“Can joys be of Martyrdom’s giving? Men seek them, and change at a breath The leisures and labours of living, For the ravings and rackings of death: To stand all alone on that height is An action unsought and insane, O, moveless and morbid Stylites, Our Patron of Pain!” “There are those who still offer to Bacchus, There are men who Love’s goddess still own, What right have new faiths to attack us? And why are our shrines overthrown? There are poets, inspired by Castalia, Whose lyres have Anacreon’s strain, Whose lives are one long saturnalia, Our Patron of Pain!” “We sing of voluptuous blisses, Of all that thy rigour would spurn, Of “biting” and “ravenous” kisses, Of bosoms that beat and that burn; To all that is earthy and carnal, Our votaries’ souls we would chain, We breathe of the chamber and charnel Our Patron of Pain!” “Oho! for the days of sweet vices, The glory of goddess and Greek! (For all that most naughty and nice is Most purely and surely antique). Oho! for the days when Endymion Thro’ love o’er Diana did reign! These, these were Elysian, St. Simeon, Our Patron of Pain!” “We’ll crown us with myrtle and laurel, We’ll wreathe us in Paphian flowers, To be and make others immoral, We’ll ply our poetical powers; Our worship shall be Aphrodite’s, To woman the wine we will drain, O, loveless and lonely Stylites, Our Patron of Pain!” “By the hunger thine abstinence causes, By the thirst of unbearable heat, By thy pray’rs which have very few pauses, By thy lodging devoid of a seat, By sleep that so meagre at night is, ’Twere better awake to remain, Come down from thy pillar, Stylites, Our Patron of Pain!” The holy man, it need not be remark’d, Turn’d as deaf ear to such lascivious singing As when a serpent hiss’d or wild dog barked, Or raven croak’d around his column winging; Immovable in body as in mind, He bore his life’s insufferable tedium, It seems a pity that he could not find ’Twixt vice and virtue’s height some “happy medium.” ――――:o:―――― In 1872, the late Mr. Mortimer Collins published “_The British Birds_, a communication from the Ghost of Aristophanes.” Extracts from this very clever satire are still often quoted. The following passages contain parodies of A. C. Swinburne, Robert Browning, and Alfred Tennyson, whose identities are thinly veiled under the names of Brow, Beard, and Hair. SCENE. _In the Clouds._ PEISTHETAIRUS, _discovered_.