Five Elements. Then I could not refrain from putting this into verse; having left my Oath-Book in Cassis, and I used this fly-leaf. 666. [376]
THE AVENGER.
I How can I bear the fulness of the joy, The brilliance of the burning of delight? Time cannot wither, nor distaste destroy This blossom beauty, or this fruit of Light
Of Truth I penetrate the inmost shrine, Compass the utmost circuit of the skies; Demeter brings me bread, and Bacchus wine. My wisdom makes me glad, my gladness wise.
Such rapture surges from the universe, Caresses sense and soul that I am swept Onward to combat the one shame and curse That can be. The great Work of the Adept? To lift the hoodwink that holds man in awe From knowledge of the Liberty of Law.
II I come Alastor to Avenge the Gods. I come to wage implacable the war Against the slaves of custom, serfs and clods Whose life is fear and shame. I stand before The Altar of the Crowned and Conquering Child, From Him to make my consecrated Sword Of Song; my shield whereon Medusa’s wild And wanton head is fixed. I come, the Lord
Of the devouring Light, the blasting Life, The branding Love that smite the whirling waves The souls of men, that stir them up to strife. The Kings of Earth against the sullen slaves — I cry the battle cry! I lift in high The Standard! Forward! Alastor am I!
NON SINE FULMINE.
I lay in the broad sunlight, bitter cold; Lapsed in most bitter lassitude; Lethargic, limb and brain; my dull dark mood Too wretched to be conjured or consoled. The wilderness about me seemed an heap Superincumbent on my soul: to weep Was almost as unthinkable a boon almost as sleep.
I was too cold to shiver! The sun poured Its glory on my chill deaf corpse, awake Only to its unfathomable ache, Dumb anguish strumming one harsh dull discord, Reiterating its persistent pain, Senseless and useless on my broken brain That only lived to know that it could never think again.
Abject I lay in impotence of soul. I could not summon fortitude or skill. Of all those loyal legions of my will Not one man owned my sceptre of control. I knew not who I was: my self sublime Sunk in a stagnant universe of slime Whose immanence defied even the deadliness of Time.
Then of a sudden, with no warning hint, The phantom fell away from me; I came Instant, a filgour of avenging flame. And leapt in lyric laughter without stint, Upon the body of my Muse, in thunder Awakening her to worship and to wonder — Sword-sweep of song that smote in storm high heaven and earth asunder!
THE VISION OF OLYMPUS.
Julian, servant of the Gods, beheld A vision of Olympus, where They sate Sunk in dull apathy, consumed of Eld, Stricken at heart by envy of strong Fate. So should they pass into oblivion While in Their stead a mongrel mountebank Should reign, A Jew in ragged raiment won By theft among Rome’s ruins when she sank Into the foul abyss of those dark Ages When Crime and Ignorance earned Clio’s wages.
But I, erect amid ignoble filth Of the dead monster’s gross ungainly carrion That spews out blood and mud, the sorry spilth Of its dishonourable veins, set clarion To my pure lips, and blew a silvern call Whereat Earth gapes, and swallows Time’s disgrace, While the blank sky teems suddenly with all Those hosts of glory; swirls the heart of space With sudden splendour of wings, and on mine eyes Dawns the great vision as the darkness dies!
There towers Olympus, stately with huge oak And green with fresh grown grass, gem-bright with flowers, There Zeus, rekindled, poises for the stroke His thunderbolt, and flings reviving showers On Earth rejoicing; there smiles Her, gay And glad, light-footed, glowing with grand eyes, While Ares strides in warrior-bright array, Flashing his spear across the scintillant skies, And Aphrodite springs with supple limb From sun-kissed waves to win Love’s way to him.
I see Apollo in his chariot stand, And strike his lyre, and sing. Young Hermes spurns With light-winged heel the heavens, his cunning hand Waving the wild Caduceus as he yearns To herald this great Word. Blithe Artemis Springs silver-girdled from the West, to span Space with one stride to crush her shameless kiss On the mad mouth of her soul’s master, Pan, Watched by Athena, now grown doubly wise — Love on her lips and laughter in her eyes!
Poseidon shakes his trident, that the sea May dance delighted to the triumph-tune; And Hades rolls his chariot fast and free To join the joyful gods: with swiftest shoon Comes dancing Dionysus, ivy-clad His thyrsus bloody with the clave-god’s ichor. Demeter and Priapus, loud and glad Leap lusty-laughing for his new-brewed liquor. Ah! but the multitude of joy and youth O’erwhelms me with the tempest of its Truth.
Mine eyes are dazzled with the light; I fail Before these tyrannous sublimities. But I have seen! The Gods, my Gods avail Against the assault of time’s conspiracies. I being born when darkest seemed despair, Have lived to see the dawn of Love and Truth. Mine eyes have seen the faces fond and fair Of mine own Gods in Their eternal youth That gives me mine! Now love and laughter thrive; For Christ is dead — Apollo is alive!
ALLAH.
I swear that God most High is One: No equal hath He, and no Son; Nor consort nor companion.
He, as the Bournless firmament Abideth, the Unknown Quintessence Omnipotent, omniscient And absolute in Omnipresence.
About us and within His State He holdeth, He the exceeding Great, By Will, coincident with Fate.
All Nature He determineth. There is nor help nor hope nor might Save in Him only, Lord of Death And Life, whose Shadow is the Light.
I take my refuge in His thigh, The True and Living God most high, The Intrinsic Image that is I.
HYMN TO TAHUTI. (Paraphrase from ancient fragments)
Silence: I utter the Creative Breath, The Word against the Son of Night, The Truth of Life against the lie of Death, The Modes of measured Might, The Wisdom of the twofold phrase, The Root of Throbbing Energy-Delight, The Shaking of the Viewless Void of Space, The Making manifest of Mother-Mass, The Piercing of the Coils of Apophrass, The Breaking-forth of Light!
At the ending of the Light; At the limits of the Night, Stood Tahuti in the presence of the Unborn Sons of Time. Then appeared the Universe; Then came forth its Ministers, The Immortal Gods, the Aeons of the Bournless and Sublime. Then the Voices shook to flame. Then was heralded the Name. Lo! upon the Timeless Threshold of the Cosmos and the Womb! In the sign of Wonder whirled Stood He, as before Him hurled Aeon after Aeon, thundered, lapsed in immemorial doom. Then in symbols did He state: Then in breath did He vibrate: For between the Light and Darkness did He stand and arbitrate!
HYMN TO JUPPITER.
King of the realm Of Aer, dread Lord Of the whirled Wand And Bolt of Fear To overwhelm The Daimon horde Inhabiting the Byss beyond The uttermost Empyrean Sphere! Sire of the Gods, from whose almighty Essence Their splendours surge! Intolerable Demiurge Before whose puissant presence No Soul may stand! I come at Thy command Thy majesty and mercy to proclaim, Name ranked with dreadful name; Being Thy flamen consecrate By fulgour of firm Fate.
A Hail, whose twin plumes assume Top Heaven, whose Ankh and Wand And blue-white diamond Intolerable to wield! O beyond all concealed In Thy one Name—A M O U N.
B Hail, Lord of Heaven and Hell Who bade all being be, Whose joy is the Strong Sea. Thy Sire dids’t thou devise, Thy Dam dids’t fertilize, In Thy great Name of A L.
C Hail, thou the Heaven of Nu With tireless thews that dost Sustain with balance just Above the Earth of Seb As Aeons flow and ebb In Thy strong Name of S H U.
D Hail, Thou who makest use Of all things to one sole And sacred end — to extol Thy majesty; whose seed Determineth all deed In Thy great Name of Z E U S.
E Hail, at whose glances stir All souls alert to endure Thine ardours that assure Their dry despairing dust With laughing life of lust In The Name J U P P I T E R.
F Hail, Lord of Wrath and War Who with Thine Hammer dids’t break The worlds, whose footsteps shake Valhalla, and Thy Breath Beat down the rage of death In Thy dread Name of T H O R!
G Hail, whose divine decree By storm and thunder ringed, With Wind and Lightning winged, Appointeth to all Gods And Men their periods In Thy Name I N D R A J I.
H Hail, whose malignant brow Bent against Heathen hosts Bringeth to naught their boasts Slaying and sparing none — Nay, not Thy first-born Son! — In The name Y E - H O - W A U.
I Hail, first most fearful Flame, Force fixed in dreadful act. Father of every fact, Inexhorable Thought Whereby all Work is wrought In Thy Name none many name!
Priest of Thy realm Of Aer, dread Lord Of the whirled wand And Bolt of Fear, I overwhelm The Daimon horde.
I stand upon the Byss beyond The utmost Empyrean sphere, Being Thy Seed of Thine Almighty essence. My spells upsurge To Thee dire Demiurge, And in Thy puissant presence Make bold to stand And utter my command. My Majesty and mercy they proclaim By virtue of Thy name That doth Thy flame consecrate By fulgour of firm Fate
HYMN TO LUCIFER.
Ware, nor of good nor ill, what aim hath act? Without its climax, death, what savour hath Life? An impeccable machine, exact He paces an inane and pointless path To glut brute appetites, his sole content, How tedious were he fit to comprehend Himself! More, this our noble element Of fire in nature, love in spirit unkenned, Life hath no spring, no axle, and no end.
His body a blood ruby radiant With noble passion, sun souled Lucifer. Swept through the dawn colossal, swift aslant On Eden’s imbecile perimeter. He blessed nonentity with every curse And spiced with sorrow the dull soul of sense, Breathed life into the sterile universe, With love and knowledge drove out innocence. The Key of Joy is Disobedience.
HYMN TO SATURN.
I. God, eldest of the Seven and most august, Whose Wisdom bade determine to devour The seed of Thine own lordly lust Save that one Joyous Thought and Just, The Exalted Lord, appointed By Thee to be anointed King of High Heaven, unfaltering Power At the auspicious hour To get Him Gods to serve Him, and to slake His spirit’s blind shrewd ache At the unfathomable Springs Of men and mortal things In strangely-woven Cups, crowned with weird-woven wings!
II. Fatal, thy sickle swept its swathe to shear Away the Father-force of Heaven Thy sire, Lest he beget a son Thy sphere To wrestle from Thee as Thy peer Thy dread demense disputing. I veil my face, saluting Thy sober and thy devastating Fire With silence — Thou inspire My selfhood with immitigable force Inured to pale Remorse That I may serve Thine altar, thrill With awe as I fulfill The fearful Rites of Death, orgia austere of Will.
III. Thy magick shapes in solemn Sacrament The essence of Existence, that it pass A pageant of obscure Event, In Bane and Beauty blent By crooked curves and savage Designs, to rend and ravage Their Souls by Thee ordained to serve Thy Mass Whose intoit is Alas, Its Host a Corpse accurst, its leaden chalice Brimming with unslaked Malice, And its “Miss’ext” the muffled knell Of Woe unspeakable, Declaring that the Heart of Heaven itself is Hell.
IV. God, eldest of the Seven and most sublime, I worship Thee, Thine Oracle and Priest; Being the Bastard Son of Time, And consecrated by Thy Crime. I would castrate High Heaven, And slay the Sacred Seven To serve them at my solitary feast. I will to be the Great Wild Beast, To wake the world (by music of my mouth) To worship the South Thee Satan, and the Dragon of Night Northward, the rigid rite Whose matter is Desire, whose miracle Delight!
V. Hail, Kronos! Be Thou steadfast to devour Thy children! Let the moments pale and pass! Let all the pageant of Thy power Perish with its permitted hour, And leave superbly stainless, The constant truth and chainless, The virgin void of the Magician’s glass All-puissant to amass The treasure sacred and sublime Of the sad miser Time. Oh squander them with careless child-delight, Untainted by the blight Of lust to hoard the shadow shapes of sense Enriched by each expense — The Sovranty of Self gripped through Experience!
HYMN TO ASTARTE.
Serene are the stars, and serene my soul, ablaze in the Night. Then how shall I worship Astarte sea-born, how invoke her aright? I am free from the fires and the foam, I have conquered the dragons and doves; I have gotten my Love as the gold from the furnace that melted my loves. Love is not bound to the body, not sparse and adrift with the mind, Not secret with soul, though soul seem one and alone of its kind. The body is naught but a corpse, its growth but a name of decay, A delirious dream of sick gods — where the Shadow hath sway. Concocted of offal and mire, putrescent with cancerous breath, A knot that unravels to Naught, a riddle whose answer is Death? The mind is the reek of the fume of the body’s corruption, the mime Of its maggoty moods as it rots from its worm-eaten egg its slime. The mind hath not even a mist to excuse philosophic pretence Of a substance; at best it distorts some few of the phantoms of sense. Its reason is ever astray, its ignorance straightens its span; It ends in the mystery-night whence its clumsy creation began. It observes, it reflects, it decides as the slave of unconscious desires, Knows neither the word not itself, nor stands for an hour but it tires. It struts in its pageant of pride, yet at best is aware it is vain, And its summit of proof is to prove nothing proven, and itself but insane. The soul, ah the flame! Ah the star! The God in us shining above! The soul, beyond being and form! Then is not the name of it Love? Nay, darker and deeper the curse, more dread the abyss never plumbed, The horror ineffably huge, the agony not to be summed; For the soul in itself is division, is separate worse that its wings Were fledged of the essence of truth at the evil beginning of things, When the All broke its peace with the thought of itself, and the schism began That ended in chaos of crime, in the crazy catastrophe man, The soul is no ghost to conjure with the spell of: “Illusion, begone!” It is true, and hath might to endure, unassailable, travelling on; None hinders, commands, or deflects; none alters its course by a jot; Space cannot constrain it, and time the waster erodeth it not. How should I love such a soul, my like, and like me the accurst From the hour when the Second was struck a spark from the forge of the First? How should I love such a soul, though fierce and afar I may rage In my passionate pilgrimage, Love, for Love is the Will toward change. Love is a lust and a prayer, and the soul of its act as its word Is of them that were Two to make One, and to seal the event with a Third Oh Love, oh Astarte sea-born, oh Star blue bright in the West, I invoke Thee, thy priest in the shrine that is built of the blood of my breast! Since thou art in me and of me, since thou art the heart of my heart, The soul of my soul, nay, the skin of my skin, not a being apart, I am Thou , I accept the intent, acquiesce in the nature implied; If change be the purpose of Love, I am launched and afloat on the tide. I accept every phantom of Mind, vain dreams in fatuity curled: I accept the corruption of Body, delight to bring Death to the world. In measureless madness I bask, I gloat upon carrion flesh; I wallow with God in the mire, and of mire I create Him afresh; There is naught, nor shall be, that my love cannot gnaw with insatiate tooth. I will wring forth the Truth from the lies as I once found the lies in the Truth. Astarte, I know thee for rotten as others have seen thee for pure; I tear off the masks that smiled false on the slaves who would have them endure. But thou and Thy masks are but one, Thy corruption the essence of Thee, It is all of the nature of things, their virtue whereby they may be. So therefore I hail Thee divine, all-one with the substance of Truth; Mine age holds Thee naked, the hem of whose garment bewildered my youth. My soul being thus with thy soul, shall not soul win at last to the wit That its changeless perfection is death, itself the assassin of it? Love under will is the law; all that exists, from the dust To the Gods, is but jetsam of Love cast up by the tide of Her lust. So I hail thee, Astarte, and hymn thee in brothel and temple the same, Who art seed of all change, being Love, by Corruption Thine innermost Name! And I know Thy device to deceive Thy servants Thine image that hailed, How none, being mortal, might learn Thy name, or behold Thee unveiled. For Thy secret is this, that immortals are crowned with the virtue to die; And I, oh Astarte, bear death in my body — Of ye am I.
MOON WANE.
1. Hush! The moon dazzles. In her virgin light. The carnival of day Is shrouded: the nun’s sharp-cut, black and white For the dancer’s tinsel and feathers, glowing gay In the spot-light. Hush! No sound Perfume the enchanted ground But this hymn’s ebb, this incantation’s wane! For I must lull the fairies, and strike dumb Satyr and Aegipan, restrain Even the nymphs, till earth become A shrine of silence—then Let my voice cease to offend the ears of God and man.
2. Hush! the moon dazzles! As I pace nine times The circle in her praise, My steps uncertain as my soul sublimes Its instrument; voice trembles as I raise The spell. Mist gathers clouds Mine eyes with gossamer shrouds. I am drunken on her purity, distraught By her divinity, made blind By the intense light of her thought —It is not lawful for mankind To drink of the hidden springs With unchaste lips, with hand impure to touch true things.
3. She hath made me mad. She hath kindled a cold fire Upon the altar stone Of my dead heart, no incense of desire To burn, but with my life to feed it, thrown For fuel to its sterile splendour; No swordsman to defend her, No priest to worship her, no phytoness, No prophet, will she, but a mirror-soul By light received to express Her virtue, to shine sole True witness to her cult That looks not back to cause, nor forward to result.
4. My soul is sundered by her sickle. Each nerve, Each cell exactly chosen Feeds, but not surfeits, the one need, to serve That sublime altar, that flame fixed and frozen. Flowers in my soul that bloomed Ye are utterly consumed Even as the weeds, and herbs of pestilence, Her soul esteeming hate And love alike offence To silence, the pure state Of virtue that would live Perfect with all, unsoiled by self’s initiative.
5. Hush! the moon dazzles. But a meteor streaks The midnight. Sudden I see The sky her glamour hid. The Polestar speaks Firmness the Great Bear signals Loyalty. Sirius blazes: “None Of us but whirls a sun, Shepherd of systems! none but plays his part Minute in some august Galaxy, brain and heart Aflame, yet with no lust One state to gain, to shirk Another, but—huge joy for the work’s sake, to work.”
6. Io Paian! The moon dazzles not. Dead globe Cast clout of Mother Earth, Her lackey, flaunting our great Father’s robe Of light, an insolent wench vaunting her girth, The pettiest satellite In heaven! The slut of night! To work! Sweep well our doorsteps with the tides! Rule sailors, hunters, witches, Lovers and other lunatics, wide’s The scope! be bayed by bitches, But ask no hymns from one Who knows Mother Earth’s breast shades his sleep from Father Sun.
7. I am a star! I whirl and blaze! I set Planets above me, play My part in the great game of life, though yet I hardly know the rules, and day by day Pain urges ignorance! The captain? Fate or Chance? The end? The Plan? If end or plan there be! I know not nor can know; Why worry? I cannot see Whence came I, whither I go. I know not who I am Nor what, but Will’s my lance, and Love’s my oriflamme.
8. A star; adrift in space! A soul afloat In the aether! Absolute, Unique, eternal, God and man, a mote, May be, but free my will to execute. Love is my charioteer: With the whip of Pride and Fear, Wisdom and understanding for his reigns, He masters the wild horses Bred of my heart and brain, The incalculable forces Of a man—drive on! We’ll race The Sun from Here and Now to the end of Time and Space!
Trinacria, thyself a flower Afloat on Earth’s most sacred Sea, Is not Aetna’s tent a tower, Thine hills columns, thy vales aisles Of a Temple? Secret glee Pan hath, deep in thine neormous Woods; and freely Venus smiles On her city of Panormus; And Diana hath her shrines Among thy olives and thy vines.
Trinacria! to these alone Dost thou bear witness? Nay, but thou Hast ivey for the Bacchant’s brow, When Dionysus, wand and cone, Dances, his tiger leaps, caresses Those his wine-bewildered tresses; And the island cult and Faith Owes to him that shining slayeth, Lord of Life and Song, Apollo That enkindleth every hollow Every day, not missing one Through all the winter, sure of aim His sunlight as thy passion for the Sun.
Trinacria, beyond these hath claim No special genius? I behold thee As ’twere an altar mad with flame In the shrine, Space, whose curtains fold thee In sacramental splendour. Zeus Hath fashioned thee for beauty’s use, Freed thee from seasons and from hours, That thou mayst swing supreme perfume, And blaze ineffably with bloom Of all his starry dreams, the flowers, Worshipful will, miraculous alignment, Flora to thine enshrinement!
To thee, my Flora, shrills its treble the hill, And the vale drones its bass. The garden glows Into an anthem. The immortal Will Of Zeus is music, as his breath’s repose Is incense, and His veil the Light, that grows And dwindles, that divides to laughing throngs Of colours dancing, and His thought the norm Of Law proclaimed in mind-compelling Form; And all these things he hath given to deck thy shrine, Flora, His flowers, His dances, and His songs, Witness be Thou, against the Whole world’s wrongs, That He hath dressed the balance, nay weighed down With splendours of delight, the scale of pleasure, When He created Thee the crown Of Beauty, and enthroned Thee, and , lest measure Mar beauty,, made Trihacria Thy garden, The sun Thine hierophant, the sea Thy warden!
Hail Flora! Thine the rose ablush with blood, Thine even the cactus, blithe with the golden bud; The gorse hath vestures for thy celebration; The harebell twinkles Thy God’s celebration; The flag-flower, white or purple, brave to bear Thy banners, waves them in Thy sacred air. Geraniums are massed lamps before Thine essence Of pure Light flaming, and of pure Love poured From the golden girdle of the Sun, Thy Lord.
Hail Flora! and be pitiful! Not mine To hymn Thee of the myriads of them That praise Thee, thuribles that cense Thy shrine And lamps that flame before Thy diadem, I cannot count or name the tribes. I stagger Drunk on their beauty, dazed by their bewitchment, Beggared by Thine intolerable enrichment, And in my madness thrust the wreathed dagger Of love for Thee within my heart, an itchment Whose starriest hope but prays that I may perish To feed some flower that Thou mayst chance to cherish!
Terminus, so colossal calm Thy face, so square thy pedestal, Is it to Thee I speak my Psalm, Give Thee the final praise of all? Was all the rest epheneral?
Is it before Thy shrine that man Is given at last to comprehend The mocking riddle, the blank plan Of Life? Seest Thou all things intend To some intelligible End?
All Gods adore Thee, Thou the sun Of Their vast ledgers, the effect Of infinite causes that were dumb To soul-search as to intellect. So let mine agony expect!
For in me there’s a sprite obscene That sneers and jeers” “Fantastic fool! What end of aught, clean or unclean, Hast Thou beheld or known? What rule Stands first of all thought’s penal school?
“Doth winter end the year or day End night? Is some effect thou knowest That is not also Cause? The Way Of Nature is the Snake’s. Thou guest. All go, the highest and the lowest.”
Term ends: the goal we panted after Despite the dust proves but one mark Of myriads—hear the ironic laughter (Self-aimed!) of those who watch us bark Shins as we stumble in the dark!
Infinite Space and Time to explore As the God waltzes with Germ! All man can do—and God no more!— Is, rhythm faultless and feet firm To dance his way from Term to Term.
I am not weary, Terminus! I am game to take all chances, spend Myself, stern, slack, suave, strenuous As may be — or to call Thee friend, If, after all, Thou be the End
THE CHAPEL OF THE SANGRAAL.
I The Desert sands encompass with despair This green enchanted tale of psalms and streams, Even so my deep sweet dreams Are set within a wilderness of care, And all their glory gleams With tremulous bold beams Upon a waste beyond man’s heart to dare. My will stands sentinel Against the assault of hell In vivid vigilance, The price of power to abide in this terrific trance.
II I have been true to the High Voice and Vision, And kept undimmed my golden spurs and chain. I have set forth to attain The Quest whose Beauty is the world’s derision, And held in high disdain The scorn, the scourge, the pain Shame, and despair that mark the vain misprision Of those blind bats that haunt This fearful path to daunt The seeker—I have won To the Siege-Perilous — where shines the Midnight Sun.
III Within this chapel of the Holy Graal The silence is distilled from various song. Persephone’s strange wrong She murmurs with soft sighs; the nightingale Sings wildly all night ling Her sacrament, while strong Priests of Adonis, Virgins of the Veil Of Isis, still intone The melancholy moan Wherein is Mystery Of woe and joy inwoven in their Solemnity.
IV About these walls the tempest howls its hate; Shrill demons shriek black blasphemies, the host Of hell, lemur and ghost, All formless forms of rancour desperate Imperishable, lost, Assail with uttermost Malice the fortress-sanctuary of Fate. Woe to who lends an ear! The hopeless horror of Fear Hath power upon the soul Who fails in steady Love or slackens calm Control.
V But all the wonder of the World is mine, Its Beauty and its sorrow and its sin; None but partaketh in The Eucharist of this most secret shrine. The perfect Paladin Knoweth the Word to win Wisdom of bread and Ecstasy of Wine. By intimate constraint Of Magick may the Saint Transmute the common Curse Into the secret Stone of the Philosophers.
VI The Hidden Spring that wells within the heart Of this huge wilderness evokes this isle Enchantress, eyes that smile Serenely wise, Adept of the True art Of life, to outwit the guile Of hell, to make the vile, The dull, the hateful,, play their proper part In the eternal plan, The Comedy of Pan. My soul’s intrinsic Mirth Hath made itself an Heaven of its exile on Earth.
HAPPY DUST.
Like so many of my titles, the meaning is two-pronged. “Happy-dust” is a cant term for cocaine. But also, man is dust”.
Snow that fallest from heaven, to bear me aloft on thy wings To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of ineffable things, Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing future and past, Maks’t the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One with the Vast, The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His measureless cold, Without Being or form or abode, without motion or matter, the fold Where the shepherded Universe sleeps, with nor sense nor delusion nor dream, No spirit that wantons or weeps, no thought in its Silence supreme. I sit and am utterly still; in mine eyes is my fathomless lust Ablaze to annihilate Will, to crumble my being to dust, To calcine the dust to an ash, to burn up the ash to an air, To abolish the air with the flash of the final, the fulminant flare. All this I have done, and dissolved the primordial germ of my thought; I have rolled myself up, and revolved the wheel of my being to Naught. Is there even the memory left? That I was, that I am? It is lost. As I utter the word, I am cleft by the last swift Spear of the frost. Snow! I am nothing at last; I sit, and am utterly still; They are perished, the phantoms, the past; they were born of my weariness-will Which I craved, craved being and form, when the consciousness-cloud was a mist Precursor of stupor and storm, when I and my shadow had kissed, And brought into life all the shapes that confused the clear space with their marks, Vain spectres whose vapour escapes, a whirlwind of ruinous sparks. No substance have any of these things; I have dreamed them in sickness of lust, Delirium born of disease—ah whence was the master, the “must” Imposed on the All—it is true, it is true then, that something in me Is subject to fate? Are there two, are there two, after all, that can be? I have brought all that is to an end; for myself am sufficient and sole. Do I trick myself now? Shall I rend once again this homologous whole? I have stripped every garment from space; I have strangled the secret of Time, All being is fled from my face, with Motion’s inhibited rime. Stiller and stiller I sit, till even infinity fades; ’Tis an idol—’tis weakness of wit that breeds, in insanity, shades! Yet the fullness of Naught I become, the deepest and steadiest Naught, Contains in its nature the sum of the functions of being and thought. Still as I sit, and destroy all possible trace of the past, All germ of the future, nor joy nor knowledge alive at the last, It is vain, for the Silence is dowered with a nature, the seed of a name; Necessity, fearfully flowered with the blossom of possible Aim. I am necessity? Scry Necessity mother of Fate! Vast is the sphere, but it turns on itself like the pettiest star, And I am the baby that learns that all things equally are. Inscrutable Nothing, the Gods, the cosmos of Fire and Mist, Suns, atoms, the clouds and the clods ineluctably dare to exist— I have made the Voyage of Thought. the Voyage of Vision, I swam To the heart of the Ocean of Naught, from the Source of the Spring I Am; I know myself wholly the brother alike to All and One; I know that all things are each other, that their sum and their substance is None; But the knowledge itself can excel, its fullness hath broken its bond; All’s Truth, and all’s falsehood as well, and—what of the region beyond? So, still though I sit, as for ever, I stab to the heart of my spine; I destroy the last seed of endeavour to seal up my soul in the shrine Of Silence, Eternity, Peace; I abandon the Here and the Now; I cease from the effort to cease, I absolve the dead I from its Vow, I am wholly content to be dust, whether that be a mote or a star, To live and to love and to lust, acknowledge what seem for what are, Not to care what I am, if I be, whence I came, whither go, how I thrive, If my spirit be bound or be free, save as Nature contrive. What I am, that I am, ’tis enough. I am part of a glorious game. Am I cast for madness or love? I am cast to esteem them the same. Am I only a dream in the sleep of some butterfly? Phantom of fright Conceived, who knows how, or how deep, in the measureless womb of the night? Ideas intangible wrought to things less conceivable yet? It may be. Little I reck—but assume the existence of earth, Am I born to be hanged by the neck, a curse from the hour of my birth? Am I born to abolish man’s guilt? His horrible heritage, awe? Or a seed in his wantonness spilt by a jester? I care not a straw, For I understand Do what thou wilt; and that is the whole of the law.
SUMMUM BONUM.
On this old earth There’s nothing worth, In age and youth, But Love and Truth. These two alone All else atone.
CHORIAMBICS.
Tragedy comes once in a life, never again. Wise are the Gods testing a man’s body and brain. Once in a life see him adrift reft of his all; Doubt, the supreme scourge of the saint, lashing its thrall. Nothing he has, nothing he is, nothing he knows; All he assumed crumbled to ash, vivid the throes Blind of his death, death which is birth, clutch at his soul Robbed of its right, stemmed at its source, blank of its goal. Once in a life all is as naught: never again Could he endure such an excess perfect of pain. That which abides, nameless and dumb, must be immune Even to change, freed of its fate, Truth for its tune. Once in a life—ah! but a life, till the event Proves it, is void, vacant of sense, null of intent, Save as it strives, keen to attain, ready to wait— Come, let us go singing aloud songs on the way, Virile, the vowed knights of the Quest, on to the Day.
Tread on my heart more firmly, O Lord God! Express a vintage wine of nobler song! The world needs Beauty for its thin grey blood Famished for Love too fiercely and too long. Mine be the vigour to bid rapture bloom Upon Earth’s breast, and flourish in Her womb!
Plunge venom in my heart, so poignant pangs That every pulse of life and death is mine! Distill their essence through infernal fangs For me to make into the soul of wine: To be—to love—to understand it all, One Magick mighty and majestical!
Intensify this intimate communion, This interplay of all things to Delight, This absolute abandon of the union Of all the Corybantic Choir of Right! See! on the crest of Love’s colossal flood, The Universe goes swooning into God!
A MEDITATION UPON GAYATRI.
Aum! That Savitri worshipful! Thy light divine I meditate. Enlighten thou my mind! Abate Greed, hate and dullness! Truth annul
Change, sorrow, emptiness: Instill Bliss, Wit and Being! Let my Will
Go its one way to its one goal All one with its one source—my soul.
Word in pure Silence consummate, Will its attainment fixed in Fate,
Way perfectly achieved by Rest, Wealth by pure Poverty possessed,
Wisdom complete by stilling thought, And All identical with Naught
EPILOGUE.
CRADLE SONG.
Slumber, my soul, a little while, The butterfly may fold its wings. Soften thy silence with a smile, But brood not on the truth of things!
“A little while!” What words to thee, Thou ended never nor begun! To thee, to sleep is not to be. To be and not to be are one!
Or was it that thy dreams create These wheels of mystery that revolve Under the force of Chance or Fate? —And at thy waking they dissolve.
My soul, thou hast not wit nor care If all exist, if all that shews Be, how things came or how they fare, If all the riot be repose.
Thou art in all, no soul apart, And all in thee eternal springs; Nothing can be save that thou art, Naught move save Light-waves of thy wings.
Thou sleep. ’Tis mind that sleeps or dies. I? But a tear thou hast loved to weep! It wearies me to be so wise— Watch thou! I turn my face to sleep.
Fauna. Birds, Insects, Reptiles
and Amoeba.
BITTERN.
THE “MOTHER-LOVE” OF EMIL FUCHS.
Muses, O Muses! to my succour now! “Poscimur!” Crowley to praise Emil Fuchs! Pour not the juice of grapes, but milk the cow! Clothe me not in lingerie de poul’ de luxe For toga! Is a woman or a sow More apt to warm the cockles of the heart? My song for Emil Fuchs? Accept one—!
COCKROACHES.
ADVICE TO MADAME AUMONT.
Madame! Your duty as a Roman Mother Is to assure the granddam and the flat, Yourself and Gerard’s good-for-nothing brother Burn all, and let them blame it on the cat. Then, his incumbrances dissolved in smoke, Your son will see the Universal Joke.
Loaded with gold, the boy will take Parisian Salons by storm, a literary nob; The President will open his Elysian Palace, and cry “Monsieur, accept my job!” Madam! let not blind egoism smother You son’s career—oh, be a Roman Mother!
LICE.
MODERN SCHOLARS.
Shame, self-plagiarist, O Hist’ty! See, “Doctores et magistri” Still to-day in ful consis’ty,
Just as Paracelsus spent his Time and breath describing them:— “Et pediculos pectentes Et fricantes podicem.”
BED-BUG.
AT THE MOVIES.
Pash, sacred sow, the ordure of thy stye! Nuzzle thy wash with that Artesian snout! Sleep follows surfeit and satiety. “Now more than ever seems it rich to die” Since “Mother-love wins out”.
“Yes, we have no bananas! Melba sings (Peaches and toast have made her smooth and stout) What care have uteri for wedding rings? Why should men talk of cabbages and kings? For “Mother-love” wins out.”
Drivel, dull drivel! Mary Pickford smirks And Clara Kimball—what’s it all about? What has gone wrong that mind no longer works? Life is a jumble of jujubes and jerks— And “Mother-love wins out.”
WINGED BEETLE.
AFTER REVISING A FRENCH TRANSLATION OF “THE DIARY OF A DRUG FIEND”.
Je deteste Gérard Aumont. Quel stratageme sangrenu! Il m’s fait travailler. Au fond C’est un bien triste individu!
WINGED BEETLE.
EPITAPH ON G. A. [Gerard Aumont]
Ci gît Gérard Aumont: Petit, Bavard Oisen.
WINGED BEETLE.
GABÊS. INSCRIPTION FOR A BRASS PLATE.
Ici est ne Le plus grand con Du monds entier.
WINGED BEETLE.
(Tunis Jan 1926)
(Pour ne pas le nommer) Est se assomant Qu’il vaut mieux l’assomer.
WINGED BEETLE.
(Dec 1925)
I wouldn’t have believed it on a bet! Aumont was jeering at my doubtful wit Of French. One asked him: “What’s the time?” (And it Was then 6.50). He replied: “Mazette! “C’est dix minutes moins sept”!!!
WINGED BEETLE.
UN GABSI.
On dit de d’un certain sot Baroque, obtus et fat, Ce vilain jeu de mots: “O mont, que tu es plat!”
MAGGOTS.
Their hair has no definite colour, Their bodies no definite shape: Blank faces and eyes that are duller Than a boil on the apse of an ape—!!!!
. . . . . . .
It’s really too much of a tax on A poet, to write of a Saxon!
PEA-HENS.
THANK YOU FOR A VERY PLEASANT EVENING.
“When little birds that can sing, won’t sing” * My bosom flutters with a sigh; I dab a rag on a moist eye; I murmur “Ah calamity!” I look as if I wished to die: I breathe a hope that ‘bye and bye’— I sob a little silently— In short I make it clear that I Am in the tolls of destiny The victim of Fatality, The sport of hell’s malignancy, In dull despair who wonders why I should be forced to travel my Road to the grave is such a sly Harsh world where everything’s awry, And all conspired to crucify My innocent desires to fly Upon the wings of minstrelsy Into an azure stainless sky— If only ladies weren’t so shy! —But I take damned good care they don’t sing!
* Much more frequent, alas, it is: “When little birds that can’t sing, will sing”.
HAMADRYAD.
TO SYLVIA, RETURNING TO HER HUSBAND.
I like this jolly baby bat That flits about my eaves in twilight. But I would be more blind and brainless If I were shocked or sorry at Its scared aversion to a high light. Begone! the operation’s painless.
When you scuttled from the sun Freedom, and rejected Love, You were not nearly big enough To realize what you had done.
I understand how false and fickle And fatuous and frail and fearful You were: I’ve lost my lucky nickel, But I continue to be cheerful.
MINNOWS.
(June 23, 1924)
They cast their ground-bait on the grey-green water. Each hour or so (more fortitude than Peter) They catch a sprat of half a millimeter. They never seem to sicken of the slaughter. To fish my fortify the virtuous Hope: But—is it fair to use a microscope?
(Translation) Lachasse est ouverts á Microbes-on-Brie. Mais—est-ce Sport, cu est-ce tuerie?
STICKELBACKS.
TO THE FISHERMEN OF CHELLES-GOURNAY.
Beware the fury of the two-ounce trout! Moreover: does your mother know you’re out?
COD.
PROMETHEUS UNBOUND— BY MATRIMONY.
Fate insolently harries Good Mr. Fiske his span. Her fiercest thrusts he parries, A sober-minded man. He sends his wife to Paris And sine die tarries In Tokyo, Japan.
He murmurs: Earthquake rarely Comes more than twice a day; It comes to treat one fairly, Persuading me to stay. I may be swallowed up? I risk More in one hour with Mrs. Fiske!
SPRATS.
TRISTRAM SHANDY-GAFF.
To land the fish they catch at Chàlles Requires we gaff their rage to quall: But if it did, the ‘gaffes’ are there— The Commissary or the Mayor!
MACKERAL.
JEAN FOUTRE.
A Chelles, cette jolie ville, Le commissaire de police Fait penser a la jeune fille Bien elevee—mais dans le vice! Qui croirait qu’il serait si fin Avec sa guele de lapin?
Ignarant qui etait son pére, Il porte le surnem de Jean, Il tient le plupart de sa mére; On dit mêms qus “C’est un con”. Qui croirait qu’il serait si fin Avec sa guele crétin?
Il sent le mot de son mystere En mettant son nex dans ses aelles. Il a bien trouvé son affaire: “Je suis le plus grand cul de Chelles”. Qui croirait qu’il serait si fin Avec sa guele de youpin?
THE OWL.
The Owl, by simply sitting still and blinking And saying nothing, seems to have persuaded Most people that his life is passed in thinking; Too hasty! Darwin noticed more than they did. He went to certain mice and such small fowl, And got their point of view about the Owl! Morale: the quire folk in the community Are maybe—waiting for their opportunity!
THE PARROT.
Do not hesitate to ask Guidance from the old grey parrot! He is equal to the task. Offer him a bite of carrot! Wait until he says to you: “Pretty Polly! How-de-do!” Insults, oaths and flatteries, Vanities inane and vapid:— All the time his look is wise; All the time his speech is rapid. Most of the Great Men I’ve heard Might be brothers of that bird!
THE COCKATOO.
I keep a copper cockatoo, Who thinks the Quarterly Review The most purely unmethodical Example of a periodical. . . . .
The meaning of these mystic words Baffles my brain—what price the bird’s?
ALBATROSS.
LYING FACE DOWNWARDS TO A FISH = PRONE TO CARP.
“Prone on his back”* poor Joseph Conrad lies. Behind him gazing madly in his eyes,
Stands squatting on his right side, my Lord Jim His weight on his left elbow, plump and slim,
Pressed deep beneath the earth. Malays recline Upon their sleek abdominal supine
In front of the great novelist, intent Upon what may most likely be a rent
In’s trouser seat. He lies in his snug berth Upon a pillow—crushing him to earth—
Poised on his head his neatly-fitting boot Supports the brain of that observer ’cute—
I hope this present unprovoked attack Won’t lay him once again upon his back.**
* The Mirror of the Sea, XXXIV. ** X. It did, alas.
Note in answer to the protest of Professor Mudd— ’Tis fair, because he shows such spleen and rancour Against those callous knaves that write “cast anchor”.
OSTRICH.
THE PALETTE OF OSCAR.
The purple pageant of my inCommunicable woes Was painted by the hand of gin-And-water on my nose. The mellow gold that glimmers through My sad autumnal style, Is symptomatic of a suPerfluity of bile. The feet of Christ I worship at appear so pale, Because of all the sKilly that I ate in Reading Gaol!
CUCKOO.
TO SYLVIA’S HUSBAND, RETRIEVING HER.
When a man chucks a cigarette Across a table after dinner, It seems a reasonable bet That he will not begin to fret, Or grow appreciably thinner Respect the man who can afford Such diminution of his hoard!
But if immediately after He jumps up growling, soaked in sweat, And grabs the half-smoked cigarette Out of one’s mouth, one ought to let One’s pity overcome one’s laughter, For one might hesitate to swear That he’s a multimillionaire!
SWAN.
THE OATH OF PARSIFAL.
If ever I acquire horse sense, I’ll Perceive the Mystery of the Grail With my intelligence prehensile Exactly like a Monkey’s tail!
THE HOOPOE.
How sinister an interest Attaches to the Hoopoe: this: (It must be candidly or confessed) I am not certain what it is. Men making a successful, scoop owe Much to their being like the hoopoe.
LAUGHING JACKASS.
PROFESSOR SIGMUND FREUD.
Without one shred of evidence I’ll Discourse on vot’s pehindt der Veil With my intelligence prehensile Exactly like a monkey’s tail.
BARNACLES.
BLIND MOUTHS.*
Though I beat Tehigorin and Steinitz Lasker and Philidor and Murphy At Chess, it would not be a sign it’s Correct to pronounce coffee “corphy”. Bishops take notice! No one needs Your criticism of men’s creeds. The art of flattering the mob, Lying and cringing is your job; Employing “Jesus” to fool Labour, Bearing false witness ’gainst your neighbor. Bully the weak and play the flunkey To wealth and power; you make the monkey, The parrot, horse-leech, owl, cameleon, And tape-worm models, you pile Pelion Of hypocritical servility On Casa of smug imbecility. The largest liars and slyest haters Come first to mitres and to gaiters. I can put up with a stool pigeon; But—not to regulate religion! Praise you? I murmur scarce a tepid ‘Damn’. Enough: NE SUTOR ULTRA GREPIDAM!
* The quotation is from a very topical up-to-date poem ‘Lycidas’, by J. Milton, St. John’s College, Cambridge.
PYTHONS.
THE STRANGLE-HOLD: FAMILY.
Laocoon And his two sons were set upon By two mere snakes: But Gérard Aumont’d Fate awakes Two worser curses, His mother and grandmother. Verse is Inadequate — — — — Strangles! Laocoon? Cheap skate!
THE HORNED VIPER.
The cerastes emphasizes What disquieting surprises Lie in wait for thoughtless folk Who incautiously provoke People of uncertain temper. It is better to let them pur- Sue their aims without appearing In their way and interfering. When we happen to arrive at Any door marked “Strictly Private” And intrude, it is not quaint if There’s a verdict for the plaintiff.
THE LIZARD.
One does not need to be a wizard, To meddle with forbidden arts, In order that the lively Lizard May teach us (lay it to your hearts) Some pithy points—I think he can Assist the bust business man.
The Lizard is alert, suspicious; He twists and turns with subtle speed; He is not stubborn or malicious, He never fights unless he needs; And if you grab him, you will find He bolts, and leaves his tail behind.
I need not even be at pains To shew the drift of these instructions. The very simplest business brains Are capable of such deductions. I echo the sighed thought “It is hard I wasn’t born to be a lizard!’
LARVA.
THE OLD MAID.
Like new-formed craters on the slope Of a burnt out volcano, cancer Breaks from the breast that held the hope Of milk, and would not, What’s the answer?
OYSTER.
TOURNEDOS Á LA BASSO.
“God making roses”—did not fail to make The very tender succulent Beef-steak Saignant, sux Cepes, en cocette, whereby Basso (like Antoine) claims Eternity.
(Note, Antoine, of New Orleans, La., has a steak ‘a la Robespierre’ invented by his grandfather on seeing R’s head cut off.)
SNAIL.
HOUMT-SOUK.
Houmt-Souk! Thy hustlers best and busiest Whose eager zest Curls their proud lips if one would bid them rest, Whose soul’s fantastic flame Consumes their mortal frame, Burns them to ash before Their years surpass two score —Some little hustlers! One of staunch physique Proved not too worn with toil to speak: Admitted: “yes, I work four days a week.”
AMOEBA.
MRS. FISKE.
Go to! thou slab of Suet! Go to! thou dumpy drab! Thou antiquated cruet. Thou human growler cab!
Thou imbecile potato! Thou bilious liver-lump! Whatever Gods you pray to Will hardly find a way to Alleviate your rump.
Men rather face the basilisk Then the fat eyes of Mrs. Fiske.
SPIROCETES.
MEALS WITH THE MASTERS.
H. G. WELLS.
1. When ’Erbert Gawdamighty Wells Offered a Brobdignian dinner to minor literary swells He didn’t ask a mere beginner Like me—besides, I am a sinner.
2. He swore a multitude of oaths (Lucullus dine chez Luc ulus) That he would sport his Havening Clothes —Non facit monachum cucullus. The imposition did not gull us.
3. There was a laughing-jackass, moulting, Borne by a sooty seaside nigger Both sentimental and revolting, A counter-jumper with a snigger: Jerome K. Jerome—name yer figger!
4. This sanctimonious subub clown Hee-hawed to a what-can-it-be-man Clobbered in humour reach-me-down, A winter-sale-eleven-three-man, Canned-ersatz-satire, Owen Seaman.
5. It was so rottenstoned and oiled And soaped and taught to bow and scrape to Respectability, and boiled Out of its substance and its shape too— Past likening a decent ape to.
6. Crazed Conan Doyle was there, his banner’s Device, sheet, hollow, turnip, candle. Rabindranath Tagore, whose manners Did honour to all Coromandel: Put in the coin, and turned the handle!
7. His talk was dim, genteel, suburban: A dog for any lady’s lap! He prayed that a Bengali’s turban No less than a top hat may cap A skullful of most mushy pap!
8. Doyle thought that Arnold Bennett’s teeth Were tombstones in a cemetery. Old Robert Bridges had a wreath Of bay, a flank of watered sherry And kept on humming “Down-a-Derry.”
9. Gaunt, lank, unwashed, uncouth, wild-eyed In melancholy stanzas makes The gossoon to his fairy Bride, The Pegasus of Selling-Plates! I hear a murmur: “What are Yeats?”
10. John Masefields’s face had turned the milk As sour as Hillaire Belloc’s wine, Expert to label shoddy silk And sell for Pekinese their swine— Per masterpiece, thirteen and nine?
11. This would-be literary ‘vet’, Sad “Silly Willy” starts to jaw ’em: I’m Sa-sam-mum-mum-er-set Mau-mau-mum-mum-mum-mum-mum-Maugham” Served with cocaine and chloroform.
12. Well furnished with the spicy scandal Current in sundry Mayfair kitchens; Thrilled by a name that boasts a handle, To Biskra’s or Taormina’s rich inns Head waiters welcome Robert Hichens.
13. At ’Erbert Gawdamighty’s bluff Of hospitality he shies— Seeks the back stairs with ready cuff To note his host’s delinquencies —Seen through the servant’s greasy eyes.
14. The bulk of the whole party was A hippopotamus who ans- swered to the name of G.K.C. ’cos The C is an immense expense (G.K. a mere extravagance.)
15. This formidable lump of lard Oozed beer from every pouting pore; He thought himself a saint, a bard, A thinker; first in peace and war And in the hearts of—(I forebore!)
16. Against his hoggishness a faint Thin shadow stood in silhouette Upon its head—which thought it quaint Whenever anything upset. He hardly ever drank or ate.
17. He never smoke or swore or laughed; He would not anything admit. The dreary donkey was as daft As David’s sow—he called it wit To sniff at everything and spit
18. With wide lapels of purple plush Upon his swallow-tail sublime, The soul of the Savoy ablush With joy of mystery and crime Blazes E Phillips Oppenheim.
19. His, only his—the rapture hid In coronet or old umbrella, His the delicious dauntless kid Stenographer and Cinderella, The dagger and the tarantella.
20. His, the stern Secret Service man, The Banker with a State to sell; The sin, the shame, the prices, the plan— Framed always by the glittering, swell Huge, loud, splendiferous Hotel.
21. A Dublin dandy dressed to kill The prostitutes of Piccadilly, A pink-faces rat with a stiff frill Of hair tempts the naughty-thrilly- Cynic—succeeds in being silly
22. There, pacing up and down, as though He still, as erstwhile, trod the floor (Frock-coated with a made-up bow) Of some great linendraper’s store One beats on Fame’s brass-bolted door.
23. Behind his vasty paunch he struts Within his collars celluloid. He breathes and feeds; his giant guts Are crammed as his dwarf brain is void. Therefore he’s worried and annoyed.
24. Long sines he heaped to hallow paper By writing gems of Anglo Saxon I told him “Once a linendraper. “Always a linendraper!” Cracks on Thy pate thy doom, O Holbrook Jackson!
25. Thou woulds’t save London—anarchist, By gently dropping bombs upon her. That was one target that you missed; You dropped your dream of fame and honour To devil for T.P. O’Connor.
26. Back yonder, cackling, grins a clerk (I guess) whose finger wags amain, Restless and huge! By jove, a shark Beside four minnows! Bust, brain; Here is a riddle to explain!
27. With that forefinger (answers me My soul) that cunning codger hammered A thousand tiny tunes in C Major—he yelled and yawped and yammered. He hit the old piano damn hard!
28. A few old salts, smart poachers, gay cops, Trim sels, the bitter bit, love thwarted At last to triumph, Mr Jacobs Won the Success Stakes by a short head— The popularity he courted.
29. Abject, fraid to give offence on The question of the weather, shy, Shivered and simpered A.C. Benson; And dimly tried to wonder why Life was so sinister and sly.
30. Grimly regarding this pale phantom Through clenched teeth grinding, “Parasite! “These dirty dons! I’d like to plant ’em “Where they belong, and plant ’em right! “The brainless blasted blatherakite!”
31. This savage socialist, this hot Cynical baresark satitist Proved on more close inspection not Born with his head fixed as a fast— He had a palm to tickle-shist!
32. We gave him a fur coat; a car; A lord invited him to dinner; We taught him that a good cigar Makes sin (Society’s a sinner) Seem less abominable in her.
33. We praised his wit, admired his views, Until he half admitted “All’s worthy, Somehow, perhaps; we have to choose Between two evils: life appals worthy Men—still we stick it” Good old Galsworthy!
34. But all along my reverent gaze Has been enthralled by minor swells, These planets lackey the One Blaze Of the Sole Sun their pride that quells. Hail! ’Erbert Gawdamighty Wells!
35. ’Ail, ’Erbert! ’Ail! Hall ’Ail! Thy toes Are ten, and ten thy finger-tips. The parings of their nails, God knows, Are pearls more precious than the lips Of all our poets sang—’Ail Kipps!
36. ’Ail, Gawdamighty, ’Ail! we own Thine All-Benevolence of belly, All-wisdom of the brain alone! Thou hast whipped Plato into jelly, And made mince-pie of Machiavelli!
37. ’Ail Wells, Hall ’Ail! Thou Wells where squats Truth naked at thy bottom, wells Whose healing virtue blandly blots Tunbridge from memory, and tells Bath’s Bishop to try something else!
38. Well’s all thou dost; where’s Selon now, Where Richelieu, Bismarck, Socrates? One thought-burst of thy bulging brow Makes mutton-broth of such as these— (Including Bonaparte—poor cheese!)
40. Enough! (As Shelly said) “I faint! I sink, I tremble, I expire!” My mean vocabulary ’aint By any means what I require To sing the songs that you inspire!
41. They swallowed mountains of molasses And damp warm toast with rancid butter, The bleat of the bewildered masses That read their rubbish made them sputter The glacial garbage of the gutter.
42.
Yet these, right up from Harold Begbie, Are really absolute outsiders: The ladies who won’t let a leg be A leg are juicier providers Of sewer-slush for girlish gliders.
43. A cockney-bastard at her breast (Her claim to fame) there welled and swanked Shrieking of sex—“Rebecca West” And Mrs. Ward the sacrosanct— They ought to have been soundly spanked.
44. Elinor Flyn and other flabby Dowdies a horde of gushing guff— Composed a cat-choir, tame and tabby, Spiteful, salacious, silly stuff:— The public cannot get enough!
45. Then lo! in corsets and low skirts Daubed to the eyes with fard and Kohl And rouge, two India-rubber squirts Simper of sin and sex and soul. Their whispers make them rather droll!
46. One calls the other “Lawrence, Love!” And he smirks back “My sweet Georgette!” One stalks dim jungles after dove, One speeds a motor bassinette: Their style is Addled Omelette.
47. Distinguished from three penny plains And tu’pence coloureds there was one, One only: some faint trace of brains Had all the rest: and he had none His name was Austin Harrison.
48. His self-assurance tries to swamp us With supercilious smugness spewed. He vomits up his prosy pompous Chyle—churned from ignorance crass and crude:— A chimpanzee dressed as a dude!
49. So very stupidly and badly He writes—it is a sort of genius! His trousers are by Pope and Bradley On ‘contra’: his trade tricks are thenious, His manners Shentemanly Sheenyous!
50. Strange! but my whithers seem unwrung The literary beaux and belles ’Is Nibs cultivates I leave unsung. Their Greenwich Villages and Chelseas Be ’Erbert Gawdamighty Well’s!
THE FLY CATCHER.
MRS. CURTIS WEBB.
Aristocrat or pimply Pleb Are all the same to Mrs. Webb; She pays me, I’ve never paid her, I ‘played’ the bitch, and then I ‘made’ her; Harridan or blushing deb Are all the same to Mrs. Webb.
In the ritualistic farces She’s the one to smack the arses; They crawl a mile, then sprawl a while To fit them for the rank and vile; Now Heavenly Mansions can they win If they despise the House of Sin?
As with the great, so with the least All must pay tribute to the Beast.
From the essence of the slime Springs the tendency to crime; To reap the harvest of the Mind Mankind must for ever ‘grind’; The lessons of Duality Were set for all Humanity; We know the happy side of life By virtue of discordant strife; At one with you, at one with me, The Christians worship Calvary. They spoil the rod to flay the child, The while they pose as meek and mild; Taking things for what they are The star-fish must become the Star.
Mrs. Webb does what she can As a lusty Lesbian To make Sappho of the filly Who never trots in Piccadilly; Girl to girl and man to man Is part and pattern of her plan; Lad to lass and lass to lad, (Bread to bread alone is bad; So, the changes she must ring If the Angels are to sing; Aristocrat and putrid Pleb Harridan and dainty Deb There’s never one that misses web.
GODS AND DEMONS.
PRELIMINARY.
THE OATH OF FEALTY.
By the huge height of heaven above I swear to thee to be thy love. By the abyss of earth beneath I swear to thee the extreme faith.
By flux of air and glory of fire, By strength of sea and horror of mire, I here renounce all grace and chrism That I have gotten in baptism.
I bind my blood in Satan's hands* All this that lieth betwixt mine hands, To thee, the Beast, and thy control, I pledge me; body, spirit, and soul.
* Note: Alternative reading: "I bind my blood in Satan's hands."
PRELIMINARY.
NOUMENA.
It does not matter in the least What mind and body cloke the soul, What masquerade of bird or beast Amuses Jupiter or stroll, What firm or flabby flesh is creased Around the necessary Whole.
I swear I will no more be fooled By accidents of intellectual Or physical appearance, schooled By life to know them ineffectual. I will not be confused or curved Or disappointed or disturbed By thoughts that baffle men and blind 'em, And shows that lure, bewitch, and bind 'em. I take my fancies as I find 'em.
My falsest friend conceals a Star; God's in his emptiest avatar: My girls—I do not care one button What meat is, an honest glutton Devours alike beef, pork, and mutton. There's one thing common to all women:— Just as all seas are good to swim in. I do not bathe to please and flatter The shores; the landscape doesn't matter. Swim when you feel dry—land too cloddy To cleanse and exercise the body!
It happens that this rare judicial Impartiality aforesaid Releases me from all official Responsibility that bores head; It makes my suitors less evasive And calm, more eager and persuasive. They come, like bitches, at my whistle, And wag their tails and gambol gaily, Properly grateful for the daily Dole, the tough tenderness of gristle.
PAIMON.
MY FAILURE IN LIFE.
By dint of divers pious courses I might have gained immense esteem. I might have heard from valued sources: "Your genius is quite supreme— By dint of divers pious courses."
My friend Mohammed ben Brahim Has his own method—it divorces My aspiration from the dream Of fame—The cure for all remorse is My friend Mohammed ben Brahim.
THE NAMELESS WORKS.
ADONAIS.
There are a lot of prigs that pan me. While I have little Belgasem Around to * * * * me and to fan me I do not give a hoot for them!
* * * * MS illegible. Professor Herman Fuchs proposes "read aloud to me!"
THE TROLL OF THE IRRATIONAL.
"As I was going to St. Ives I met a man with seven wives." He railed so bitterly on Heaven God blessed him with a second seven! Out, owlish, out abhorred offence And outrage against common sense! The oaf professed himself contented! Man is a dribbler so demented That still he slobbers, sobs, importunes The Gods to multiply misfortunes. The more ineffably he itches, The more ignobly in his breeches He buttons up the lice he harbours Against apothecary-barbers.
Moral. This fact is attested by oodles of oaths: Man loathes what he loves, and he loves what he loathes.
HARPOCRATES.
Like Daniel in the lion's den, Sil- -ence helps when fear and doubts assail— With my intelligence prehensile Exactly like a monkey's tail.
COMUS ROUT.
ADIEU GOODMAN DRIVEL.
1. Sunday's child is hale and creamy. Monday's child is frail and dreamy.
Tuesday's child is rude and restless. Wednesday's child is shrewd and breastless.
Thursday's child is greedy and jolly, Friday's speedy, full of folly, Saturn's seedy, melancholy.
2. English girls are greasy gluttons; Welsh girls more like goats than muttons;
Scottish girls are sour and skittish:— So much for the bloody British!
Irish girls are richly fancied, Barring Ulster, where they're rancid.
French girls whores, some real, some sham; Belgian girls like putrid jam.
Dutch girls give square meal and deal; German, watchful for your weal.
Spanish are like lightning flashes; Portuguese romantic trashies.
Wop girls are the herds of flirting, Swiss have two main lines of sucking.
Scandanavian girls I lump:— Frump, mump, grump, bump, rump, hump!
Balkan girls, whatever their race is, Have soft souls and silly faces.
Greek girls, mean and elegant; Turkish, plump and petulant.
Austrian, refined or worse, Russian, crazy and perverse.
Polish girls are proud and shrewish; Jewesses, obscenely Jewish.
But Hungarians—wanton witches Lovely, laughing, lechorous bitches.
Are the only white-skinned woman Worth one's while to sink of swim in.
3. Arab girls are fiery and trustful, Gipsies, treacherous and lustful.
Senegalians giant—vicious, Congolese girls, fat, nutritious.
Malagasy, superstitious, Moors, Satanic and suspicious, Kabyles, dainty and delicious.
Nubians, intense and lissome: Abyssinians—see me kiss 'em!
Negresses, of all varieties, Mostly leer, and love, and lie at ease.
4. Hindu girls are shy, coquettish; Japanese, wired-marionettish; Polynesians, intuitive, and bright.
Chinese girls are proud, polite, Skilled, intuitive, and bright.
Burmese girls are grave and gracious, Siamese, sleek, slim, salacious.
Malays, ardent and audacious; Cingalese, serene and spacious.
Tamils, blockish cloodless brutes; Kashmir girls, prize prostitutes.
Nepalese girls are mad stallions, Raging lusts in black battalions.
Javanese and Philipinos, Rather trying to a keen nose.
Tartar girls are mad with thirst, Go—till something has to burst.
'Stralian girls? I'd rather combat Old man Wallaby or Wombat.
'Murikan girls—but few I think Worth the waste of pen and ink.
Mexicans, superb and spiteful, South Americans delightful.
6. What! talkest thou of naught but ladies? Aroint, foul fiend! Get back to Hades!
FELICIAN ROPS—GOD OF FIRE.
Black Mass. The wing and blood are drugged and spiced To bubble at the curved, incarnadine, And cruel lips of Satan's Priestess, Sin, That she may babble blasphemies to Christ.
Her lively carrion writhes upon the bole Of Hell's live Tree of Lust that fattens on his mouldered cross, his putrid carrion— Her Body is the secret of her soul!
Sin smiles and whispers through the dusk her hissed Lewd benediction; at the altar-rail Kneels still one slender stripling with wild pale Blank eyes ecstatic from the Eucharist.
Sin plays with itching fingers in the flame Of his crisp curls. Thou lovest me? she purrs. The boy sobs silently. "Sin holds thee hers; Ask what thou wilt, then, in the Devil's name!"
"Choose me to praise thy Beauty, cast the spell Of Art on man! Felician Hops, my line Enmesh and strangle saints, my maze design Lures Jesus' lambs into the styes of Hell."
The Devil smiled: Sin slide a skilled caress Within the fleshly form, as in his soul Her master stamped His smoking seal, and stole Snake-subtle to indwell his eagerness.
Sin kissed his brain; it boiled with eager mirth, Blood absinthe-bitter, opium-depraving, Vitriol-corrosive, every thought a craving That curled blind tentacles about the earth.
Man in his magic mirror saw but swine, Head in his Bible "Wisdom is to wallow", "Be sure all Faith is fraud, love lust, hope hollow!" He made Truth leer and hie in every line.
He impaled the Virgin Beauty, as a bait Upon the back of Vice; he put the dress Of Art upon the limbs of Rottenness, And made Love handmaid in the house of Hate.
O subtle seed! What crimes shall be thy crops? My bone is builded on the bitter bread Baked of thy wizard oats: my blood runs red With sin, spark-flashing from the smithy of Rops.
THE NEGRESS ON MONTPARNASSE.
LILITH AND THE GAMALIEL.
Upon thy breast-terrasse, O Dome de Montparnasse! The pseudo-artists sit Incapable of wit Being completely — IT — With what contempt she sails, the gallant girl About them all a-swirl— The splendid animal—the lively lash To mine imagination As I compare her with the sour stagnation, And dribbling degradation Of all this poor white trash.
The Dingo's stools ensconce Maitland, the sodden ponce Of Mary Butts The Goddess Guts; There Mrs. Fiske lurks, twitches, Smirks, itches.
Nameless Americans Grin, imitating man's More obvious gestures, pose And prate, there prate and prose. Interminable rows Of Jews uncircumcized (For the ripe cheese they prized) Inextricably mongrel, booze and bleat. The iris Trees with vast unwashen feet, Innumerable 'inskis', worn-out Poles With aromatic wholes Which they entitle Art (As if no 'f' were part Of the maimed alphabet Oh! let us haste to set Against this purulent horde Of pustules something that the Lord Might possibly admit for his, Something whoses nature is At least clean comely animal, Something at least that shall Not be ashamed to own itself, a wench Proud of her musky stench And shimmering skin obsidian And steatopygous Big-breasted, black, prognathous, simian- -Firm flesh, not poulticed pus Like those who haunt the Dome and the Rotonde —White trash beyond The power of pen and ink To write, or mind to think— The incarnation of essential stink. Hail! she-orang outang! blue black gorilla, With strong white teeth, Your solid splendours thrill a Mans soul that's sick at stomache of the oblate, Obese, degenerate, White trash that are so fond Of squatting with blear blank Dead eyeballs, rank on rank Ox-eyed brunette, peroxide blonde— Some at the Dome and some at the Rotonde.
Come, negress, it were cleaner to shoot craps Upon thy paps! Rather get syphilis of thee, and death Than the first whiff of Cecil Maitland's breath; The ailliest jape to intellect less risk Than the most pallid proot of Mrs. Fiske!
ASMODEE.
KNIGHT TAKES BISHOP, CHECK.
Woman delights not me, nor (though Your smiling seems to say so) Man either (British Bishops know A trick worth two of Naso.) From art and music, wit and wine, I fail to see the fun shine. It bores me stiff to have to dine, I mildly snub the sunshine.
“Old Mother Damnable”, you hope, Would help—you really hope so? Heaven smiles beyond a swarded slope? (You can’t persuade the Pope so.) Fold wooly me in pious pen. And with me equals then lie— Grease ladies and wax gentlemen At Hurlingham and Henley?
Nay, Bishop, I have been the round, A wider round than you know; Below Dis’ throne have broken ground, And split the skies of June. I know the secrets of the soul, The prettier points of polo, The earth’s enticements, pole to pole, From solitaire to solo.
I know too much to lay my spleen To conscience or to liver; I’ll always be, I’ve always been A creaky, cranky flivver. I’m only dust in Nature’s ‘must’: Behemoth hers, and bustard— She made insatiable lust. I’ll thank you for the mustard.
SILENUS.
“1826”
Oh let us bathe and crown our hair And drink untempered wine! Let ever greater cups ensnare Our souls in traps divine.
Soon calms the season of love’s rage, And joy grows short of breath; Birth shoots a shaft, weighed down by age, That strikes the target death.
Then come, thou golden goblet brimmed With lust! Though all be vain, There’s hope for us, the lion-limbed, In hashish and cocaine.
Though death should hale us by the scruff Of neck to’s mouldy portal, To-night let us get drunk enough To know we are immortal!
To Bob Chanler. An XV.
Note to future editor: 1826 is the date of Bob’s best brandy, but he has not met my Waterloo!
UNDINE.
INSPIRATION.
I want to strip Margaret bare, To drag her about by her hair, To smother her faecal young body in treacle, And plant her in Washington Square.
To bury her up to the chin In a grave, with red ants to fill in; To smoke a cigar as I strum my guitar, And watch her go West with a grin.
Her hair—I’ll write madrigals on it! Her mouth—oh the epodes upon it! I’ll kick out her eyes for a Ballad of Sighs, And cut off her nose for a sonnet.
UNDINE.
LINES WRITTEN IN DEJECTION NEAR WASHINGTON SQUARE.
In the rose-garden of my mind My soul hath built an hermitage,— With weariness its eyes are blind, Its might is palsied by its age; It hath not wit to be resigned To its own fate, to play the sage.
O surely did the prophets lie, The poets utter a vain thing:— Too many centuries pass by, While God has hardly waved a wing. I too am of eternity And loathe the insolence of Spring.
They pass, they pass, on gleaming glass Reflected, and no tool engraves Their memory; all their moving mass Is as ephemeral as the waves. It matters not; they pass; they pass, The dull procession of my slaves.
Last year ’twas Helen strove with Kate, Gladys, and Desda, and Yvonne. This year I’ve Lea to my mate, And—I forget! The year is gone. Next year—is Margaret my fate? Ah, sursum corda—carry on!
The dragon of my soul demands The flesh and blood of Margaret. She smiles and weaves her spider strands To catch the dragon in her net. Each, lewd with boredom, understands Love the best tincture to—forget.
I am so sick of kissing girls. None satisfy, yet all excite; Strung on the centuries like pearls, Like shooting stars athwart the night, I loathe the cruelty and the curls Of every sleek hermaphrodite.
The safest kisses are the bought. They do not wither the soul’s flower. But all ships reach alike the port Oblivion; all the milk is sour. Could God devise no better sport? Margaret comes in half an hour.
UNDINE.
THE SUMMER GIRL.
Margaret is out of town. God has kissed her golden brown. One would say a panther Sun Leaping to the Horizon From the fleecy clouds that roll Their enchantment on His soul, When her body crashes home To the green wave’s crown of foam. Wind-whipped, till the sea becomes A world of white chrysanthemums. One would think a goddess gay Foam-born of the Milky Way, Mastered by a panic spell, Burnished in the fires of hell; But she so much to earth belongs That she rejoices in my songs, Condescends like God to dust, Breathes the purity of lust On my soul, its mood surprising As Ra enkindled at His Rising, All the rhythm of her life To the vampire-lure of Life, And her eager smile explaining (Too proud for fencing and for feigning) All the mystery charm of youth In one giant gesture—Truth. Come from the sea, my love, to land! I will crush thee with one hand, And let your blood upon the sand Bear witness that—I understand!
SALAMANDRINE.
BERTHE.
From God there comes a gust In this wild spirit of mine; Your body brims with lust As a goblet with gold wine;
Your eyes are burning swords, And your mouth a moist red bud, Your barbed arms strain like cords And your soul’s aflame for blood;
Your breasts are stiff and taut And your golden belly shakes With the writhing of your thought As the soul of your soul awakes
A fountain of sweet showers On the mind’s insensate clod, Behold the fervour of flowers That grow in the garden of God!
I crown you queen of night I wreathe you lady of day, I wrap you round with my might; I rape your body away;
I make you pleasure and pain As a paved work for your feet; I twist and madden your brain With the matchless musical beat
Of my love that swells and soars, That hammers the anvil Time, That breaks like a sea on the shores Of space—oh thou, sublime;
Supreme, Satanic, serene, My love, my body of breath, I conjure thee, spell the obscene Epithalamium, death!—
SALAMANDRINE.
November 1918
Strong poison of thy mouth, my love, and honey of thy breath, A fierce red wine that sucks me down, a drunkard unto death, Snake of my soul, thou leapest up to feed upon my brain That thrills and sobs wild music to the murder-lust refrain! Home, there’s a tent pitched on the sand: the camel bell rings clear: The stars are violent like red suns: I will have thee here. Why linger in the moody north? There’s welcome in the south; Strong poison of thy mouth, my love, strong poison of thy mouth.
FAUN.
BELGASM. (SONG OF AN ARAB MAIDEN.)
Twelve summers hath Sahara’s sacred sun Kissed into growth of lissome strength and fine Laughter, and buoyant beauty, this young vine; Shall my desire do less than His hath done? Mine eyes illume, My mouth is mute, I dare design To brush its bloom, And crush its fruit, And drink its wine!
O honeyed body, ripening Into intoxicating purple lips! * My brain, thy bee, celestial madness sips At their bold brim; my soul’s thirst at the spring Of thy love’s joy, Quenched in delight I soar and sing!
I have thee, boy! Sun-strong, moon-bright My queen and king!
* This metaphor is taken from the ‘degla’ date (the choicest variety) which exhibits these colours.
FAUN.
A PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION IN THE SCENTED GARDEN.
A wise man makes the most of life In case he never has another: It’s great to be a happy wife Though I can never be a mother.
NYMPHS.
IN MY HAREM.
A room I dare wag a limb in! Damn these respectable women! Give me the ocean to swim in.
Oh how they try to amuse me, Conscientiously bite me and bruise me;— Nobody guesses what woos me.
Passion—their lamps only splutter! Mustard is better than butter; Give me a girl from the gutter!
Hope has completed its ebbing, You spiders with obvious webbing, Love “by the book”—of Kraft-Ebbing!
I live them? God rack m’em and rot m’em! When I drew them, the pencil would spot m’em, Expose the respectable bottom!
Nubians love on the level, Black as the heart of the devil, Savage and sumptuous revel!
Purple as a plum, the intruder! Lewd as a monkey and lewder! Stark as the desert that spewed her!
Have you no beauty to storm us, Monsters wry-moulded, enormous, Pesth, Paphos, Paris, Panormus?
Rotten with drink and diseases, Crazy with drugs—ah, my thesis Proves but too clearly what pleases.
I being God in simplicity, Lust after all eccentricity, Wallow in death and lubricity.
You, you keep bowling full pitches! Damn all these amateur bitches. Give me my old riding-breeches!
An XVI.
SYLPHIDES.
The brown brats squatting in the sun! One has a dirty flowered skirt, A ragged robe, black striped with dun Crimson and toned with dirt.
One has bare feet, one gaudy shoes Of yellow leather; round her hair Twisted a coif of many hues Of fancy debonair.
The other coif black with striped ends Green, purple, yellow, blue; her robe Orange; a great gold ring depends From each ear's delicate lobe.
Bangles of silver and ebony Adorn each dusky arm and wrist, Their finger nails with henna dye Glow like the sun through mist.
Their foreheads and their chins, tatooed Deep indigo with quaint device, Attest their father's blood, with shrewd Heraldic subtleties.
The sun, the moon, the desert wind; Fierce fire and frost, all harsh extremes Of nature's nakedness, they find To furnish them with dreams.
Ten years: their childhood trembles on The brink of the dark stream of Fate That swells and feeds the palms; anon Its task done, to abate.
Their calm unconscious loveliness Glow in the sunsets idly gay; As if no terror, no distress, Were Wardens of the Way.
Are Beauty, Wonder, Wisdom worth Their price of tragedy obscene And lewd Burlesque? How fair were Earth Freed from all Earth must mean!
Two brown brats squatting in the sun. 'Tis pity of our lives the Mind Must muddle; soil and spoil the fun Of living for Mankind.
(Written while sitting outside the Marabout, Sidi bou Ali, Nov 23/23 with the 'brown brats' staring at us.)
JINNI.
BLACK AND BLUE.
Black velvet of the sky, my love, black velvet of your skin:— One maddens and one soothes the sense of sacramental sin. I prostitute myself to you as Christ to Calvary; Your kisses purge me of the stain of my mortality. You ugly laughing devil! hug and plunge till soul descry Blue velvet of your skin, my love, blue velvet of the sky.
JINNI.
RETURN TO HAMMAN MESKOUTINE. Tunis — Winter 1925/6
Celui qui m'a aimè sera mon homme encor Heureux toute la nuit il prendra son essor. Dechire par ses dents, ecrase dans ses bras, Aux abois sous sou corps, mon preux ne m'encoulera, Le copps laid et puant l'haleine chaude et aigre M'intoxiquant d'amour pur ce Satan de negre Je veux m'abimer dans la salete de vices, Y trouver de mon ame abrutie les délices, Dechire de ton dard les entrailles brulantes De ta putain pamee de joie extravagante! Fils de Soleil! encor plenge ta fleur-de-lys Au fond de cul de ton impérieuse Alys!
JINNIYAH.
Marseilles Oct 1925
Dear God! With twenty francs a man May buy a cocktail, a cigar, A dozen clams, a courtesan— Dear God, how fortunate we are! We owe the Lord a thousand thanks For passing us those twenty francs
. . . . .
The cocktails cost a little less, And the cigar a little more The clams are ‘extra’: I confess I might have haggles with the whore. Still, twenty francs have bought the lot: Marseille is a delightful spot.
FAIRY.
THE LADY OF PITLOCHRIE* COMPLAINS OF HER BRUISED NECK AND UNBRUISED PEACH.
I would some Newton or Fermat might draw A curve of Cecil’s joy and Cecil’s jaw. My neck’s an echymosis On all men imposes The scandalous thought “I Must have been naughty.” While I am in fact a Virgo intacta!
* The reference is to the well known Limerick.
CARYATID.
TO A FRIEND’S WIFE.*
The dome of great Saint Isaac’s glows At sunset with celestial rose. Thee though hath spiritual profit: Kate, kiss me, and remind me of it!
* Who rouged her lips, to the adornment of the dome of a certain House of the Almighty.
OREAD.
APHRODIRE PHARMAKE.
(At The belladonna in your eyes The ‘coco’ in your nose The rouge upon your lips—I rise Though not upon my toes. The hashish in your abdomen,
The morphine in your thighs, The ether on your breath—I ken Love’s last subtleties.
The fascination does not last, Still—nail your colours to the mast!. June 15)
NOTE: This is the same Oath as “The Belladonna in your eyes” further on in the Manuscript.
GOD OF SPIRIT.
(WILLIAM BLAKE) (November 14, 1923)
I went to call on William Blake And found him scrapping with Isaiah Ezekial busy cutting cake. The tea was poured by Obadiah.
Moses was eating buttered toast, And Paul was punishing the crumpets. They talked about the Holy Ghost And how to act towards our dumb pets.
Blake offered me the caviar And asked me what I thought of Ossian He gave me an immense cigar And told me Hell’s last koke—a mossy ’un!
Such hospitality as his I wish I met more often in this Unsociable old galaxy's Worst planet—what a labyrinth is
Life at its best! I’d go on strike (If only for example’s sake) If it were not for people like My good friend Mr. William Blake.
GOD OF WATER.
MEALS WITH THE MASTERS. (SWINBURNE)
I went to tea with Algernon Charles Swinburne, who was drinking brandy Out of a bucket: so was John Ruskin, and sucking sugar candy.
Rossetti used a long stout straw To soak up whiskey by the gallon, While Herbert Spencer sang the Law Of Evolution with Grant Allen!
As a duet which Sullivan Had just composed that day at lunch; The three of them were black and tan With boozing Maraschino Punch.
My host made haste to open for me A bottle of the best old Pernod. I drank it off—its virtue bore me Into the heart of their Inferno.
“By Atlanta”, I observed “I’d like to know, (as I am a sinner) “If this is tea, we should be nerved To have a jolly little dinner.”
GOD OF AIR.
MEALS WITH THE MASTERS. (E. A. POE)
De Quincey wired me to drop in To lunch with Edgar Allen Poe. It would have been a shame and sin To meet such kindliness with a No. They hoped to stir the drowsy God in ’em By filling themselves up with laudanum.
The lunch—qua lunch—was not, perhaps A gastronomical success; For all there was to eat was scraps Of yesterday’s neglected mess. But oh the jars of opium And oh! the company—yum yum!
Coleridge was sprawling on a mat Fighting the bamboo to a finish, While Baudelaire, in high silk hat And boots constructed to diminish The size of his flat feet, was assish Enough to swallow pounds of hashish.
De Maupassant produced a stench Abominably vile with ether; And Wilkie Collins brought a wench Who thought all alcohol beneath her. So all through lunch, to my surprise, They shot more morphine in their thighs.
Between the course, Nietzsche took Pinch after pinch of heroin, So regular it made him look Less like a man than a machine. I reckoned that he puts away At least a kilogramme a day.
I found myself most warmly greeted By Poe, who told me that my brain Would find its genius completed By several ounces of cocaine; And like a veritable prince, he Borrowed the bottle from De Quincey.
They introduced me to their friends (Like Francis Thompson, Ernest Dowson) Who bolted pills of divers blends Of dope we nearly set the house on Fire, for the curry William Sharpe ate Was hot enough to burn the carpet.
Others again worked Belladonna, Chewed mescal buttons, smoked Stramonium— I murmured to Augustus John; “A Remarkably fine Pandemonium!” He hadn’t had so wild a day Since leaving the Y.M.C.A.
OATHS ON ASTRID.
OATH NUMBER
0 = 2.
In thought and word and deed I swear to love Astrid. I swear to do my will And keep her from all ill. Be thou my monitor And aid me Father THOR
In my
OATH ONE.
TOZEUR.
Tozeur hath got, A worthy Chott. But I do not Desire to stay One poor half day. I have to say It is not quite Exactly right. And so—good-night!
OATH TWO.
NEFTA REVISITED.
The greed of gain has gotten “Mashoo Griech”; He has completely ruined his hotel.
It was enchanted Beauty and unique, And now its middle name is Bloody Hell.
Gone is the roof wherefrom I gazed on space; Drunk all the wine, the brandy, and the beer; And the most useful room in the whole place Stinks even fouler than it stank last year.
Like a young palm, my dainty Belgasem Has grown into an admirable stripling; The liar Ahmed still maintains the phlegm Of one who steers his course by Rudyard Kipling.
The Café with the terrace is shut up.
Crech has acquired an auto of his own: A meaner rascal never sold a pup; A mouldier mongrel never snatched a bone.
Still the Oasis stretched to the Chott, And still the springs give life to the Corbeille; But otherwise I’d really rather not Have left the fish- and flesh-pots of Marseille.
I love the palms and streams, Djerid’s one gem; But Mashoo Grieck has gotten in my gorge. Hire me a swift mehari, Belgasm, Shaoust—el Yahoudi is a decent bordj!
OATH THREE.
AT SHAOUSHT - EL - YAHOUDI (Night)
I was a trifle premature in praising The bordj—to does not lend itself to lazing. The floor is scarce superior to flint; The guardian is sinister—a squint. No light, no food, no fuel to be had; The water green and brackish—beastly bad. In short the district wholly lacks amenity. Some poets would describe it with obscenity. Not I: the sunset and the silence give Enough to make me cry “Its good to live!”
OATH FOUR.
AT SHAOUSHT - EL - YAHOUDI (Morning)
About Shaousht - el - Yahoudi, now, I spoke decidedly too soon. The only decent thing, I vow, About the district was the moon, And that because she rose before the day, And let us make an early get-away.
OATH FIVE.
THE FIRST DUNES.
Oh golden sands, sisters of golden snows, Crisp, sparkling, gracious to the fervid foot, Vats where the sun plunges in torrid throes Innumerable vestures, violet-soot And furnace-orange, lavender and rose!
EL OUED.
El-Oued, the central island of An archipelago, in her silence sits. Ouargla, Toouggourt, and Berresof
May envy her, unchallenged queen Amid her myriad mountain dunes, Yellows and purples round her green And white—beneath the sun she swoons.
O city of a thousand domes What milk of madness at thy teats, Inviolate Artemis, secretes The travail of thy slyphs and gnomes!
I stand upon the minaret; The clustered cupolas, the deep Set palms, the endless waves that fret The sterile sand, the air asleep!
Life! Far beneath the city lurks The river subterranean—chaste Baffles the malice of the waste, And all the secret wonder works.
O sacred fountain of my soul Spring thou! bring thou to flower and fruit My sterile spirit—to extol My God, it’s one exhaustless root!
DEBILA.
I would not recommend To any valued friend The night on its cement. (I’d write a little more, But every bone is sore.)
P.S. after 15 months repose. The guardian of the Boedj is one big thief. He tried to swindle us in the belief That we were tourists. Though I’d scarce one hale bone, I chastened his convictions with a whalebone!
DOROTHY’S DASH FOR FREEDOM.
I have you helpless! What are you To do Against my love impregnable To Hell? Can you escape the starry height of Night? Your struggles irk no orb’s least ray Obey Your destiny, my snow-white swan! Sail on!
TOUGGOURT.
I do not like Touggourt at all. It is abominably damp. It gives my genius the cramp, And turns (Macbeth) my milk to gall.
Flies and mosquitos bother me; The Arabs are a scurvy crew: Even blue sky turns me blue: I write like Alfred Tennyson!
Oh no, my friends, I do not like Touggourt at all; my Muse’s nose Is out of joint; my sap is froze: To bloody Biskra let me hike!
DOROTHY AT SIDI BOU SAID.
I have got the girl I wanted (In my heart are dagger-thrusts) Her wicked little bats’ eyes slanted Gleaming with unfathomable lusts, Glittering slits through which the soul Burns in hell like a live coal.
Even so above, even so below— Whose image seems alert to show That one hell is worth another— Oh, none so sweet so near to seek: “Come, burn with me!” she signals sleek, “Satan, my beautiful, my brother!”
DOROTHY IN BED.
Oh Dorothy, my best, my burning Botticelli! My right arm’s full of breast, my left arm’s full of belly.
DOROTHY IN THE DESERT.
The Sun in his splendour The Moon in her calm, Bathe, eager and tender, The cactus and palm. The stars in their slumber Of Silence above Can hardly outnumber The kisses of Love.
Like a snake, the Simoon Hisses death to the dunes; There is mirth, there is doom In his Mystery-tunes, With his whips as they twist Them to columns high-spanned To roam as they list On the seas of sand.
O delicate air! O wind of delight! O subtle and rare Dim daughter of Night! Thy kisses, sharp whips As of asps of the dust, Enkindle my lips To the limit of Lust.
The Sun in his splendour, The Moon in her calm, Preside on my tender Lascivious Psalm. The Stars in their palace Of Silence above, Drop dew in the Chalice, The Chalice of Love!
DOROTHY AT 33.
Oh Dorothy! I’ve a misgiving That something’s gone soft in your brain; You think you can still earn a living By pissing* in people’s champagne!
* Repeating the Cavendish experiment.
HER BIRTHDAY. Thüringen Summer 1925
Astrid! for three-and-thirty years You've plodded this pathetic planet: Still Atropos suspends her shears, It's probable you'll have to pan it, Astrid! for three-and-thirty years.
I hope, when you are sixty-six, You'll tell your grandchildren the story Of how I came your life to fix In love and happiness and glory, I hope, when you are sixty-six.
I love you, nothing matters else. So nearly now a year together; We lived through every spite of hell's And braced the vilest kind of weather. I love you, nothing matters else.
The future shall fulfil the past, Next year make up for last year's worries. Next year give all we lacked in last— Oh mix me cocktails, cook me curries! The future shall fulfil the past.
Astrid! my beautiful, my bliss! This birthday be the dawn of gladness! Seal afresh betrothal with a kiss To kindle fresh ecstatic madness, Astrid, my beautiful, my bliss!
BISKRA REVISITED.
Still Cardinal Lavigenrie Malignant menaces the sun. Much progress hath his purpose won: The big hotels now number three.
An auto-garage now has come, At every step the drink-shops gape. Biskra is taking on the shape Sublime of the millenium!
Beauty so deep, profaned so sore The pallid virgin then wast thou That art the beefy matron now:— And soon the hag, the crone, the whore.
Too sad my soul to dwell among Those memories—when we were young— First single, please; El Kantara.
THE PAINTED LADY.
Oh no, my dear, I greatly fear an apoplectic diet: Vermilion and gambodge appear a mere digestive riot. I do not like the stinking crems with which the barbers load her, And preparations that absolve her arm-pits of their odour.
My motto's "KX, not Chemicals": I keep my head erect. Most solemnly I warn my pals of what they must expect. It moves me to profanity: I'd rather eat my hat. "It was not love but vanity, set love a task like that."
Marseille, May 7/25
How I hate the fourth of May When my darling went away! She left me for the gaities of Paris. When her 'Life & Loves' are known She will certainly dethrone The celebrated amateur, Frank Harris.
I shall rob the local Banks And collect a million francs And hustle to my baby in a biplane. She has such expressive eyes That I do not think it wise To leave the passage open to her tripe-lane.
Thüringen July 1925
I love you with the force that holds The Universe in thrall, The seed that stealthily unfolds The blossom of the All.
I will not tolerate one thought That is not thrilled with bliss Of emanating from the Naught To ultimate in this.
Its sphere Existence still revolves About its changeless youth As by its virtue it dissolves Illusion into Truth.
NE CHERCHEZ PLUS LA FEMME!. Thüringen Summer 1925
Oh Woman! in my hours of ease I smile to feel your fig is flatter; The mystery of mysteries A mystery that doesn't matter. When pain and anguish wring the brow I see the world, as Pharoahs used to, Supported by a sky-blue cow— But I consistently refuse to. Angel or devil—she's no doubt A gun I didn't know was loaded: I fire her—and I find her out Rusted and rotten and exploded. I've studied her in ache and ease With ardent zeal and care meticulous; I'm willing to admit that she's A riddle—yes, but how ridiculous!
ON DOROTHY/RAVING AGAINST LEAH [Leah Hirsig]!. Thüringen Summer 1925
To listen to one slut abusing Another slut is not amusing, But—what fine fuel for the blaze Of my contempt for woman's ways!
TO DOROTHY, PROSTRATED.
You write of rest in bed: those beds are best From which the weary ones arise to rest!
CHATEAU LAFITTE 1884. GABES — HOUMT-SOUK.
My melancholy wine! Proud sorceress of warmth in desolation, Shrewd sanctuary of bestial negation! Who can discover wisdom or design In Life's snake-shapen labyrinth, the shrine Of futile falsehood, blank abomination? Speak to me, sibylline Dark melancholy wine!
The woman I made mine, In whom I summed the secrets of creation, Through whom I tasted the keen air divine Wherewith I flooded mine high habitation, For whom I lived to entwine Laurels with myrtles, she whose mouth was wine, Whose eyes were sunlight, from her starry station Wrenched by obscure and obscene Fate malign, Is gone, the centre of my constellation! Oh drown despair in thy storm-black Euxine, My melancholy wine!
Sting with electric fire each nerve: refine Each throb of blood to rapture! Expation Of my mortality, supreme vibration Of sense and soul; fuse mine with thine, My melancholy wine!
A CABLE FROM DOROTHY.
"Souvent femme varie" The girls are shifty? "La donna é mobile"? Well, I'm past fifty And I've a girl; by God, a crackerjack! Who rushes over to New York and back (Oh fire-flushed rose of Love's immortal June!) To get the cash for our next honeymoon!
November 1925
Astrid returns She burns: I freeze. Still, "concubine, da nuces"!
TO DOROTHY IN BED (AGAIN).
I wish to God you were a hen. (For Jesus' sake, Amen.) A feather from your tail I'd swipe To clean this blasted pipe.
THE MYSTERY OF LOVE.
Dorothy, Dorothy, blessing upon her! Has no sense of humour & no sense of honour. She isn't pretty, or witty, or rich— But somehow I love the old son of a bitch!
SHE DISCOURSES UPON THE IMMORTALITY OF ARTISTS.
For many and many a long year Yank after Yank bought "Dirty Doll", Some got her cheap, some deadly dear:— Now she's too old to play the Moll She plays the prude. The slut may find A boot-end tickle her behind.
PUSS IN BOOTS.
Lazy Cat, Crazy cat, how do you do? Furry puss, purry puss, I—love—you. High boots, sly boots, the tricks that you try on (Lazy cat, crazy cat!) your—Big—Lion!
DOROTHY BEATEN IN ARGUMENT.
The Common Sewer sneers: "Who can fill me?" she jeers.
MISAPPREHENSION.
"Oh what a pretty Black-and-white kitty!"
I went up to stroke her— And found my mistake.
But—well, after all, what a Stole she would make!
Oyez!— The shrine of the Sacred White Cat A basilica built for Low Jacks and High Jinx. The rhinoceros revels in raping the rat, The Siren is ravished in turn by the Sphinx Who pays her Big Lion for playing the fiddle By making herself a ridiculous riddle!
Big Lion! The number of brutes he has thrashed; The beauty and strength his virility conquers! But what shall he pay for the secret of Pasht? From Battery Point to the limits of Yonkers Breathes none who is worthy to serve as a mat At the door of the Shrine of the Sacred White Cat!
White Cat! the one flag I dare nail to the mast is Simplicity—baffles you, 'purcelle of puzzle' I stand, Mau the Lion, against thee, Bubastis, Severe in my silence—you nargule and nuzzle In vain! Your despair and delirium die on The spears of the Guards of the Lair of the Lion!
APROPOS DE BOTTES.
Why I love her I don't know; How I love her I can't tell. But I love her like a snow- -ball in hell!
THE PIOUS CAT.
I could not find a fleck On the white fur of my lover. I bit the back of her neck And arched myself above her.
Terrible and tremendous! God, be good to a sinner! Look from heaven and send us A couple of mice for dinner!
ASTRID HAS A BLOOD TEST.
Would you of dirt become a connoisseur, Try Tunis—at the Institut Pasteur.
SWEET GRAPES.
Sweeter than the grapes of Muscat Are the kisses of my puss-cat!
ASTRID IN APRIL.
The temple of your body is enwalled With heaven's sapphire and earth's emerald; And I your worshipper abide enthralled
In contemplation of the golden rose Your beauty, its pure shrine, whose sunlight flows Forth from your heart's exulting music-throes.
Astrid, I stand in wonder and delight, My spirit's wings spread solemnly for flight Into the skies of Love's clear-radiant night.
O temple of pure pearl! Within the house Of gold transparent and self-luminous I have invoked mine Image in my spouse.
The idol of my dream and my desire, Formed subtly of the essence of my fire, And moulded by the music of my lyre
Is hidden in thee, token of our troth, Slow kindling by the virtue of mine Oath— I am incarnate in its glowing growth.
AT HAMMAM MESKOUTINE.
Before my lunch I languidly enjoy My bath, my book, my brandy, and my boy. For in the afternoon I must attend To the amusements of my lady friend.
ASTRID MOST SACRED WONDER OF MY HEART.
Astrid! Most sacred wonder of mine heart My soul’s resource; my body’s counterpart, And instant inspiration of mine Art,
How shall I praise Thee? How declare the worth Of this great love? How measure all the mirth And joy that thou hast given me, flooding earth
With heaven’s rapture? Have I not become Most void of music; pitifully dumb Before thee, who art music’s perfect sum?
And now, when the last miracle is wrought, The world with this new flame of wonder fraught, I am subdued, incapable of thought,
Too happy to take measure of its store, My heart is overladen: I sing no more I stand and love in silence, and adore.
Astrid! I love, I worship, I await With reverent eyes, lips sealed, and pulse slate, Thy grace, the crown and chrism of my Fate.
O temple pure pearl! O sovran shrine! O consecrated feast of Bread and Wine! Astrid, bring forth the Godhead—mine-in-thine!
OATHS ON VARIOUS PEOPLE.
NINETTE. [Ninette Shumway]
Intellect, dull; Morality, Null. Mast, rudder, and sail Help weather life’s gale. She drifts. And I think She will very soon sink, To judge by the size of the leak in her hull.
LEAH LEERS. [Leah Hirsig]
I gave my concubine a dollop Of laudanum; but what the trollop Needs most of all is a big wallop
MY SCARLET WOMAN HAD A BABY. [Leah Hirsig]
My Scarlet Woman had a baby, She dressed it all in black; How do you think she got that baby? Lying on her back.
THE BELLADONNA IN YOUR EYES. [Leah Hirsig] June 15, 1924
The belladonna in your eyes The coco’ in your nose The rouge upon your lips—I rise Though not upon my toes.
The hashish in your abdomen, The morphine in your thighs, The ether on your breath—I ken Love’s last subtleties.
The fascination does not last, Still—nail your colours to the mast!
BIG LIONS OFTEN ACT DISTRESSING. [Leah Hirsig]
Big Lions often act distressing To monkeys when they’re convalescing, But when the Big Lions get quite well They eat those monkeys all to Hell.
CISSY ROE ‘DE SENECTUTE.
She finds: “Old men are vile & vicious.” (Or if not all, a vast majority.) Oh well, we need not be suspicious That she is not a sound authority. From hair to teeth, she earned her gold By prostitution to the old.
ROS-A-LIE. (THORN-A-FACT)
We offered you friendship and help Your foul mouth growled back spite unbated, Your currishness known by your yelp. You must learn what it means to be hated.
The world is no more and no less That the shape of our life as we live it; It returns us the curse or caress Or the smile or the stab that we give it.
As you would have none of our love, So we will have none of your hate. Your choice was to banish the dove; It leave’s you the scorpion’s fate.
Have we time, in our dreams of delight, As we dance by the moon to the zither, And sing and laugh softly all night To recall you so sordid and bitter?
Your rancour (that we cannot feel), Your envy (that tortures you only), Your fangless sharp snaps, the shrill squeal Of your agony loathly and lonely.
Sour milk that you drip; putrid pus That you ooze from your childless old dugs And your rotten old bowels—as for us The gods keep our bed free of bugs!
To drop from our life — you must lie In the dung you have made for your bed, And eat your own heart till you die As each minute you wish you were dead.
Could only the mirror reveal Yourself to yourself, that the terror And horror you wakened to feel The hideous doom of your error!
Could only one shaft of Apollo Strike down to the ice of your soul, And wake in that desolate hollow One glimpse of our glorious goal!
Could only you wake to the splendour Of sunlight wherein we abide, A torrent terrific and tender Of beauty and love in its pride!
O surely the star you have darkened, The love you have cursed and blasphemed, Would burst from the night as you hearkened, And knew that in truth you had dreamed.
Your love would find ours all aflame Untainted, undulled by your hate; You would find us superbly the same As you groped your dim way to the gate.
TO COUNT P.
The circle is God’s favourite ’tis true. Take the circle from thy name and where are you?
TO MUDD. [Norman Mudd]
He was in truth a simple dirty dud, His muddy blood was mixed with bloody mud.
TO A MATHEMETICIAN. [Norman Mudd]
Methinks to-day friend Mudd would be alive If he had known that two and two make five.
MacGregor was indeed a drunken sot, In point of fact God’s incarnated snot, Of this clear statement you will see the force, “Happy the man who gets back to his source”.
GABRIEL D. [Gabriel Dee]
She raised her eyes to where the cloud fleece drifted, ’Twere better if her bottom had been lifted.
I. R. [Israel Regardie]
“I’ll see you soon again”, he said, “D.V.” I saw him once again, it was V.D.
ON AN ENEMY. [Israel Regardie]
Lie light, Regardie, underneath the earth That dogs more speedily may drag thee forth.
F. B. [Frank Bennett]
Australia stirs, and sheep call unto sheep No doubt F.B. will make the angels weep.
K. G. [Karl Germer]
Barred from Britain in 1937. Strange, as you can never hope for Heaven.
Knowing me well, at least you did not act Like Judas did ere Christ was crucified; Loyal as Brother to a bestial Pact, By you at least the Beast was deified.
In dreamy Richmond hard by Potter’s field You strove to raise my standard from the dust; When suddenly the ramparts you did yield, And sold your birthright for a mouldy crust.
When close to me you lay and breathed the Name That I imparted in the Sacred Cell, You little thought to hang your head in shame, And join Black Douglas on the road to Hell.
A. J. [Augustus John]
The Tiger Woman and Dolores sad, F.D.M. and other silly bitches, The Admiral’s lady seeming sun-set clad, Helped thee from time to time to garner riches, And furnished pictures for some nifty nitches, But John, my Brother of the Sable Night, Beware; Salome yet may claim your head To see the worms below are better fed.
A. B. [Allan Bennett]
The ‘Dawn was Golden’ when you met the guide Between the massive pillars White and Black; You took the boat that floated with the tide, To leave behind no track.
I got you gold that you might go abroad, And take my message to another land; I hoped that you would raise my magic Sword Upon another strand.
Buddha, who died from eating too much pig, Netted your soul. With corybantic Swine You swilled your fill to prance a porcine jig Beneath an alien vine.
Yellow your heart—as yellow as the Gown You wore—the colour of the sneaking spy, Who from within betrays the tortured town, When victory is nigh.
Rosher was blind, but saw the Vision Splendid, Fielding was mad, and Loveday devil-led; But you found yourself, ere your drab journey ended Rejected by the dead.
MRS. D. (Psychomagia.)
A Roman Catholic slut in U.S.A. (a German spy—so all the papers say) Hoodwinked Viator [Max Schneider], a would-be Neophyte, A ‘black’ who tried to bleed the Order white; I have sent secret word via Frater Tränker [Heinrich Tränker] That they should trap the bitch and soundly spank her.
GANDHI.
I hear that Raymond (sissy) Duncan, in toga and sandals out of deep enthusiasm for Gandhi, tripped along Forty-Second Street, New York to the Battery, pail in hand, to ladle up salt water (so he thought, but it was the thin soup of sewage) which he boiled until only the salt ( and sewage) was left.
Listen, dopey Duncan, Salt may come in handy To sprinkle on the latter end Of Goosey Goosey Gandhi.
Gandhi’s pose as saviour Adds to Moslem strife; And for all his quiet behaviour, Salt won’t save his life.
THE MAZE HILL FAMILY ROBINSON.
The Church of England! Here’s a glimpse of her. The brother of the dean of Westminster Failed, when my tutor (and in my early teens) To silence me. At least he had the means Which is not much the case with actual Deans.
Before Priapus I am often dumb (As fascinated by the Fascinum) And think no shame to manhood that great Pan Hath often cowed my better part of man.
But when ‘Old Mother Damnable’ pretends That she and I might make our private ends Stronger united—No! I cannot swallow A holiness at once too huge and hollow, I the High Priest of Aries and Apollo.
(F. R(obinson) my tutor in 1891. His family lived at Maze Hill near Greenwich Observatory. He, like his brother Jack—who had ‘silenced’ him while at school—became a medical missionary and died at Lokoja, Nigeria. As if the native could not acquire the art of homosexual incest without the official instruction of the Church of England.
M. S. [Meredith Starr] (A STAR OF THE ‘MILKY’ WAY.)
You tried to rape your sister, then the cat, Your seed you spilled into a cup of tea; You worshipped Set, then crucified a bat, And cocked a snook at holy trinity.
Your lady mother called MacGregor R (Reid) (She’d heard about the Wisdom of the Druid) He plunged your tool into a pot of tar, And lo! a Star emerges from the fluid.
TO DOROTHY.
I send the daffodils Found dancing near a wood Beside a flower bed Where sleepy violets brood.
O dance as daffodils All radiant with delight And like the sleepy violets lie And brood with me—at night.
F. H. R(OBINSON).
Applaud with a dose of clap, She sulked beneath the Orient Star, Until as bait she filled the trap Set for Kashmir’s Maharaja.
MABEL COLLINS.
And did your spirit madly burn, For paramours that men forget— Dark ecstasies—and did you learn The secret of the House of Set?
Did you know Lebak and in Khern Did sacred snakes writhe in your bed— Strange paramours—and serve to slake Your passion ere you crushed them dead?
I see you throned a crescent queen In Tyrian purple swathed—your hand Upraised, as with stately mien You uttered some supreme command.
I see the mighty purpose in Your soul; I see your mighty will; You fain would rule the House of Sin, And like a God you fain would fill
Your soul with al the sensual bliss That hides in honeyed groves terrene, And feast on Set’s unholy kiss Voluptuous and epicene.
And like the Sphinx yourself you lay Upon the breasts of Seb and stole My secret craft its strength away And made a poison of his soul.
And then you lipped him, just as Pan Might lip a dryad on the lawn, And with your claws you then began To maul him like a tender faun.
But this was in another life. Forgive me Mabel if I say I should have liked you for a wife In that divine though distant day.
Forgive me if my art can see And paint your picture as you were; Ah, then you were the mate for me. Ah, then you were supremely fair.
Tiger-Woman burning bright With a fire that scorches light, Poison from the horned toad, Spiders from the haunted road, Helped to swell the witch’s brew That fed you as you foully grew.
PAWKY.
Get a piece of pork Stick it on a fork And use it as the natural bait To capture Gerald Yorke.
MISCELLANEOUS OATHS.
I AM ALASTOR THE PURE.
I am Alastor, the Pure Fool, the Goer, Bacchus, the Holy Ghost, the Flaming Wind That bloweth where it listeth—Mind And Word of God, Hermes the Speaker and Knower. Thou art Alostrael, the Great King’s Daughter, The spring shut up, the fountain sealed, the Child Of Peace and Innocence. the undefiled Virgin, the soul and body of the Water. As on the eave the wind, so I the Spirit On thee the womb must brood till one inherit Thy Life and Love, my Liberty and Light: The Word in thee made flesh, the God-Man sharing The doom of death for the reward of bearing Redemption to the dwellers of the Night
KAIROUAN
SHE REFUSES MY ARAB COFFEE.
He wanted to make coffee for the cat, She wouldn’t drink it. He went out and ——.
KAIROUAN
DECENCY VERSUS DOLLARS.
If I must elect, I have more respect For the lousiest Arab in Kairouan Than I have for any American.
THE CHINESE LIKE TO EAT.
The Chinese like to eat Good rice with plenty pork With chopsticks just as neat As we with knife and fork, And they have wisdom (lost to us) Because they do not make a fuss About the vitamins And calories, and what Foods are accounted sins And which, if any, are not They eat exactly as they please. I wish I had been born Chinese.
BLACK IS HIS ROBE FROM TOP TO TOE.
Black is his robe from top to toe, His flesh is white and warm below; All through his silent veins flows free Hunger and thirst and venery: But in his eyes a still small flame (Like the first cell from which he came) Burns round and luminous, as he rides Singing my song of deicides.
“WHY, NUFFINK”. “What’s the good of anyfink? Why nuffink?. (English proverbial philosophy)
My life is lost in Life: the part Forgotten in the whole, I am an adept in the art Of sinking self in Soul.
All God am I that was one man; Truth has wed evil and good; I have beheld the face of Pan, And known, and understood.
Now madness is the nameless name Of that most absolute And indecipherable flame About my Reason’s root.
The cause of sorrow is desire, With ignorance for dam And personality for sire:— I am not that I am.
Desire destroyed, and sorrow slept, Truth flared, and glamour passed, Existence ebbed within the adept— I touched to triumph at last.
But chain of curses, fate-fulfilled, Dissolved for ever; cause Cancelled, chance impotent to build New lies upon new laws.
Annihilation hath annulled All being; fally-faith Wreathe no more smoke-self to be gulled By mist-world, wraith to wraith
But hark! How fare the body and brain That mined that ogre-lair Of tyrant lies, and to the inane Blew the inane, despair?
Hoist with his own petard, see first My brain and body are tossed Bubbles no less than all they burst, Lies lost with lies they lost!
Truth is so trenchant in my thought That all the illusion “I” Is known instinctively for naught —And Life itself a lie.
Man lives not but by witchcraft of His self—devised deceits Of dreary Life and dusty Love, To cheat him as he cheats.
How should I live and love, who know The vanity and void Of all that seemed, sit out the show That truth hath quite destroyed?
How live a man whose mind is stilled By Truth, in Silence sealed, “Life was a nightmare, that my skilled Soul-surgery hath healed.”
How love, a man whose body feels Its fellowship with dust. “Death treads upon Love’s hurrying heels, Despite her scorn of lust.”
How should he think or speak or act Who constantly abides In contemplation of the fact Hallucination hides?
All things soever, whether they Of mass or mind be wrought, In time and space, or no, must weigh, Summed all together, naught.
Nothing can spring from nothing: this Must match its opposite And equal, somewhere in the abyss Whose Naught in Infinite.
How should he will to work, a man Who knows that he destroys Not, nor creates, whose pointless plan Makes its own counterpoise;
Who with solemnity and sweat Shuffles his shadow-ware? He cannot judge which marionette Best profits his affair.
No, like his dolls, to Power pretends With order orthodox. All effort effects naught, and ends —Flung back to the old box.
How shall I will to work, in whose Most subtle scales serene? “To gain” is weighed against “to lose”, And not one hair between!
How shall I will to work, whose wit Marks, measures each event’s Effect evoke its opposite From equal elements?
I am become a bodiless And boundless Being, void Of sensibility to stress; Distinction is destroyed.
Ah personality! Moon-crowned, A pearl, an exquisite Secretion of disease around An irksome grain of grit!
My pearl, my person—swift dissolved In Truth’s sharp wine, therewith Passion, perception were involved— The manifested myth!
How should I will to work? Not I Who am no more; not this My mind that manifesteth me The absolute abyss
Where all thoughts cancel out and lose All meaning; not this dull Corrupting carrion whose use Is evidently null.
And yet I will to work; for all That I once claimed I am as I Agree, accept the magical Decrees of destiny.
All things that are must be, must move As they are moved, fulfil Their own norm’s necessary groove Whose Way is also Will.
Naught can be other than it is, Its rancour, its distress, Its rapture, make the synthesis Whose sum is nothingness.
My nature is to work; I will To breed to human birth The tailless apes that cumber still The much-enduring earth!
My life is lost in Life? Why not? In Life my life I find, Content to be exactly what My destiny designed.
666
SIDI BOU ALI. (Recipe for a Hashish cocktail)
Sidi Bou Ali had a reddish-brown skin Which was RUM, So he got a pair of breeches of the whitest London GIN For his bum. And because he’d been to Mecca, so his turban had a tint Of GREEN MINT; And he said: Masallah, Allah make my mixture really nice! Pour through ICE! And he looked upon the heavens through his wizard’s spying-glass On the GRASS.
LA GRANDE MONARQUE.
I squat in silence, and make merry A corner of the Café Maure. I wear a crimson velvet beret, A blue and silver roquelaure; Old buckskin breeches make complete A toilet singularly neat!
Grave Arabs clad in all their native Solemnity and white gandarahs Encircle my calm contemplative Pose, vast and simple as Dahara’s. Desire itself brought under bridle, I smirk like some smug Heathen Idol.
Matchless, this melancholy musing. Foretaste of Death’s delicious ease, An Alexander chastely choosing Decorum of Diogenes! I squat in silence, stern and lean, Among the admiring Bedawin!
THE HAPPY KNIGHT.
Ego ferri regimen sil- icisque colo cakes and ale. With my intelligence pregensile Exactly like a monkey’s tail.
AMONG THE DUNES.
Unbounded vastness of sheer desolation! The limit of the kingdom of creation! The huge salt lake vanished in a bar Of thread—fine thunderclouds—that keen eyes prove Dim banks of sand and scrub, aloof, afar, Here is no sound, no tree, no habitation; Only the shadow of the sunlight move Inexorable from dawn to dusk, and scar The silence—lo! amid the devastation Awakening my amazed admiration, Behold, a tender tiny lilac star! Almost these parched and arid eyes of mine Give sudden birth to tears, whose bitter brine Shall not be sterile, but refresh my soul, And make this seed of poetry unfold This blossom with its ardour to extol Through Beauty Nature’s Magick manifold. So forth, pale rime, into the world, and bear Witness that courage dominates despair— Light, Life, Love, Beauty flourish everywhere!
HERE HAVE I SLEPT ALL NIGHT WITH SORROW.
Here have I slept all night with Sorrow And danced with Pleasure on the morrow; Here have I loved and laughed and lusted, Till joy jarred and delight disgusted; Here have I hugged to heart the hated Ape, the abortion animated That fed her foulness on me, clawed Her carrion till the withered bawd Venus Aversa, leering, crept Up to the dunghill where I slept With fetid sorceries to bewitch My brain, until the beastly bitch That writhed within my arms, unsated And glad to hold the man that hated And loathed her, felt my soul revert From its abhorrence, drawn to dirt By her excess, heard words drip Debauched from my apostate lip, To tell her that I knew my loathing Was stripped like a slut’s underclothing
From a slut’s soul, that now I kissed her In utter love, my spouse and sister.
DANS MA FOUGEUSE JEUNESSE.
Dans ma fougeuse jeunesse J’etais folle de mon corps. Fiere de mon allegresse Je souris a tous: Adore Mon eclatante jeunesse
Dans ma triste vieilesse Je suis folle de mon ame Honteuse de ma faiblesse “Pitoyez-moi, Notre Dame!” Dans ma trists vieillesse.
La veritable sagesse? Ce qui est, pour tel qu’il est, Doit suffire a vrai noblesse. Trouver ta simplicite La veritable noblesse!
ON THE RAILWAY. (Return to Chelles. June 12th)
The sunset turns each tawdry glass To a live jewel as I pass.
AVANT—APRÈS. (Etude de femininité)
Au Kirchenwald de Bern la lune ontrevoyait Le corps étroit d’Aida, ennerv é, frémissant: Mon corps le tenait coi, rude comme un géant Foudreyé. Les sapins, soldats, nous ombrageaient. Sa bouche de Pharaon, son profil de Niké, Son âme de Vénus, me trahissent an Néant, Et je réfléchis. (Grâce, Cupidon!) Avant, Le mot de toute femme est toujours un Jamais.
Ses yeux brûlent. Comme un poison, son haleine M’envahit. Fou j’étouffe. Le spasms de haine Me prend: le mâle fulgurant flaire la mort, La femme, l’assassin! Cauchemar, disparais! Il faut agir. (O grâce, Cupidon!) Aprés, Le mot de toute femme est toujours un Encor.
EXUL EXULTANS.
England; my England! True—but thence I’ll sail For land unknown, like Drake, set sail With my intelligence prehensile Exactly like a monkey’s tail.
(Thuringen, June 1925)
The little that I do not know Is not worth knowing, The little that I shall not know Is not worth showing, The few things that I have not done Were not worth doing. The few girls that I have not won Were not worth wooing, The little fun I may have missed Is hardly funny, The two-three mouths I have not kissed Weren’t worth the money, The money I thought I lacked Could I have spent it To profit? Did I ever act That I repent it? No there is nothing in the past Bloated or meagre: The future stands before me vast And finds me eager!
THE APACHE COON. (Voodoo)
When Camille’s live weight goes Dead suddenly above me, You’re wrong if you suppose I worry “Does he love me?”
Snibben, blind buzzard of the Vault below Ululates epithalamies of Woe In that uncharted archipelago Of extinct stars that float sans light, sans motion In that unfathomable Ocean Whence the bleak fiends despense their dismal potion Of ratsbane to inconsequential hosts Of bloodless, bat-eyed, grim, ungodly ghosts Dried over devil’s dung in Hell’s own oasts To brew the beer of Dullness, Even so Snibben, blind buzzard of the Vault below Ululates epithalamies of Woe In Boredom’s trackless archipelago.
LOVE SONG.
There in the dark harem you soil the hours A noxious bird within a noisome nest, Until the sun-set bloodens all the west, A sacrifice to dark nocturnal powers Oh dreary is the day and sweet the night When thou art far and free, my heart’s delight
When drones the south wind and the night-jar trills, And pissy perfumes through the portals creep, I dream without the aid of slinky sleep, Anticipating transcendental thrills. Oh dreary is the day and sweet the night When thou art one with me, my heart’s delight.
Wave-mountains rise only to sink Ere they silver the air with their spray; So great men are aye on the brink And fall when night purples their day.
I rallied against both God and man, Yet still no comfort found; Though I saw across life’s span, What use? My soul was bound.
ENGLAND.
And if I write for England, who will read? As if, when moons of Ramazan recede, Some fatuous angel porter should deposit His perfect wine within the privy closet. “What do they know who only England know?” Only what England paints its face to show, Love mummied and re-labelled ‘chaste affection’, And lust excused as ‘natural selection’.
Caligula upbraids the cruel cabby, And Nero birches choir-boys in the abbey; Semiramis sandpapered to a simper, And Clytemaestra whittled to a whimper, The austerities of Loyola to seek; But let us have a ‘self-denial week’. The raptures of Theresa are hysteric; But—let us giggle at some fulsome cleric. To call forced labour slavery is rude, “Terminological inexactitude”. This from the masters of the wind and waves, Whose cotton mills are crammed with British slaves.
Men pass their nights with German-Jewish whores, Their days in keeping ‘aliens’ from our shores. They turn their eyes up at a Gautier’s tale, And run a maisonette in Maida Vale. Your titles—Oh how proud you are to wear them— What about ‘homo quatuor Literarum’? The puissant all their time to vice devote; The impotent, contented, pay to gloat. The strumpet’s carwheels splash the starving maiden In Piccadilly, deadlier than Aden. “England expects a man to do his duty”. He calls truth lies, and sneers at youth and beauty, Pays cash for love, and fancies he has won it— Duty means church, where he thanks God he’s done it.
WHEN VENUS WILLED.
When Venus willed that she should walk my way My soul was shaken; her simplicity But fired my love for ever and a day, And never more will there be rest for me.
Ceaseless, the pain I foster silently Like a dumb devil slinking in her wake; She hath no knowledge of this mystery That I should suffer thus for her sweet sake.
It was to show how tortured I could be, That Venus willed that she should walk my way To never throw a single smile at me Who once upon a time did Love betray.
SWAMI, SWAMI, HOW I LOVE YOU! HOW I LOVE YOU.
Several hundred American Newspaper continue publishing advertisement of palmists, clairvoyants, and Swamis who guarantee to answer all questions concerning courtship, marriage and business.
A THOUGHT.
O sleep! For Darkness in the Lake of Night Hath plunged, to splash the sunbeams out of sight; A million flowers drop with petals dank To be digested in the guts of Night.
1919.
The raven croaks his raucous lay The vultures sit to watch and prey.
A man that steals what isn’t his’n Can be cured by hypnotism.
20 MAY 1924.
Here by those banks where once the fullest flood That hate could fill was met, and stemmed, and rolled Back in a mist of agony and blood, The lazy waters swirl, dull green and cold, Seeking eternally the eternal sea. Oh waters that no might of man may stay Bear on your easy breast my thoughts; set free My equal spirit to its ordered way! Oh waters heal this wide, this unavailing Wound, that no skill of medicine may redress. My soul, a steady ship, go idly sailing In fancy down your leafy loveliness. So I may turn anon with lance and sword To lead once more the legions of the Lord.
THE GREAT DESERT. (1924)
England! My England! Hast thou nothing else But shallow, stinking, putrid, dried-up Wells?
The lousiest Kike, the greatest Wop, They make an excellent ‘Fly Cop’ But for the higher ranks aerial I don’t know where they find material.
(MARCH 1924)
Take away the dove of Love And the pigeon of religion! Put a cenotaph above When you’ve got ’em hid John!
Never heed the crow of Woe, Nor the raven of the craven! Simply lift your chin plus haut As becomes a brave ’un.
Tell the draggled swan: Begone! Lock the turkey out with her key! Calmly meditate upon Life, nor wroth nor jerky!
Don’t be a wet hen to Men! Be the eagle life is regal! That injunction is worth ten Of command more regal.
Skyward soar, o hawk don’t squawk! Shoot keen-arrow eager sparrow! More you act and less you talk Swifter reach the marrow.
Waste not wealth of words on birds! Nor on droll tree squat like poultry! Pluck thy flowers and fruits preferred From the sun-lit soul-tree.
EPIGRAM AGAINST MRS. OSCAR W. COLEMAN. Who wrote to the Chicago Tribune to the effect of the lines below.
“Our dictatorship has failed—damn nuisance Dictatorship’s the only plan” Ah! why not try the Institutions And manners called—Republican.
Three years—it seems so short It seems but yesterday I took you A silver salmon newly caught Gaping your life out on the thwart— It was a master cast to hook you!
Three years—it seems so long It seems as if my life lay unfinished, Forgotten, when it broke in song The chorus that still stays as strong Not to be darkened or diminished.
1 May 1924
The Blackguard’s fist shook his blue steel and struck Stark through the golden belly of the Sage. The scarlet blood spouted in joyous rage And the cascade of glutinous grey muck Slow tumbled to the callous malachite Its russet-brown abominations oozed— And all the sorrow of the sage was loosed, As eyes and lips aped beard’s lack lustre white. Now God stepped forth, a purple crested hawk With plumes of jade and lapis lazuli Born on that boisterous breath, so glad to espy The glories of the sunset, and to stalk Free through the rainbow realms where dwells the soul When from its ageless limbs the fetters fall And in the ambience of the Essential All It reads the gilt imperishable scroll Of its right Record—Therefore the dull gleam In the fell Blackguard’s eyes became a glow, Twin suns eclipsed forth flaming oer the snow. His bloated lips part—their violet smile spare me Showing the sanctuary of teeth, ferocious Chryselephantine wardens of his tongue That lied and lusted with his whole soul’s young Violence—his soul insatiate and atrocious That seized and tore the issuing God—I saw The loveliness implacable of Nature Arisen to full supremecy of stature To this her climax of her own wise Law!
QUI NE DORT PAS, DINE. (“Qui dort, dine”. Old French Proverb)
Unless I get food fairly soon My soul will not support my sinew; I realised this afternoon I shant be able to continue Unless I get food fairly soon.
I have not had a decent dinner For months: I am not feeling strong, I get continually thinner; For long, for very much too long, I have not had a recent dinner.
I realise it does not matter To me how Brother Body fares, In those dead days when I was fatter I had another set of cares: I realise it does not matter.
But I have wrought my utmost Will; I have fulfilled myself in all That I determined to fulfil; The axe may be about to fall, But I have wrought my utmost Will.
In youth they urged me to be clever; I’ve been as clever as I could, And now I find that I am never (Or hardly ever) understood.
My fellow-men misunderstand me; The simple fact that I insist On love and worship makes them brand me As an immoral atheist.
My intellectual excesses Have harmed me as no vice could ever; I pay with manifold distresses The penalty of being clever!
DOUBLE SUICIDE.
Gehazi wrote one word upon the wall With his last finger’s crumbling chalk: “ROMANCE”. True Love hath one end only, to enhance The horror of the threshold of the wall Of hell with ivy-pronged woe when cynical Old Death drags one brute bellowing from the dance, Life flogs its mate back bleating to the ball. Who understands this pastime, who foreknows, The anticlimaxes of Anteros May make the serpent harmless as the dove is By subtly synchronising suicidal Ideas with those that culminate in bridal. —If only we were certain what True Love is!
THE EXTENDED PRINCIPLE OF RELATIVITY.
The Ass said to the Tom-Cat: “Why do boys In love make such a melancholy noise?”
THE ASPIRANT.
I dare to overstrain the tensile Strength of my mind—and yet I fail With my intelligence prehensile Exactly like a monkey's tail.
ENGLAND.
In England's spiritually dense isle I find love very like a whale* With my intelligence prehensile Exactly like a monkey's tail.
* "Neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring."
(Nov 1925)
Man is a gambler. Though we know Our ruin absolutely sure, We wait to see what each next throw Will do for us. And we endure.
One thing is certain here below: The more you know, the less you know.
THE SPENDTHRIFT.
To learn the truth there's no expense I'll Begrudge—yet all is no avail With my intelligence prehensile Exactly like a monkey's tail.
I.O.U.TOPIA
Erbczhtk,* The Fa'atcha'an of Dtktz-hph-a'at (The Socrates of Regulus) Has never even heard of us. Perhaps he's none the worse for that.
Nay, I myself am hardly sure That Rrbczhtl is as remarkable For wisdom as the Baztl-hrm-zcll Insists—I should not feel secure
(So full am I of base suspicion) That even Regulus is safe From just those very bugs that chafe My soul's terrestrial condition.
So long as I depend for ease On accidents of Nature's courses, So long am I exposed to force's Fatal, malignant Destinies.
The only plan is to accept Law as it is, and make no fuss. —I only hope that Regulus Has got in Rrbczhtl a real Adept! I trust that I have done as well For men as my good colleague Rrbczhtl!
* Pronounce Wrrg-pfszh-thil (one syllable).
'FREE ASSOCIATION
Oats!—Do you think of breakfast food With cream thick spilt on? I, of Theocritus the lewd And lyric Milton!
NUMBERED OATHS
WITHOUT TITLES
XXII.
From deepest heaven art thou, or from the abyss O beauty? Thine infernal gaze divine Pours in confusion crime and benefice, Is not thy soul thereby the soul of wine?
The sunset and the dawn lurk in thine eye Thou sheddest perfumes like even stormy-wild Thy kiss a philtre and thy mouth a vase To tune the hero and make brave the child.
From the black gulph art thou or from the stars? The charméd Fiend follows dog-like at thy heels, Thou sowest joy and mischief All-ruling, irresponsible.
Thou treadest on the dead & mockest them, Beauty! Horror thine enchanting jewel And Murder, dear to thee for many a gem, Leaps loving on thy belly proudly cruel!
The d -fly, dazzled, flies to thee, the flame! Scorches & burns—and cries: “Most blessed womb!” The ick-breathed lover bent above his Seems like a dying man who woos his tomb.
Beauty, enormous, frightful, innocent! From heaven art thou or hell, what matters it? So that thine eye, thy smile, thy foot present Me to my loved, mine unknown Infinite.
Of Satan or of God, who cares? Unclean Siren or Angel, fairy velvet-eyed, Light, rhythm, perfume, my soul's one queen, The World less hideous— ine less deicide.
XXXII.
Thou who stabbest, dagger-keen, To this plaintive heart thy revels Mad and garlanded, obscene In thy might, a troop of devils.
Of the trampled soul of me Make thy bed and thy domain Monster, I am bound to thee Like a convict to his chain.
Like the dicer to his dice, Like the drunkard—at the term! Like the carrion to the worm —Curse you, curse you, cockatrice!
Help, O falchion, swift & hideous! Cut my way to liberty! Help, O poison-cup perfidious End this coward infamy!
Ah! the subtle & the swift, Mocked me, jeering loud & rude, Thou! unworthy to uplift Thine accursed servitude.
Fool! if from its filthy empire Thee our powers should save alive How thy kisses would revive The cadaver of thy vampire!
LXIX.
Beneath black yews they keep their state The owls in decorous array Like stranger Gods invisive They With swift red eye. They meditate.
Moveless their pose they will maintain Until the melancholy hour When, the slant sun beneath their bower The shadows shall assume their reign.
Their attitude instructs the Sage: In this world only fools engage In tumult and its frantic pace.
He whom its shades make drunk is spent— Bears evermore the chastisement Of having wished to change his place.
LXXIX.
I am like the king of a land of rain and cold, Rich and yet impotent, being young & yet very old, Despising the restraint of all his wisest priests I weary of my dog as of all other beasts. Nothing distracts him, neither falconry Nor his folks dying beneath his balcony His favourite buffoon's most grotesque follies now Avail this cruel sick man to smooth his wrinkled brows, His royally-broidered bed is changed to a vault, And the Court Ladies who find princes without fault Are at a loss to find dresses to beguile This young death's head at their immodest smile. The alchemist who makes him gold has failed to find A means to extirpate corruption from his mind And in those baths of blood which Rome bequeathed to us (Whereof the mighty think when age grows rancorous) He has not wit that stupent corpse to rouse Where for swift blood Lethe's green waters drowse.
LXXXII.
Sad spirit, that wast eager once to leap Into the fight, no more will Hope, thy spur, Rowel then flanks! All unashamed Old horse that stumblest at each stone.
Resign, my heart! sleep out thy brutish sleep.
Beaten & foundered spirit! Love is spent For thee, old rascal, weary of dispute, Farewell loud brass and swift-suspiring flute, Joy, tempt no more a dark bent malcontent.
The Spring, the adorable, has lost her scent!
And Time engulphs me, as the minutes gall, As the vast snow a body stiffening, I look on the round globe beneath No more to look for shelter there at all.
Avalanche, bear me with thee in thy fall!
XCI.
Every man worth calling so Has a tawny snake installed In his heart—and when, enthralled, He says “I will”: answers “NO”.
Fix thine eyes upon the gaze Of the Sirens or the Fays; Sats the Tooth: “Thy Duty’s warning”.
Children, statues verses, trees; Wouldst fulfil thyself in these? Says the Tooth: “Wilt see the morning?.”
All he seeks to sketch or grasp —Man is bound at every moment To support the savage comment Of the intolerable Asp
XCIII.
Behind the library, a sombre Babel My cradel stood; there all the Long Ago, Greek dust, and Latin ash, tale, science, fable Mingled. I hardly topped a folio. Two voices called me: one insidious And form: “The world's a sweetmeat infinite. I can—your pleasure would be endless thus— Give you an equally great appetite.” The other: “Come, o come to Fairyland, Beyond the Possible, beyond the Known!” Its song was the Wind's whisper to the sand, A wandering Phantom (ah, who knows whence blown?) I answered: “Ay sweet voice.” And thence I date The hour when in my heart, alas! the Spear Made its inveterate wound, the doom of Fate Behind the shadow-shows of all the vast Illusion of existence, in the night Of the Abyss most black, where drown aghast Strange worlds distinct and vivid to my sight, Victim of this lucidity ecstatic Snakes gnaw my sandals, as is of death caress My heels; and from that moment attic I love the ocran and the wilderness As did the prophets with a tender aching And now are sad solemnities divine I laugh, and weep at feasts of merrymaking And find the sweetest in the sourest wine, Often the fact to me base falsehood seems, Star-gazing, oft I tumble into pools Then the consoling voice: “Guard well thy dreams The sages know less beauty than the fools.”
XCVII.
Sweetheart, your lovely eyes are tired, Rest them awhile before you rise From that pose idleness-inspired When pleasure took you by surprise, The jet that in the courtyard springs And sings unstilled though day and night, Bears softly on ecstatic wings Love's trance that bathes me in delight.
In myriad flowers The sheaf diffuse With Phoebe showers With all her hues Falls in soft showers Of sperid dews
So too your soul that pleasure's string —Wild lightning—kindles—sanctifies: Rapid and bold, darts forth to spring Towards the vast enchanted skies Then, dying, melts in languor, blends With silence in sad waves of art That by an unseen slope descends To the abysses of my heart O thou whose beauty night enhances, How sweet to lean towards thy breasts And listen to the plaintive fancies Of sobbing fountains—ere it rests. O sacred night, o streams sonorous, O trees that quiver, o Moon above! Your pure and melancholy chorus Is the mirror of my love.
XCIX.
In this sacred house The enchantress of a thousand spells, Calm, ready for all oracles.
One hand fans her breasts to sleep, Her elbow in the cushions deep, She listens to the fountain weep.
Here live Dorothy—who else? Wind and water faintly mourn her. Their songs of tears its sorrow swells This spilt child's humour soothes and quells.
Up and down what cares suborn? Her Delicate skin, rubbed sweetly, smells Of benzoin, and scented, oils to adorn her— Flowers are swooning in a corner.
C.
How goodly to the Sun's first floral beam An outburst flinging us his morning greeting, Happy is he who can, at his retreating, Salute his fall, more glorious than a dream.
Remember! I have seen beneath his sway All—flower, fount, furrow—faintly palpitate Run towards th' horizon, run. Run fast! 'Tis late! That we may catch at least on slanted ray.
But I pursue the flying God in vain, Night irresistible assumes her reign, Dark, ominous, damp, pregnant of shuddering.
The scents of charnels in the shadows swim, My fearful foot brushes, at marish brim, Toads unforeseen—cold snails—lewd slimy things.
CII.
Pascal divined his Gulph, that moved with him. Alas! All's the Abyss! all, all! Desire, dream, action, word. And oh my hair, horrent that stands, is stirred The wind of Fear, on many the time I feel it pass!
All ways, above, below, unplumbed, inert, unheard Silence and night, affright and fascination of space, See God upon sleep's blank with his wise finger trace A nightmare multiform, with truceless fury spurred.
I fear to sleep as one who dreads a vast and darksome lair Full of vague horror, cave that leads no man knoweth where, All windows open on the formless Infinite.
My spirit, giddy from the hauntings of distress Aches for the apathy of nameless Nothingness. Oh! never Number see of Being know the Light!
CIII.
Men who love harlots are at rest Happy and satisfied. Accurst Am I whose brawny arms are burst With crushing clouds upon my breast.
I owe it to those matchless Ones That blaze in the profoundest skies That in my burnt and blasted eyes Remain but memories of Suns.
Vainly I sought to mete the zone Of Space its limit and its norm. I know not what dread eye of storm Impending, snaps my pinion-bone.
By love of Beauty (torturer!) Shrivelled, the honour I shall miss To give my name to the Abyss Where I shall find my sepulchre.
CXLIX.
Beneath a livid light Life runs. Dances and writhes—insensate spite!— Harsh, shameless, while the horizon's Verge quickens with voluptuous Night.
Voluptuous Night, that climbs the heaven Appeasing hunger's self aghast Effacing even shame—shame, even!
Spirit and spine imperative Insistent clamour for repose Funereal dreams in my heart thrive
Let me, supine, lie curled close Within your curtains comatose!— O shadows soul-restorative!
FURTHER
MISCELLANEOUS OATHS
A sense of exquisite relief Accompanies the act of squatting In Asana, a pipe of Kif Between my lips, serenely blotting
From consciousness the imbecile Impressions that assail its candour: And I am brave as Boabdil, And great as two-horned Alexander.
Avaunt! “bad dreams”, wealth, fame, success— Deceitful moons that children cry for And jackals bay at!—I possess All that I need to live and die for
Within the nut-shell of my skull An empire boundless and eternal, Beyond Hell's malice to annul The sweet imperishable kernel.
Nov 24/24. e.v.
THE BLACK EGG. (Buy a Black Egg without haggling—Instruction of Grimoire)
“My river's Thames!” “Mine's Severn!” “Mine's Tyne!” The quarrel does not excite Eisenstein. If you take seeds of thought, and plant 'em The world of sense becomes a phantom. Our time, our space, our scale of values We use no more, nor ever shall use; So why be anxious what the price is To be Initiate of Isis?
MOTHER EARTH.
There is no star or Planet whence I'll Grip firmer on Truth's branches frail With my intelligence prehensile Exactly like a monkey's tail.
PHTAH.
I know that Earth is false, and Hell And Heaven to man are deaf and dumb too. I know what last dim oracle Every Panurge is bound to come to. I find more mental bread and cheese In bounty of one brandy bottle Than all the books of Averrhoes Once built about his Aristotle.
The babble of my slut, I swear Gives joy and certitude intenser Than all the wit of a Voltaire And all the science of a Spencer. My poppy-pipe—it shows surpass! More and more beautiful and brainier Than all the forms of Pheidias And all the daubs of de la Peňa.
My music and my verse are mine. I know myself and what my task is! Be off, ye syncopated swine, Wagner, Vitruvius, Velasquez, Swift, Shakespeare, Shelley, Socrates, Sterne, Blake, Petronius, Canova! I'll make my universe to please Myself, like jolly old Jehovah.
ELIJAH.
O sicut gladiator ensi l— —eap I upon the priests of Baal With my intelligence prehensile Exactly like a monkey's tail.
THE NAVIGATOR.
Indifference to consequence I'll Keep seeking stranger seas to sail With my intelligence prehensile Exactly like a monkey's tail.
I challenged the Creator to a set Of Racquets, in the Court of Space, with Time For marker. Throngs of Gods, to gossip met, Watched idly—shall I call it sport or crime?
Our racquets were our Wills creative, strung With gut of Life, trophies of Torture-Fact; The balls were World-Ieas, in folly flung, With galaxies of stars for stuffing packed.
Fierce the strokes smashed, wild wantonness, the cost Not counted; the huge passion of play compels Our lust; we heeded not who won or lost, Climbed heavens, or went whirling down what Hells!
The Old Hand beat me—mean I claim foul play? Time scarcely favours me. Nay, take the shame As a man should! My arm's too weak to sway A Racquet, breath's too short. I lost the game.
Space is too wide for me to reach its bound; The balls' weights vary so, their motions cheat me; —But, in so great a game the loser's crowned. None but the Father who begat me, beat me!
From him I learn to measure bound of ball, Distance and Time to judge, and strength to gather And use—ho marker! cry the score: Love—All! I'll play another set or so with Father!
NON-EUCLIDIAN ABCDEFOMETRY.
The mysteries of Mathematics Have analogues in acrobatics. You postulate the most absurd Inanity as your First Word, And argue it just as long As it amuses you to do so: Forge but each link in sequence true, so You cannot possibly go wrong. No one can prove your system worse Or better than another man's, Both are alike symbolic plans Of an uncharted Universe. Yet this arrangement all-elastic Hinges on one assumption drastic; Absurder far than you began on; That human reason is Truth's Canon.
(On being promised £70 I began to create, although sick, after month of spiritual stoppage. Marseilles Oct 1925)
Mercenary Is my faery Fancy's play! No sooner does Old Mammon buzz: “Cash to-day!” Than my costive Spirit, frosty v- -acuum, Leaps with laughter, Lyrics after Lyrics come! With those seven Tenners, Heaven Caulks the leak In my bottom: When I've got 'em God shall speak Truth in Rapture Life recapture, Love revive, Earth shall listen, Glow and glisten, Throb and thrive. Come along, o Merry throng, o Fifties flowing! Fill my belly, Bound reveillé, Get me going! Put your cash up, Se me lash up Pagasus! Have you seen all Art is venal? Atcha! Bas!
EVOE. “To worship me take strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, and he be drunk thereof.” AL II 22.
I'll drink inspiration, when Sil- -enus himself turns cold and pale. With my intelligence prehensile Exactly like a monkey's tail.
INSIDE INFIRMATION.
I am assured that every man is God Because the simplest-minded, dullest youth Witless and ignorant, a stock, a clod, Has perfect understanding of pure Truth.
Innate, exact, identical with mine, Though all inane vain Philosophy has sweated That simplest concept even to define. Humanity is certainly indebted
To intellect for drivers useful arts; But when it comes to any serious odds, Our brains play second fiddle to our hearts— Damned lucky that he happen to be Gods!
VILLIEGATURE.
This duck looks like the woman whom I wed that night I cut her throat— I smell the goat— I smell the stoat— And all the spring breaks out abloom. The beauty of the simplest life be stated:— None other is one-tenth as complicated!
UNDE CUCHULLUS. “Vaird Iduge Ttha—tha'T—Songs of the Seraph Al—ber—Tche V—Ali—e.r”
“D'ou as-tu, eu ce chapeau-lá D'ou as-tu cette tuille? Vrai, n'est il pas du plus haut Ton, et du dernier style? Je voudrais bien en avoir un Pareil a ca, mon gros Partout je vais on hurle—Ah mais! D'ou as-tu ce chapeau?”
Did thine antique and cloistered sanctuary (Thou blessed Bennet!) with dim hollow sound Echoe the whisper hushed, the thought profound Of Lincoln's venerable minster, sigh
Secret assent to that conspiracy Whereby yon superstructure scorns the ground, That tower of ebony whose fame hath crowned Sombre, that cupola of Ivory?
If not from these (oh wonder!) Tell me where— I charge thee in the name of Christ, that bare For man on Calvary Cross sins' dread black burden—
Where didst thou get that tremendous shape Of civic splendour—whereupon men gape With marvelling mouths—to be thy forehead's guerdon?
METAPHYSICS. (Marseilles, Spring 1925)
I What is is not what is not: is what is “Is not what is not?” is not what is not “What is—what is not?” What is ‘is’? What 'tis What is not what is not what ‘is’ is: what?
II He that is is that I am that I am. He that I am is that I am: is that That that I am that that that he is? damn! He is that that that that I am—you cat!
P.S. That he that is that I think is that he Is that that that that that that is to be!
A NIGHT WITH THE POETS.
Drink to me only with thine eyes, To others through thy nose, And I will pledge my largest size Pearl earrings—only I advise Abandoning the pose.
Lead kindly light, amid the gloom, (Oh hell!) lead thou me on! This dirty drunken sitting-room Goes round and round, its sense of hum- -our absolutely gone.
Oh say, have you seen the dawn's First light the S.S.B.? A nightmare due to curried prawns So haggard and so woe begone's Not half so sans merci.
One word too often is profaned For me to profane it: Vambronne himself has not refrained And yet my mother would be pained If I should flourish it.
To be or not to be? That is The point. God save the King! God save our noble King! Gee-whiz! Allons, marchons! My country 'tis Of the (I think) I sing!
Beauty is truth, truth Beauty; that Is all ye need to know: Yet still “Where did you get that hat?” We ask, and “Twinkle, little bat” Keeps flitting to and fro.
How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour? By bawling loudly “as for me, Please give me death or liberty, And six of the whiskey sour.”
Do unto others as you would That they should do unto You, V; and W. Be good, Sweet maid, and make it understood What fair and wise ones do.
We are na' fou', we're no that fou'; But we hae just a drappie —I've sung enough tonight—I'm through. Guid-nicht, sirs! Here's to hoping you Have not been too unhappy!
A GOOD TIME COMING.
The bishop is boiling the baby with hashish and beer in a pot. The process is good for it, maybe; or else, as you hint, it is not. He ate his old woman this morning; the child is for supper to-night. It certainly had a fair warning to beat it, so that is all right!
When artichokes grow on the noses of Dukes, we may cherish the hope To fish for okapis with roses, and butter archangels with soap. But whether the world will be better when all these conditions occur, I've got a black hen that a setter—perhaps you had better ask her!
(Paris. May-June 1925)
On the Tour St. Jacques, built by Nicholas Flamel and his wife Permelle from the gold made by them alchemically.
L'espace enfante vide en son néêant aride Rejette sur la terre un monstreux bolide. Aussi, la Tour St. Jacques enseigne aux insipides Que le grand feveur rêve un rêve bien solide!
(Tunis, Oct. 1925)
I doubt if cuttlefish go well After all night with Calomel. Oh for a mother and a tallow plaster (Was it? that used to save me from disaster! Oh collywobbles of “the little master!”
VOX VIDUAE. “wo 'ntuku mombi Lbé—Li” (Savage folk-song.)
Thou that wast dipped in sacramental foam And lifted by strong sacramental power Of that grave priest—invoking in that hour The Father, Son, and Spirit—whose voice clomb Through the dim chancel to the august dome And hailed thee by the self same name whose dower Was Shakespeare's—defies Saturn to devour!— Wilt thou not hear the cry that calls thee Home? O thou, strong scion of the deathless clan Names from the sign of spring—“Bélier”—must thou roam Far from ancestral battlements, still stray A wanderer on some strange and alien way? Wilt thou not hear the cry that calls thee home?
THE SECRET OF STATE.
Awe hushed the council chamber; men all men gazed Upon the grim Governor of the South Who moved his firm but melancholy mouth And whispered weighty some portentous phrase
Dark-glowering to the Governor of the North Who needed his inscrutable assent. What solemn ultimatum had gone forth? Was peace or war the inevitable event?
Time has revealed the Secret of the Sphinx. Too true! It is a long time between drinks.
OEDIPUS.*
O Son of Man! Thy darkly glooming eyes Glow with the dreaded Enigma of the Sphinx. The savage silence of the Soul that links Fatherless, fathomless eternities.
Propounding: Is there Aught so weirdly wise, So deeply from the Well of Truth that drinks, As to declare what secret wonder winks Behind the inviolate veil of certainties?
O Son of Man! Behold the sorrow-worn Eyes of that womb whereof thy flesh was born! IN their Abyss doth aught of knowledge gloam.
Whether her son—the Son of Man—bereft Of his inheritence—indeed hath left Her holy habitation—his heart's home?
* “Dazhurm oth—Erno Urou'T” Sayings of the Angel Lit-el-Vul Garb-Oi
EXCELSIOR.
Even Jesus saw that it You catch Belial a biff On the point of his lewd jaw; If, when all the powers of Law; You evict him, seven other Devils, each worse than his brother, Enter in the house you garnished Papered, painted, whitewashed, varnished.
There grins Mammon, frying gammon; Satan grilling steaks of salmon; In a tub, Beezlebub Mashing Murphies with a club. Lucifer is swilling huge Goblets of the best vin rouge Sleek Astarte, eating hearty, *Life and soul of the whole party!)
While Lewd Lilith slyly swilleth As their tankards she refilleth; And Magot—with a sore throat In a fur-lines overcoat— Carved the faux-filet of goat. Was it for such shameless scenes That I handed Belial beans? If he should come back, I shall Treat him as a trusted pal.
2. When the pious made a fuss Over beer, they saddled us With raw spirit and bay rum, Ether, hashish, opium, Heroin, morphine, cocaine, —Rather trying to the brain.
3. So when King and Pope we slew In there rushed a raving crew, Lawyer, politician, Jew: Labour soup and Irish stew. Charles and Louis overcome, Mob rule and officialdom Smothered earth until their schism Showed the way to Socialism. When a despot gets too bad, Plays the coward and the cad, Lets the ladies hold the ribbons, We can take a tip from Gibbon's Book of Jokes, and shove a boot Up against his snotty snoot.
As things are—I wish these masses Of hyaenas, sheep, and asses Had a single neck to nick —Nothing less will do the trick! For the love of Mike, resist Meddling like a meliorist! Old-established ills, abated (Being mostly compensated) Almost second nature, are Less intolerable far Than the unknown hordes that come Crowding to the vacuum When well-meaning madmen shriek: “The Millenium next week!” “We must end disease and crime And poverty by dinner time!”
4. When Australia tried to think There was brewed a sudden stink. To cure nature of bad habits They provoked a plague of rabbits, Statesmen cut each others' throats: Remedy—give women votes! “Standing armies, standing shame.” Instantly conscription came. Priestcraft—set it at defiance— Mormonism, Christian Science! So the social evil shocks— —We democatized the Pox!
5. Aristocracy appals? Battered the ancestral walls, Barons now pay social calls Wearing three—not four—gold balls. Down with birth!—the parasite Claims official place of right. Down with brains! and craft and low cunning Are free at last to make the running, Down with love! the world is grown an Altar to Almight Onan— Down with God! But in His ark's Or Mrs. Grundy or Karl Marx. Shakespeare's redolent of sin— Victoria Cross and Mrs. Glyn!
6. I was wise once—in my youth I had a strangle-hold on Truth. A monopoly of Light How to run the planet right. Now my wits are whiskered white, I suspect I am not quite Well enough equipped to master Manu, Moses, Zoroaster, Gautama, Mohammed, Cato, Apollonius, Lao-tzu, Plato Jesus Christ, Confucius, Zeno, Aristotle and Dan Leno, All in one—and hope to pass As not being a prig and ass Altogether, only thus That I hate to make a fuss. Let the world jog on unchecked By my notions of correct Conduct—yet I'd take the job Of mismanaging the mob. I would make this single rule: Any blasted silly fool Who supposes his advice Better than a throw of dice Should be sent to tell us what Happens after one is shot.
7. Upon earth the ugliest ogress And the stupidest—is Progress.
(An XVI)
“They toil not, neither do they spin.” (I quote an unknown Master) If that's where our observs begin, The end should be disaster!
Stop! Let me warn rash youth, that Thought, Allied to observation. Is far from certain to support Preconceived ideation.
“Consider the Lilies!” ‘Twere indeed Shame were our souls' researches To fail our faltering steps to lead To Sunday-schools and churches.
No weekly envelope they draw, No time clock punch O' mornings; No forelady they hold in awe; They heed no ‘walker’s’ warnings.
They have no families to keep, No taxes, rent, insurance. No rude alarm clocks murder sleep, And drag them to their durance.
They snatch no hasty meal; they miss The sport of subway crushes; The possibilities of bliss On rainy days in buses!
They do not slave till even the hours Of rest hold no enjoyment; They do not educate their powers By monotime employment.
They tax not heart, not poison lung, Know not what dangerous trade‘ is; They feel no shame when thrown among A group of‘ ‘puffick’ ladies.
They force not muscle to repeat A single simple action Year in, year out; they cannot meet With true soul-satisfaction.
They cannot balance books from youth To age without a murmur; Sure ‘tis, the grip on Cosmic Truth Of cashiers must be firmer.
With reach-me-downs they cover not A weary wasted body; No ‘dicky’ dognifies their lot, No overcoat of shoddy.
Yet Solomon (The Master's But) Was not, in all his glory, Clothed like to one of these! Tut-tut That's quite another story.
“God clothes them!” We must never let Press, government, or pulpit Hear this—there's Satan working yet To overcrowd his full Pit.
The Master's dead, or gone before, Unless accounts belie him: But all respectable folk roar Still louder: “Crucify him!”
Dragons of old, or giants, toiled Youth-tribute— 'twas a trifle, Today the population's polled For factory or rifle.
“Consider the Lilies!” Don't you dare, You Bolshevist, Hun, slacker! As yet we've hardly taxed the air, So prospects might be blacker.
High cost of living worries you, And does not fret the lily? Christian, unanimous with Jew, Yells: “On the job! You're silly!”
Would I were you—! I'd make a shift To pass existence floating. Yea, would resign God's choicest gift, The privilege of voting.
II “Consider the lilies!” What, again Did not the Master's error Of taste convince the inquiring brain, Inspire the proper terror?
No? Must I state a fact so bold Disclose a crime so nameless? Lilies—the mind reels back, appalled— Are absolutely shameless.
(Dissect degeneracy's ray Hell-lit, by science' prism. We label flowers' offence to-day As “Exhibitionism.”
Of all insanities and crimes That history tells, at any rate, Of all perversions in all times, Theirs is the most degenerate.)
They flaunt those organs that should rest Still nameless, if I knew them. And worse, since worse can be attest And call attention to them.
By naughty shape, and gaudy hue, By lewd perfume, the trusting Innocent soul., like me or you, They lure—
Love is a foul and shameless vice Of Nature, grown malicious By Adam's fall, a cockatrice Of Hell, inane and vicious.
But since survives the ignoble fact Even in our age progressive, Utmost decorum, word and act, We cannot deem aggressive.
All this is lost on lilies. Flame Corolla, pistil, stamen— Things so obscene we veil the shame In decent Latin. Amen!
Calyx and anther—there's a word Means what? Well, soul's abrasion! I'll note it, lest some need occurred On some discreet occasion.
Worse—though unthinkable should seem Worse—is the fact to follow, Grinning in infamy supreme In Hell's obscurest hollow.
Perpend then! Flowers (I hide my face) Not only are not married, But live promiscuous; place to place Their lust by wind is carried.
Even the bee (the bee that stings And so's a kind of adder, Snakes being Satan's) Plies its wings A pimp's! Could aught be sadder?
Verily, yea! Some flora forget The proper and the decent So far—one bloom has fish and net For her to hold what he sent!
Loathsome, most hideous, the sin To fertilise alone, an Abomination, close akin To the offense of Onan!
Science lauds Nature for her wit In scheming reproduction! I'll tell you what I think of it —Soul's damage and destruction!
I doubt not that the maid that looks On the geranium's scarlet Is marked for prey in Satan's books; And she who plucks, a harlot.
For the debauched girl that would wear A posy, verbal stricture Fail—there's a super-vampire there As shewn in moving Pictures.
“Consider the lilies” On your knees, Mothers, and whine for pardon! Speak, shall your daughters browse on these Kraft-Ebbings of the garden?
Their influence can only breed Those thoughts that shame and irk us, That always, in the run, lead To Piccadilly Circus!
III
“Consider the lilies!” Thrice I come To expose the hate obsidian That cunning Satan hides, the plumb That sounds his dark meridian.
The art of printing (art sublime The witness of whose skill is To level thought—rogues love to climb!) Has never reached the lilies.
Their minds lack ‘uplift’, they ignore Thefts, murders and divorces; They follow not the Soccer score, Nor note the form of horses.
They cannot read advertisement Of cure-alls, soaps and motors, Nor how the money market went, Nor eloquence to voters.
The ‘leaders’ do not stir a frond; Their petals are not flustered By letters from the Great Beyond, And girls lives, with the mustard.
How movie stars find marriage sweet, And mother-love, enthralling And Chinese dogs divine—complete Their ignorance—its appalling.
Was Mrs. Get there's dinner graced By bishops? At the party At Prine's was a Duke disgraced? Who cheated at ecarté?
The coming out of Lady Jane, The coming home of royalty, None of it thrills them. They disdain Not snobbery, no! but loyalty.
How serious is their state is shewn By journalist's exchequers; Who buy no newspapers are known By all for social wreckers.
“Jews can afford it?” There's the sting, The lily's poison lurking. Who reads not seems an awkward thing For those who have been working.
How, if one read not, shall he learn The wickedness of labour? How know the moment when to turn In wrath upon which neighbour?
We would not thus abuse the light: But—as to education, Our lilies in the self-same plight Stand, menace to the nation!
“Consider the lilies?” The judge mounts The wall of witness built; he Directs the twelve: On all three counts, Bring in the wretches Guilty!
“Lop the lewd heads that mock our toil, That outrage our propriety, Contaminate our souls, and soil Our notions of society!”
THE MORALIST.
Delaying to do the thing that's right Is as bad as having a funk on; Then why should we wait till Saturday night? To get all kinds of a drunk on? With brandy a century old in sight, Why should we wait till Saturday night?
If I haven't a house on the Grand Parade, I'll build me a hut of wattle. The corkscrew seems to have got mislaid? Then smash the mouth of the bottle! Courage and will and a whack will aid, Though the corkscrew seems to have got mislaid.
Anatomists say that a single wing Isn't much for a bird to fly on. There's not much ginger about the spring Of the fiercest one-legged lion. Another bottle's the obvious thing To get the ginger into our spring.
Beloved brethren, listen to me! If there's one truth of divinity Clear, it's the virtue there is in Three, And I myself was at Trinity. The least we can do is to seek and see The virtue hid in the Number Three.
If much be good, the better is more, As any logician will prove to you; It's only a step from Three to Four; May the argument's lever move you! Its simply illogical not to explore The little bit on from Three to Four.
On bread alone though a man can't thrive, Saint Luke says nothing of brandy; It may be the thing to keep us alive, And I see there's a bottle handy. Open in Bill! That's only Five. It may be the thing to keep us alive.
The road to excess, said William Blake, To the Palace of Wisdom leads one; Open a bottle for Wisdom's wake! And I am the boy that needs one. It's a long long way, but it's good to take —Open a bottle for Mishter Blake!
At the door of Burgess' Fish Sauce Shop She stood, oh, how does it go, boys? Well, ‘truly rural’ will do for the cop, If you say it quiet and slow, boys. Why the devil should anyone stop, When ‘truly rural’ will do for the cop?
I'd know 'f 't struck you, i' shtruck me Th' was something wrong with the pheasant. Say, how would a little drink, maybe— —You' know, 'void an'thing 'npleasant? Say doctor, d'you prescribe it, shee? W'd'y think, lil drink, maybe? 'Fence o' th' Realm Act, I'm no fool. All tha', th's ri', damnation! 'Member, 'n I wazza boy a' school, A—overa top'sh my rule:— 'Member, n' I wazza boy a' school . . . . .
THE JOLLY BARBER.
I met my love in a barber shop Sing hey, sing ho! He kissed me until I was ready to drop. Sing hey, the ship's in the harbour. He kissed me straight, and he kissed me oblique; He kissed me until I got so weak That I couldn't stand and I couldn't speak. Sing ho for the jolly barber!
He couldn't wave and he couldn't shampoo. Sing hey, sing ho! But what he could do he could do! Sing hey the ship's in the harbour. He kissed me hot and he kissed me strong; And my mother said I should never do wrong If I always put things where they belong. Sing ho for the jolly barber!
He kissed me all the day and he kissed me all night. Sing hey, sing ho! O yes, he certainly kissed me right! Sing hey, the ship's in the harbour. But love isn't all the poet sings: He took my watch and he took my rings, And he left me a lot of other things, Sing ho for the jolly barber.
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name ALASTOR.