On the Margin: Notes and Essays

by Aldous Huxley

Destroyed hath the green in every yerd.

Janus sit by the fire with double beard,

And drinketh of his bugle horn the wine;

Beforn him stont the brawn of tusked swine,

And “noel” cryeth every lusty man.

In astrology he does not seem to have believed. The magnificent passage in the Man of Law’s Tale, where it is said that

In the starres, clearer than is glass,

Is written, God wot, whoso can it read,

The death of every man withouten drede,

is balanced by the categorical statement found in the scientific and educational treatise on the astrolabe, that judicial astrology is mere deceit.