He wished himself Job, Solomon, Alexander,
For cunning, patience, power to overthrow
His tyrant, but with heart gone so far rotten
That most of all he wished himself John Doe.
THE DIALECTICIANS
Thought has a bias,
Direction a bend,
Space its inhibitions,
Time a dead end.
Is whiteness white?
O then, call it black:
Farthest from the truth
Is yet half-way back.
Effect ordains Cause,
Head swallowing its tail;
Does whale engulf sprat,
Or sprat assume whale?
Contentions weary,
It giddies all to think;
Then kiss, girl, kiss!
Or drink, fellow, drink!
THE LANDS OF WHIPPERGINNY
(“Heaven or Hell or the Lands of Whipperginny.”—Nashe’s Jack Wilton.)
Come closer yet, sweet honeysuckle, my coney, O my Jinny,
With a low sun gilding the bloom of the wood.
Be this Heaven, be it Hell, or the Lands of Whipperginny,
It lies in a fairy lustre, it savours most good.
Then stern proud psalms from the chapel on the moors
Waver in the night wind, their firm rhythm broken,
Lugubriously twisted to a howling of whores
Or lent an airy glory too strange to be spoken.