Book 4 (Part II)

86 This is one of the more exoteric of these rimes. In fact, it is not much better than a sun-myth. Tom is Toum, the God of the Sunset (called the Son of Apollo, the Piper, the maker of music). The only difficulty in the poem concerns the pig; for anyone who has watched an angry sunset in the Tropics upon the sea, will recognize how incom- parable a description of that sunset is given in that wonderful last line. Some have thought that the pig refers to the evening sacrifice, others that she is Hathor, the Lady of the West, in her more sensual aspect. But it is probable that this poem is only the first stanza of an epic. It has all the characteristic marks. Someone said of the Iliad that it did not finish, but merely stopped. This is the same. We may be sure that there is more of this poem. It tells us too much and too little. How came this tragedy of the eating of a merely stolen pig? Unveil this mystery of who " eat " it ! It must be abandoned, then, as at least partially insoluble. Let us consider this poem: Hickor}', dickory, dock ! The mouse ran up the clock ; The clock struck one, And the mouse ran down, Hickory, dickorj', dock ! Here we are on higher ground at once. The clock symbolizes the