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Moral the Second (Quiet, girls!)
A sane square is worth ten mad earls.
And, most important, Number Three:
Every one must trust somebody.)
You do well to treat it lightly, said Basil. It s the most terrible story I ever heard. A
fico for your tragedies of blood and bones!
Indeed, tis the one hopeless hell, added the Scholar. It is true? You knew the man?
I did, returned the big man. As nice a fellow as you could find in three continents.
And lost! lost! lost!
Oh! when will men be free of all this superstitition? groaned Denzil.
Never, said the Scholar.
Now, said the big man.
I can t see it, cried Denzil, but it shall be! it shall be! And he rolled off this great oath:
I SWEAR by all the stars that stream
Through all the lofty leaves of night:
I swear by the tremendous towers
That crown Granda s vale of flowers:
I swear by their impending gleam,
The Sierra s snowy swords of light!
By all the cruel and cold despair
That Christ hath brought upon the land:
By Mary and the false blind beastly
Lies of the prudish and the priestly:
By God and death and hate I swear
That man shall rise, shall understand.
I swear by this my lucid Eye
By all the freedom I have won,
That men shall learn to love and doubt,
Put faith and slavery to the rout,
And eagle-pinioned even as I
Soar to the splendour of the sun!
THE STONE OF THE PHILOSOPHERS
71
All right! all right! said the doctor, rather testily. But you want everybody to use your
methods. Hurrah for Huxley! Down with Jesus! By heaven, your tyranny will soon
be as bad as that of Rome or Geneva. Every man must find his own way to freedom.
Let me read to you about my mad friends. One of the most interesting cases of
symbolic coitus I know of. The man wasn t of the hunting class; he was a head
waiter, child of some Russian exiles of the so-called student persuasion, and his only
notions of fox-hunting were taken from the Christmas numbers of the illustrated
papers of his childhood.
Strange how things stick!
THE SYMBOLISTS
TITAN EVE was thewed and sinewed: all the blood of Mother Earth
Sang within her veins and gave her all the might of all her girth.
Vladimir was small and dainty like a fairy knight to brand
Greener circles with his dancing on the green enamoured land.
Strange that in the silent city, Eve should play the horsing mare,
Eve should whinny for a stallion, snuffing up the scented air;
Strange that breeched and scarlet-coated, brave with wealth of boot and spur,
He should hunt the fox Jehovah through the world astride of her.
But his whip! the flame that lashes blood from out her flanks afoam,
Strips the flesh and leaves the spirit bridle-free to gallop home!
But the screams of pain that stab him, drunk with lust of spur and rod,
As the rowels and the whalebone send his spirit back to God!
So in madness is attainment that inspirits and endures.
Who are you to blame their folly, ask them to assent to yours?
Be ye sure, the Eye Unlidded measures by another rod!
Be ye sure, the human balance looks distorted to a God!
To yourselves be slaves and masters; stand or fall to self alone;
Human ethics will not loosen our Astarte s crimson zone.
You will never fit your forehead with your father s fancy hats:
You know more about salvation that the Reverend Robert Rats.
Well, you have most certainly met an unpleasant set of people, exclaimed the big man.
Can t we be a bit cheerful for a change? The night wears on: we must part.
I think you would like my Gipsy girl, said Denzil, without scruple or diffidence.
If she s a sane clean human being, we shall. So Arthur Gray voiced the general
feeling.
Without further debate he set to.
KONX OM PAX
72
LA GITANA
YOUR hair was full of roses in the dewfall as we danced,
The sorceress enchanting and the paladin entranced,
In the starlight as we wove us in a web of silk and steel
Immemorial as the marble in the halls of Boabdil,
In the pleasaunce of the roses with the fountains and the yews
Where the snowy Sierra soothed us with the breezes and the dews!
In the starlight as we trembled from a laugh to a caress
And the god came warm upon us in our pagan allegresse.
Was the Baile de la Bona too seductive? Did you feel
Through the silence and the softness all the tension and the steel?
For your hair was full of roses, and my flesh was full of thorns
And the midnight came upon worth a million crazy morns.
Ah! my Gipsy, my Gitana, my Saliya! were you fain
For the dance to turn to earnest? O the sunny land of Spain!
My Gitana, my Saliya! more delicious than a dove!
With your hair aflame with roses and your lips alight with love!
Shall I see you, shall I kiss you once again? I wander far
From the sunny land of summer to the icy Polar Star.
I shall find you , I shall have you! I am coming back again
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