BUBBLE-BREASTED swells the dome Of this my spiritual home, From whose nave the chandelier, Schaffhausen frozen, tumbles sheer. We in the round balcony sit, Lean o’er and look into the pit Where feed the human bears beneath, Champing with their gilded teeth. What negroid holiday makes free With such priapic revelry? What songs? What gongs? What nameless rites? What gods like wooden stalagmites? What steam of blood or kidney pie? What blasts of Bantu melody? Ragtime. . . . But when the wearied Band Swoons to a waltz, I take her hand. And there we sit in blissful calm, Quietly sweating palm to palm. FATIGUE THE mind has lost its Aristotelian elegance of shape: there is only a darkness where bubbles and inconsequent balloons float up to burst their luminous cheeks and vanish. A woman with a basket on her head: a Chinese lantern quite askew: the vague bright bulging of chemists’ window bottles; and then in my ears the distant noise of a great river of people. And phrases, phrases— It is only a question of saddle-bags, Stane Street and Gondibert, Foals in Iceland (or was it Foals in aspic?). As that small reddish devil turns away with an insolent jut of his hindquarters, I become aware that his curling pug’s tail is an electric bell-push. But that does not disquiet me so much as the sight of all these polished statues twinkling with high lights and all of them grotesque and all of them colossal. THE MERRY-GO-ROUND THE machine is ready to start. The symbolic beasts grow resty, curveting where they stand at their places in the great blue circle of the year. The Showman’s voice rings out. “Montez, mesdames et messieurs, montez. You, sir, must bestride the Ram. You will take the Scorpion. Yours, madame, is the Goat. As for you there, blackguard boy, you must be content with the Fishes. I have allotted you the Virgin, mademoiselle.” . . . “Polisson!” “Pardon, pardon. Evidemment, c’est le Sagittaire qu’on demande. Ohé, les dards! The rest must take what comes. The Twins shall counterpoise one another in the Scales. So, so. Now away we go, away.” Ha, what keen air. Wind of the upper spaces. Snuff it deep, drink in the intoxication of our speed. Hark how the music swells and rings. . . . sphery music, music of every vagabond planet, every rooted star; sound of winds and seas and all the simmering millions of life. Moving, singing . . . so with a roar and a rush round we go and round, for ever whirling on a ceaseless Bank Holiday of drunken life and speed.