Till, by heaven! thy pleading beauty
Drove those carnal thoughts away,
And the friend that came to scruti-
nise was left behind to pray:—
For I shamed thee not, nor spanked thee;
But to rearward, on the plain,
Hathi, on my knees I thanked thee
That I felt a boy again!
VISIONARY
ON THE ADVANTAGES OF AN 'ASTRAL BODY'
It is told, in Buddhi-theosophic Schools
There are rules
By observing which when mundane matter irks,
Or the world has gone amiss, you
Can incontinently issue
From the circumscribing tissue
Of your Works.
That the body and the gentleman inside
Can divide,
And the latter, if acquainted with the plan,
Can alleviate the tension
By remaining 'in suspension'
As a kind of fourth dimension
Bogie man.
And to such as mourn an Indian Solar Crime
At its prime,
'Twere a stratagem so luminously fit,
That tho' doctrinaires deny it,
And Academicians guy it,
I, for one, would like to try it
For a bit.
Just to leave one's earthly tenement asleep
In a heap,
And detachedly to watch it as it lies,
With an epidermis pickled
Where the prickly heat has prickled,
And a sense of being tickled
By the flies.