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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.