Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/The Little Group Gives a Pagan Masque
THE LITTLE GROUP GIVES A PAGAN MASQUE
The Little Group gave a party
And all of the gods were there,
From Thor to Miss Susan Astarte
With doo-daddles gemming her hair,
Bill Baldur and Jane Aphrodite,
Dick Vishnu and Benny O'Baal,
And Bacchus came on in a nightie
With little pink snakes on the tail;
Latin, Phœnician and Hindu,
Norse and Egyptian and Chink….
Castor was watching his Twin do
Stunts, with a brotherly wink….
Persephone swearing by Hades….
A Norn and a Sibylline Simp….
A Momus, who showed to the ladies
The latest Olympian limp.
Was Hermione present? By Crikey!
(This Crikey's a Whitechapel joss)
Our Hermy attended as Psyche—
She siked and she got it across!
And Fothergil Finch, rather gaumy
With Cosmic cosmetics, was there,
But the Swami went just as the Swami,
After oiling the kinks in his hair.
I said to Hermione: "Goddess!
You're graceful, you're Greek, you're a rose,
From the pinions that rise from your bodice
To the raddle I note on your toes,
"And Fothergil, here, with his censer,
And his little cheeks crimson as beets,
Your acolyte, perfume-dispenser,
Is sweet as a page out of Keats,
"But tell me, my Dea—my Psyche!—
(With your wings outspread as to race
With that swift and acephalous Nike
Who lost her bean somewhere in Thrace)—
"My Thea—my classical pigeon!—
Is not your Sincerity shocked
By this giddy revue of religion?…
Are none of these gods being mocked?…
"In the regions unknowable—Thea!—
Where the Noumenon chums with the Nous,
Where the Idol gets hep to Idea,
And Pythagoras ogles a Goose,
"In the heavens of Brahm and Osiris,
Are they peeved with this revel, I ask?…
Does Pluto like this, where his fire is?…
What in hell do they think of this masque?…
"Where the avatars, drowsed in Nirvana,
Lie folded like bees in the comb,
Where Jove with his spangled bandanna
Wipes off the nectareous foam,
"Where the deities, avid of Is-ness,
Resurge from the Flivvers that Were,
While the wild Chaotical Whizness
Gives place to a Cosmic Whir,
"Do they relish this josh of the josses?
Do they lamp not the same with a grouch?
Are you stinging these gloomy Big Bosses
To a keener, immortaler ouch?"
Hermione murmured: "How eerie!
You are voicing my own Inner Mood!
Ah, me! but the world is less dreary
If one is but Understood!
"And I thank you, I thank you, for rising
To my personal point of view….
I thank you for Sympathizing!…
Dear man, how you always do!"