Phi. “In this wild medley round us of Bought Love,
Free Love and Forced Love and pretentious No-Love,
Let us walk upright, yet with care consider
Whether, in living thus, we do not err.
Why might we not approve adulterous licence
Increasing pleasurable experience?
What could the soul lose through the body’s rapture
With a body not its mate, where thought is pure?”
Bau. “Are children bonds of love? But even children
Grow up too soon as women and as men,
And in the growing find their own love private,
Meet parent-love with new suspicious hate.
Our favourites run the surest to the Devil
In spite of early cares and all good will.”
Phi. “Sweetheart, you know that you have my permission
To go your own way and to take love on
Wherever love may signal.”
She replying
Bau. Said, “I allow you, dearest, the same thing.”
Zeus was struck dumb at this unholy compact,
But Hermes knew the shadow from the fact
And took an oath that for whole chests of money
Neither would faithless to the other be,
Would not and could not, being twined together
In such close love that he for want of her
Removed one night-time from his side, would perish,
And she was magnet-drawn by his least wish.
Eternal Gods deny the sense of humour,
That well might prejudice their infallible power,
So Hermes and King Zeus not once considered,
In treating of this idyll overheard,
That love rehearses after life’s defeat
Remembered conflicts of an earlier heat,
Baucis, kind soul, was palsied, withered and bent,
Philemon, too, was ten years impotent.
THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN TELLS OF A FAMOUS MEETING
Unknown to each other in a hostile camp,
Spies of two empire nations unallied,
These heroes met, princes of East and West,
Over a ragged pack of cards, by chance.
Never believe what credulous annalists
Record you in good faith of that encounter.
I was there myself, East’s man, and witnessed all.
In the main camp of the Middle Kingdom’s army
At a soldier’s mess, shortly before Retreat,
East, a pretended trooper, stepping in 10
Glanced round the room, shortly discerning West,
Who sat dejected at a corner table.
East moved by curiosity or compassion
Pulled out his cards, offering West the cut,
And West, disguised as a travelling ballad-man,
Took and cut; they played together then
For half an hour or more; then went their ways.
Never believe such credulous annalists
As tell you, West for sign of recognition,
Greatness to greatness, wit to dexterous wit, 20
With sleight of magic most extraordinary
Alters the Duty on his Ace of Spades,
Making three-pence three-halfpence; East, it’s said,
For a fantastic sly acknowledgment,
While his grave eyes betoken no surprise,
Makes magic too; presto, the Knave of Hearts
Nims the Queen’s rose and cocks it in his cap
Furtively, so that only West remarks it.
But such was not the fact; contrariwise,
When Proteus meets with Proteus, each annuls 30
The variability of the other’s mind.
Single they stand, casting their mutable cloaks.
So for this present chance, I take my oath
That leaning across and watching the cards close
I caught no hint of prestidigitation.
Never believe approved biographers
Who’ll show a sequence of the games then played,
Explaining that the minds of these two princes
Were of such subtlety and such nimbleness
That Whipperginny on the fall of a card 40
Changed to Bézique or Cribbage or Piquet,
Euchre or Écarté, then back once more,
Each comprehending with no signal shown
The opposing fancies of the other’s mind.
It’s said, spectators of this play grew dazed,
They turned away, thinking the gamesters drunk.
But I, who sat there watching, keeping score,
Say they observed the rules of but one game
The whole bout, playing neither well nor ill
But slowly, with their thoughts in other channels, 50
Serene and passionless like wooden men.