TO THE UNKNOWN GODDESS

Will you conquer my heart with your beauty; my soul going out from afar?

Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautious shikar?

Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking and blind?

Shall I meet you next session at Simla, O sweetest and best of your kind?

When the peg and the pig-skin shall please not; when I buy me Calcutta-build clothes;

When I quit the Delight of Wild Asses; forswearing the swearing of oaths;

As a deer to the hand of the hunter when I turn‘ mid the gibes of my friends;

When the days of my freedom are numbered, and the life of the bachelor ends.

Ah, Goddess! child, spinster, or widow — as of old on Mars Hill whey they raised

To the God that they knew not an altar — so I, a young Pagan, have praised

The Goddess I know not nor worship; yet, if half that men tell me be true,

You will come in the future, and therefore these verses are written to you.