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I did not see why I should be confined to one life. How can one hope to understand the world if one 
persists in regarding it from the conning tower of one's own personality? One can increase one's 
knowledge and nature by 
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travelling and reading; but that does not tell one how things look to other people. It is all very well 
to visit St. Peter's and the Vatican, but what would be really interesting would be to know how they 
look to the Pope. The greatness of a poet consists, to a considerable extent, in his ability to see the 
world through another man's eyes; and my training in science is always suggesting to me that I 
should invent a technique for doing anything that I want to do. My technique for borrowing other 
people's spectacles was to put myself in the place altogether, either by actually adopting a suitable 
alias or by writing a book in their names. It is a common and legitimate literary device. 
When in Holland in '97, I had written a Christmas hymn in which the Nativity was treated 
realistically. I now found that Christian piety had taken away the entire poetic beauty of Bethlehem 
by declaring that the Virgin suffered no pain. (It is really astonishing how these idiots managed to 
remove any touch of sublimity from this stupid story!) I therefore had to change "her bitter anguish 
hath sufficed" into "her joyful ardour hath sufficed", and otherwise degrade my poem to a 
blasphemous imbecility, in order to comply with the conventions of the Church. Apart from that, 
what I had written in a spirit not far removed from ribaldry was found wholly satisfactory. 
I had written, in 1899, while staying with Mathers in Paris, a hymn to Isis to be used in the 
ceremonies of Isis worship which he was at that time proposing to revive in Paris. I changed the 
word "Sistron" to "cymbal" and the word "Isis" to "Mary". The hymn required no further alteration. I 
think that rather significant. 
Once more, I made a translation of the Fatihah, the most sacred chapter of the Koran, I replaced 
the name of God by that of Mary, and once again found favour with the Vatican. 
I quote a few isolated stanzas: 
The red sun scorches up our veins; 
The white moon makes us mad; 
Pitiless stars insult our pains 
With clamour glad. 
At the foot of the Cross is the Mother of God, 
And Her tears are like rain to enliven the sod, 
While the Blood of the Lord from his Body that runs 
Is the heat of the summer, the fire of its suns. 
See where the cherubim pallid and plumed 
Swing with their thuribles praises perfumed! 
Jesus is risen and Mary assumed: 
Ave Maria! 
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O sorrow of pure eyes beneath 
The heavy-fringed estatic lids, 
Seeing for maiden song and wreath 
Sphinxes and pagan pyramids! 
O Mary, like a pure perfume 
Do thou receive this failing breath,