The Sword of Song

ASCENSION DAY 9 Are dumb, the drum doth come and make us mute : The Englishman, half huckster and half brute, Raves through his silk hat of the Absolute. The British Don, half pedant and half hermit, Begins: “The Ding an sich*—as Germans term it—” We stop him short ; he readjusts his glasses, Turns to his folio—’twill eclipse all precedent, Reveal God’s nature, every dent a blessed dent ! The Donkey : written by an ass, for asses. So, with permission, let us be Orthodox to our finger-ends; What the bulk hold, High Church or Friends, Or Hard-shall Baptists—and we’ll see. I will not now invite attack By proving white a shade of black, Or Christ (as some47 have lately tried) An epileptic mania, Citing some case, “where a dose Of Bromide duly given in time Drags a distemper so morose At last to visions less sublime ; Soft breezes stir the lyre Aeolian, No more the equinoctial gales ; The patient reefs his mental sails ; His Panic din that shocked the Tmolian48 Admits a softer run of scales— Seems no more God, but mere Napoleon Or possibly the Prince of Wales” :— Concluding such a half-cured case With the remark “where Bromide fails !— But Bromide people did not know Those 1900 years ago.” I think we may concede to Crowley an Impartial attitude. And so I scorn the thousand subtle points Wherein a man might find a fulcrum (Ex utero Matris ad sepulcrum, * Vide infra “Science and Buddhism”, and the writings of Immanuel Kant and his successors. 260 265 270 275 280 285 290 295 Basis of poem to be that of the Compro- mise of 1870. Non-medical nature of poem. Crowley J. No mention will be made of the Figs and the Pigs