ASCENSION DAY
151
Are dumb, the drum doth come and make us mute:
The Englishman, half huckster and half brute,
260 Raves through his silk hat of the Absolute.
The British Don, half pedant and half hermit,
Begins: ‘‘The Ding an sich *—as Germans term it—”
We stop him short ; he readjusts his glasses,
Turns to his folio—'twill eclipse all precedent,
265 Reveal God’s nature, every dent a blessed dent !
The Donkey : written by an ass, for asses.
So, with permission, let us be
Orthodox to our finger-ends ;
What the bulk hold, High Church or Friends,
270 Or Hard-shell Baptists—and we'll see.
I will not now invite attack
By proving white a shade of black,
Or Christ (as some have lately tried) |
An epileptic maniac,
Citing some cases, “ where a dose
Of Bromide duly given in time
Drags a distemper so morose
At last to visions less sublime ;
Soft breezes stir the lyre Aeolian,
280 No more the equinoctial gales ;
The patient reefs his mental sails ;
His Panic din that shocked the Tmolian *
Admits a softer run of scales—
Seems no more God, but mere Napoleon
285 Or possibly the Prince of Wales” :—
Concluding such a half-cured case
With the remark ‘“ where Bromide fails !—
But Bromide people did not know
Those 1900 years ago.”
290 I think we may concede to Crowley an
Impartial attitude.
to=~!bot)
And so
I scorn the thousand subtle points
Wherein a man might find a fulcrum
205 (Ex utero Matris ad sepulcrum,
* Vide infra, Science and Buddhism, and the writings of Immanuel Kant
and his successors.
Basis of poem
to be that of
the Compro-
mise of 1870.
Non-medical
nature of poem.
Crowley J.
No mention
will be made
of the Figs and
the Pigs.