Konx Om Pax

90 KONX 0M PAX destroy them. Only morbid “Union with God ” is attained by fast, vigil, scourging, and the like. Morbid or no, continued the doctor, most saints have used this method. What I was about to say was that since we wish to overcome the body by fatigue, we shall do just as wisely to seek Union with God / in excessive debauch. If done with the same purpose, and sleep successfully banished, the same result will occur. If your Messalina failed—well, what does the poet say? Try, try, try again! Re your verses, Jack! And with a disdainfu! glance at his clothes, as much as t “ Where ’5 my toga?” the scholar began: THE RETURN OF MESSALINA FROM the marsh of the Maremma the malaria is drawn By the gray and chilly breezes of the autumn and the dawn. In the silence as we shiver who is yonder that we see With the hair fallen loose about her, with the stole about her knee? All her flesh is loose and fallen, and her eyes are wet and wild, And she staggers as she wallows like a woman big with child. How she gasps and stares about her! How she shivers! Are the hosts Of her lovers there to haunt her, life’s lupanar thick with ghosts? How her teeth are clenched with horror! How her lips are curled and wried As she staggers to the palace weary and unsatisfied! Surely I have done the utmost! (all the demon in her wails) Is it spirit that disdains me? Is it only flesh that fails? Did Danae win to slumber at the thrust of grievous gold? Did the Bull bring Pasiphae to the palace of the cold? Could the sea avail to Sappho drifting dead upon the foam? What shall save me, Messalina, save the majesty of Rome?