The sable presbyters approach The avenue of penitence; The young are red and pustular Clutching piaculative pence, Under the penitential gates Sustained by staring Seraphim Where the souls of the devout Burn invisible and dim. Along the garden-wall the bees With hairy bellies pass between The staminate and pistilate: Blest office of the epicene. Sweeney shifts from ham to ham Stirring the water in his bath. The masters of the subtle schools Are controversial, polymath. WHISPERS OF IMMORTALITY Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin; And breastless creatures under ground Leaned backward with a lipless grin. Daffodil bulbs instead of balls Stared from the sockets of the eyes! He knew that thought clings round dead limbs Tightening its lusts and luxuries. Donne, I suppose, was such another Who found no substitute for sense To seize and clutch and penetrate, Expert beyond experience He knew the anguish of the marrow The ague of the skeleton; No contact possible to flesh Allayed the fever of the bone. * * * * * Grishkin is nice; her Russian eye Is underlined for emphasis; Uncorseted, her friendly bust Gives promise of pneumatic bliss. The couched Brazilian jaguar Compels the scampering marmoset With subtle effluence of cat; Grishkin has a maisonette: The sleek and sinuous jaguar Does not in his arboreal gloom Distil so rank a feline smell As Grishkin in a drawing-room. And even abstracter entities Circumambulate her charm; But our lot crawls between dry ribs To keep its metaphysics warm. THE HIPPOPOTAMUS _Similiter et omnes revereantur Diaconos, ut mandatum Jesu Christi; et Episcopum, ut Jesum Christum, existentem filium Patris; Presbyteros autem, ut concilium Dei et Conjunctionem Apostolorum. Sine his Ecclesia non vocatur; de quibus suadeo vos sic habeo._ S. IGNATII AD TRALLIANOS. _And when this epistle is read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans._ The broad backed hippopotamus Rests on his belly on the mud; Although he seems so firm to us He is merely flesh and blood. Flesh-and-blood is weak and frail, Susceptible to nervous shock; While the True Church can never fail For it is based upon a rock. The hippo’s feeble steps may err In compassing material ends, While the True Church need never stir To gather in its dividends. The potamus can never reach The mango on the mango tree; But fruits of pomegranate and peach Refresh the Church from over sea.