III.

THE tea-rose tea-gown, etc.

Supplants the mousseline of Cos,

The pianola “replaces”

Sappho's barbitos.

Christ follows Dionysus,

Phallic and ambrosial

Made way for macerations;

Caliban casts out Ariel.

All things are a flowing,

Sage Heracleitus says;

But a tawdry cheapness

Shall reign throughout our days.

Even the Christian beauty

Defects — after Samothrace;

We see το καλόν

Decreed in the market place.

Faun's flesh is not to us,

Nor the saint's vision.

We have the press for wafer;

Franchise for circumcision.

All men, in law, are equals.

Free of Peisistratus,

We choose a knave or an eunuch

To rule over us.