An Indian Ass

AN INDIAN ASS By the same author AQUARIUM
BY HAROLD ACTON
“Ha ha! ha ha! this world doth pass Most merrily, I’ll be sworn; For many an honest Indian ass Goes for an Unicorn.
Ty hye! ty hye! O sweet delight! He tickles this age that can Call Tullia’s ape a marmosyte And Leda’s goose a swan.”
DUCKWORTH 3 HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON, W.C. First published in 1925 All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London

NOW fogs enfold the sea And berries fall from eaves, The cat’s eyes glitter green into the dark. The sloping hills of myrrh, The trees with tender anise overweighed, The pointed flag-leaves stir Only to weep again, Only to sob and mourn Adonis dead.
Throughout this dolorous night of cloudy jade Even the hornless dragon of the sea, The green and golden sequined basilisk, The water-scorpion and the python-king Like sad eclipses trail about the land. The crane, the ibis and the mango-bird, The jungle-fowl, the heron and the roc, The badger and three-footed tortoise join In pouring out their eyes.
O Cypris violet-stoled, O wrapped in purple woof Arise and beat your azure-veined breasts! Small jewelled nipples, bleed! For I have seen you make that curved mouth A bed of balsam, bed of crisp lush flowers, Whose poor crushed frozen lips compactly closed Lie, flakes of ice, where once were flakes of fire, Their loveliness a thing of agony. The moon has slanted off, and querulous ghosts Hover along the brink of treacherous voids And leap into this night of blinded eyes (Blind now to pleasure’s lapping ecstasies); This peacock-throated night whose stifling cries Shudder and crack: ’tis Misery who calls “Woe” to the black solemnities of sky For loveliest Adonis—he is dead.