Heaven’s Jester or The Message of a White Rose MRS. HAVELOCK ELLIS “It is dawn! Men and women are in the city of sleep. Waken, thou strange child of many dreams, and hear my message. A woman gave me to thee, a woman thou lovest, whose fragrance for thee is as delicate as mine, whose whiteness is thy strength and hope. But hark! the gods are pitiless. Thy name is entered in the call-book of heaven by a woman thou lovest also. In gentle jest she wrote the scrawl when thy soul passed into Paradise with hers for one brief hour. She entered those gates in the sweet sleep of Death and thou, by force of her love for thee, in the sleep of life. “Heaven’s Jester” was inscribed in the registers of Paradise and heaven’s jester thou must remain. Thy soul, after her passing from Earth, had barely gained thy body again before the cap and bells were donned by thee. Thy jests for men were written down. The jingle of thy bells drew laughter and tears. God found he had need of the fool the woman had signed to him. Hush! the jester of heavenly courts must not lower his head or hide his face. Tears ill become the piebald suit and trappings of mirth. Thou crazy clown! Didst think the woman who gave me to thee needed thy heart? Hear the message the white rose by thy bed gives to thee. She also needs thy cap and bells. It is not for thee to choose thy way of love. God’s jester is neither man nor woman nor child, but a singer of joys and woes to ease men’s souls and dry the eyes of women. Play thy part, then, and laugh thy laugh. Men win her lips, women crave her help, the world takes her service, and thou her smiles. Wouldst thou have more, thou poet lover in the guise of a fool? Then throw thy cloak down for a lover to kneel on if Fate shows thee his face. Drown the world’s chatter with thy bells while lips kiss. In his absence make songs and sing them to ease the travail of love in her body. If no lover comes, then hearten and hasten even thine own enemy into her service, if so be she gets strength and comfort from the strange enterprise. Then make thine own soul white as the rose she has given thee. On with thy cap and bells! Grow nimble and dance. Dance and sing in thy jester’s way, for the homesickness of the heaven thou hast seen will teach thee strange melodies. When death claims thee, and the cap and bells are laid aside, God’s Jester shall sleep with a white rose on his breast. “Dead,” they will say, but no! At last thou shalt hear the eternal song of the souls of women and be satisfied! HEAVEN’S JESTER TO THE BODY OF HIS LADY Heaven’s Jester said unto himself, “I have no need of my lady’s body, her soul suffices. In the passionate pressure of lips the Fool has known his God and the man has found the woman. Let that suffice!”