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
 
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285
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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