But we from the death of roses That three suns perfume and gild With a kiss, till the fourth discloses A withered wreath, have distilled The fulness of one rare phial, Whose nimble life shall outrun The circling shadow on the dial, Outlast the tyrannous sun. FIRST PHILOSOPHER’S SONG A POOR degenerate from the ape, Whose hands are four, whose tail’s a limb, I contemplate my flaccid shape And know I may not rival him, Save with my mind—a nimbler beast Possessing a thousand sinewy tails, A thousand hands, with which it scales, Greedy of luscious truth, the greased Poles and the coco palms of thought, Thrids easily through the mangrove maze Of metaphysics, walks the taut Frail dangerous liana ways That link across wide gulfs remote Analogies between tree and tree; Outruns the hare, outhops the goat; Mind fabulous, mind sublime and free! But oh, the sound of simian mirth! Mind, issued from the monkey’s womb, Is still umbilical to earth, Earth its home and earth its tomb. SECOND PHILOSOPHER’S SONG IF, O my Lesbia, I should commit, Not fornication, dear, but suicide, My Thames-blown body (Pliny vouches it) Would drift face upwards on the oily tide With the other garbage, till it putrefied. But you, if all your lovers’ frozen hearts Conspired to send you, desperate, to drown— Your maiden modesty would float face down, And men would weep upon your hinder parts. ’Tis the Lord’s doing. Marvellous is the plan By which this best of worlds is wisely planned. One law He made for woman, one for man: We bow the head and do not understand. FIFTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG A MILLION million spermatozoa, All of them alive: Out of their cataclysm but one poor Noah Dare hope to survive. And among that billion minus one Might have chanced to be Shakespeare, another Newton, a new Donne— But the One was Me. Shame to have ousted your betters thus, Taking ark while the others remained outside! Better for all of us, froward Homunculus, If you’d quietly died! NINTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG