answered her, “Youth wants no emphasis,
But in extravagance of nature shows
A rigor more demanding than precise.”
IV
“Pride is an illness rising out of pain,”
Said the ensnaffled Fiend who would not wince.
Does the neat corollary then obtain,
Humility comes burgeoning from pleasure?
Ah, masters, such a calculus is foul,
Of no more substance than a wasting cloud.
I cannot frame a logic to convince
Your honors of the urgent lawless measure
Of love, the which is neither fish nor fowl.
The meekest rise to tumble with the proud.
V
Goliath lies upon his back in Hell.
Out of his nostrils march a race of men,
Each with a little spear of hair; they yell,
“Attack the goat! O let us smite the goat!”
(An early German vision.) They are decked
With horns and beards and trappings of the brute
Capricorn, who remarked their origin.
Love, like a feather in a Roman throat,
Returned their suppers. They could not connect
Sentiment with a craving so acute.
VI
Those paragraphs most likely to arouse
Pear-shaped nuances to an ovoid brain,
Upstanding nipples under a sheer blouse,
Wink from the bold original, and keep
Their wicked parlance to confound the lewd
American, deftly obscured from sin
By the Fig-Leaf Edition of Montaigne.
But “summer nights were not devised for sleep,”
And who can cipher out, however shrewd,
The Man-in-the-Moon’s microcephalic grin?
AS PLATO SAID
These public dances and other exercises of the young maidens naked, in the sight of the young men, were moreover incentives to marriage; and to use Plato’s expression, drew them almost as necessarily by the attraction of love as a geometrical conclusion is drawn from the premises.
PLUTARCH
Although I do not not know your name, although
It was a silly dance you did with apple flowers
Bunched in your hands after the racing games,
My friends and I have spent these several hours
Watching. Although I do not know your name,
I saw the sun dress half of you with shadow, and I saw
The wind water your eyes as though with tears
Until they flashed like newly-pointed spears.
This afternoon there was a giant daw
Turning above us—though I put no trust
In all these flying omens, being just
A plain man and a warrior, like my friends—
Yet I am mastered by uncommon force
And made to think of you, although it blends
Not with my humor, or the businesses
Of soldiering. I have seen a horse
Moving with more economy, and know
Armor is surer than a girl’s promises.
But it is a compelling kind of law
Puts your design before me, even though
I put no faith or fancy in that daw
Turning above us. There’s some rigor here,
More than in nature’s daily masterpiece
That brings for us, with absolute and clear
Insistence, worms from their midnight soil,
Ungodly honk and trumpeting of geese
In the early morning, and at last the toil
Of soldiering. This is a simple code,
Far simpler than Lycurgus has set down.
The sheep come out of the hills, the sheep come down
When it rains, or gather under a tree,
And in the damp they stink most heartily.
Yet the hills are not so tough but they will yield
Brass for the kitchen, and the soft wet hair
Of the sheep will occupy some fingers. In the bottom fields
The herd’s deposit shall assist the spring
Out of the earth and up into the air.
No. There is not a more unbending thing
In nature. It is an order that shall find
You out. There’s not a season or a bird can bring
You to my senses or so harness me
To my intention. Let the Helots mind
The barley fields, lest they should see a daw
Turning to perch on some adjacent tree
And fancy it their sovereign ruler. No.
However we are governed, it shall draw
Both of us to its own conclusion, though
I do not even know you by your name.
DISCOURSE CONCERNING TEMPTATION
Though learned men have been at some dispute
Touching the taste and color, nature, name
And properties of the Original Fruit,
The bees that in midsummer
But in extravagance of nature shows
A rigor more demanding than precise.”
IV
“Pride is an illness rising out of pain,”
Said the ensnaffled Fiend who would not wince.
Does the neat corollary then obtain,
Humility comes burgeoning from pleasure?
Ah, masters, such a calculus is foul,
Of no more substance than a wasting cloud.
I cannot frame a logic to convince
Your honors of the urgent lawless measure
Of love, the which is neither fish nor fowl.
The meekest rise to tumble with the proud.
V
Goliath lies upon his back in Hell.
Out of his nostrils march a race of men,
Each with a little spear of hair; they yell,
“Attack the goat! O let us smite the goat!”
(An early German vision.) They are decked
With horns and beards and trappings of the brute
Capricorn, who remarked their origin.
Love, like a feather in a Roman throat,
Returned their suppers. They could not connect
Sentiment with a craving so acute.
VI
Those paragraphs most likely to arouse
Pear-shaped nuances to an ovoid brain,
Upstanding nipples under a sheer blouse,
Wink from the bold original, and keep
Their wicked parlance to confound the lewd
American, deftly obscured from sin
By the Fig-Leaf Edition of Montaigne.
But “summer nights were not devised for sleep,”
And who can cipher out, however shrewd,
The Man-in-the-Moon’s microcephalic grin?
AS PLATO SAID
These public dances and other exercises of the young maidens naked, in the sight of the young men, were moreover incentives to marriage; and to use Plato’s expression, drew them almost as necessarily by the attraction of love as a geometrical conclusion is drawn from the premises.
PLUTARCH
Although I do not not know your name, although
It was a silly dance you did with apple flowers
Bunched in your hands after the racing games,
My friends and I have spent these several hours
Watching. Although I do not know your name,
I saw the sun dress half of you with shadow, and I saw
The wind water your eyes as though with tears
Until they flashed like newly-pointed spears.
This afternoon there was a giant daw
Turning above us—though I put no trust
In all these flying omens, being just
A plain man and a warrior, like my friends—
Yet I am mastered by uncommon force
And made to think of you, although it blends
Not with my humor, or the businesses
Of soldiering. I have seen a horse
Moving with more economy, and know
Armor is surer than a girl’s promises.
But it is a compelling kind of law
Puts your design before me, even though
I put no faith or fancy in that daw
Turning above us. There’s some rigor here,
More than in nature’s daily masterpiece
That brings for us, with absolute and clear
Insistence, worms from their midnight soil,
Ungodly honk and trumpeting of geese
In the early morning, and at last the toil
Of soldiering. This is a simple code,
Far simpler than Lycurgus has set down.
The sheep come out of the hills, the sheep come down
When it rains, or gather under a tree,
And in the damp they stink most heartily.
Yet the hills are not so tough but they will yield
Brass for the kitchen, and the soft wet hair
Of the sheep will occupy some fingers. In the bottom fields
The herd’s deposit shall assist the spring
Out of the earth and up into the air.
No. There is not a more unbending thing
In nature. It is an order that shall find
You out. There’s not a season or a bird can bring
You to my senses or so harness me
To my intention. Let the Helots mind
The barley fields, lest they should see a daw
Turning to perch on some adjacent tree
And fancy it their sovereign ruler. No.
However we are governed, it shall draw
Both of us to its own conclusion, though
I do not even know you by your name.
DISCOURSE CONCERNING TEMPTATION
Though learned men have been at some dispute
Touching the taste and color, nature, name
And properties of the Original Fruit,
The bees that in midsummer
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