DIAPHENIA, drunk with sleep, Drunk with pleasure, drunk with fatigue, Feels her Corydon’s fingers creep— Ring-finger, middle finger, index, thumb— Strummingly over the smooth sleek drum Of her thorax. Meanwhile Händel’s Gigue Turns in Corydon’s absent mind To Yakka-Hoola. She can find No difference in the thrilling touch Of one who, now, in everything Is God-like. “Was there ever such Passion as ours?” His pianoing Gives place to simple arithmetic’s Simplest constatations:—six Letters in Gneiss and three in Gnu: Luncheon to-day cost three and two; In a year—he couldn’t calculate Three-sixty-five times thirty-eight, Figuring with printless fingers on Her living parchment. “Corydon! I faint, faint, faint at your dear touch. Say, is it possible . . . to love too much?” FROM THE PILLAR SIMEON, the withered stylite, Sat gloomily looking down Upon each roof and skylight In all the seething town. And in every upper chamber, On roofs, where the orange flowers Make weary men remember The perfume of long-dead hours, He saw the wine-drenched riot Of harlots and human beasts, And how celestial quiet Was shattered by their feasts. The steam of fetid vices From a thousand lupanars, Like smoke of sacrifices, Reeked up to the heedless stars. And the saint from his high fastness Of purity apart Cursed them and their unchasteness, And envied them in his heart. JONAH A CREAM of phosphorescent light Floats on the wash that to and fro Slides round his feet—enough to show Many a pendulous stalactite Of naked mucus, whorls and wreaths And huge festoons of mottled tripes And smaller palpitating pipes Through which a yeasty liquor seethes. Seated upon the convex mound Of one vast kidney, Jonah prays And sings his canticles and hymns, Making the hollow vault resound God’s goodness and mysterious ways, Till the great fish spouts music as he swims. VARIATIONS ON A THEME