Collected Works (Vol. II)

210 THE SWORD OF SONG You write him, with a face of flint, An order for some soda-mint. So Yoga. Life’s a carcinoma, Its cause uncertain, not to check. In vain you cry to Isis: ‘‘O ma! I’ve got it fairly in the neck.” The surgeon Crowley, with his trocar, Says you a poor but silly bloke are, Advises concentration's knife Quick to the horny growth called life. ‘“ Yoga? There’s danger in the biz ! But, it’s the only chance there is !”’ (For life, if left alone, is sorrow, And only fools hope God’s to-morrow.) Up, Guards, and at’em !/ Second, your facts are neatly put ; —Stay! In that mouth there lurks a foot ! One surgeon saw so many claps He thought: ‘‘ One-third per cent., perhaps, Of mortals ’scape its woes that knock us, And bilk the wily gonococcus.” So he is but a simple cynic Who takes the world to match his clinic ; And he assuredly may err Who, keeping cats, thinks birds have fur. You say: ‘‘ There's Berridge, Felkin, Mathers, Hysterics, epileptoids, blathers, Guttersnipe, psychopath, and mattoid, With ceremonial magic that toyed.” Granted. Astronomy’s no myth, But it produced Piazzi Smyth. What crazes actors ? Why do surgeons Go mad and cut up men like sturgeons? (These questions are the late Chas. Spur- geon’s.) Of yogi I could quote you hundreds In science, law, art, commerce noted. They fear no lunacy: their one dread’s Not for their noddles doom-devoted. They are not like black bulls (that shunned reds In vain) that madly charge the goathead Of rural Pan, because some gay puss Had smeared with blood his stone Priapus. They are as sane as politicians And people who subscribe to missions. This says but little ; a long way are Yogi more sane than such as they are. You have conceived your dreadful bogey, From seeing many a raving Yogi. These haunt your clinic; but the sound Lurk in an unsuspected ground, Dine with you, lecture in your schools, Share your intolerance of fools, And, while the Yogi you condemn, Listen, say nothing, barely smile. : Oif you but suspected them Your silence would match theirs awhile ! A Classical Research, (Protectionists may serve if the supply of Hottentots gives out.| I took three Hottentots alive. Their scale was one, two, three, four, five, Infinity. To think of men so I could not bear: a new Colenso I bought them to assuage their plight, Also a book by Hall and Knight On Algebra. . I hired wise men To teach them six, seven, eight, nine, ten. One of the Hottentots succeeded. Few schoolboys know as much as he did! The others sank beneath the strain : It broke, not fortified, the brain. The Bard a Brainy Beggar. Now (higher on the Human Ladder) Lodge is called mad, and Crowley madder. (The shafts of Science who may dodge? I’ve not a word to say for Lodge.) Yet may not Crowley be the one Who safely does what most should shun ? Alpine Analogy. Take Oscar Eckenstein—he climbs Alone, unroped, a thousand times. He scales his peak, he makes his pass; He does not fall in a crevasse ! But if the Alpine Club should seek To follow him on pass or peak— (Their cowardice, their mental rot, Are balanced nicely—they will not.) —I] see the Alpine Journal’s border Of black grow broader, broader, broader, Until the Editor himself Falls from some broad and easy shelf, And in his death the Journal dies. Ah ! bombast, footle, simple lies ! Where would you then appear in type? The Poet ‘‘ retires up.” Hts attitude undig- nified, his pleasure momentary, the after results quite disproportionate. He contem- plates his end. Therefore poor Crowley lights his pipe, Maintains: ‘‘ The small-shot kills the snipe, But spares the tiger; goes on joking, And goes on smirking, on invoking, On climbing, meditating,—failing to think of a suitable rhyme at a critical juncture, Ah !—goes on working, goes on smoking, Until he goes right on to Woking. 637. No one supposes me a Satnt.54—On in- quiry, however, I find that some do. 686. Amrita.>>—The Elixir of Life : the Dew of Immortality.