The Scented Garden

30 Is the passion of man for man. Let him but taste the wine ! It grips him body and soul. Once and for all, Whatever befall, He is bound to the golden goal By the joy of his shuddering spine.” He will know that in the rites of sodomy duly done, even more than in the rites of heterosexual passion, lies the great secret of the Universe, the Key of the Gardens of God..... But I must not proselytize : many are called, but few chosen ; a sodomite is born, not made ; you can’t make a silk sodomite out of an English groc- er’s boy ; one sodomite doesn’t make a scan- dal ; take care of the boys, and the girls will take care of themselves ; strike while the tool is hot ; don’t bugger in haste, or withdraw at lei- sure ; a turd in the hand is worth two in the bush ; a prick in time saves nine ; it’s a wise Wilde that knows his own Q. ; one good turn deserves another ; frig wise and fuck foolish ; there’s better boys in the choir than ever came out of it all of which goes to show that it took no genius to write ‘ John Ploughman ’. Not that if Charles Spurgeon had been12 one of us, his style would have approx- imated to that of Walter Pater ; a stylist is as direct a miracle of God as a sodomite. No ! I must not proselytise ! there are enough of us in the world ; a select body of idealists, of men cleansed from the gross passions, of poets and mystics linked in a perfect freemasonry of style and man- ner, of ships (as it were) who have dropped anchor in a safe harbour, or conquerors at ease in the towns they have captured, whose inhabitants are too crass and stupid even to know themselves slaves.