......................
. . . . . . . . . What lights this fire?
Maids, and not boys, are wont to move desire,
Else 'twere illicit love! O sad mishap!
But what prompts Nature then to set the trap?
Why night and day does his sweet image float
Before my eyes? Or wherefore do I dote
On that dear face, with ardour so intense?
Why truckles reason to concupiscence?
Though Law cries "Hold!" yet Passion onward draws.
'Twas Nature gave us passions, Reason laws.
Whence spring these inclinations, rank and strong,
And harming no one? Wherefore call them wrong?
How many captains, famed for deeds of arms,
Have found their solace in a minion's arms?
Say why, when great Epaminondas died,
Was Cephidorus buried by his side?
Or why should Plutarch with eulogiums cite
That chieftain's love for his young catamite,
And we be forced his doctrine to decry,
Or drink the bitter cup of infamy?" …
Many a mature man not suspected, by friend or foe, of such a sexual emotion as that in the foregoing lines, Byronic or not, can echo their confession, looking back on past boyhood.
School-life and
Uranianism.
School-life, even when not in a boarding-school, frequently is highly developing to similisexual sentiments. There is no easy method of counteracting this tendency. To work against it too directly means the injury of the free, childish companionship, damage of wholesome, juvenile confidentiality and loyalty, and a check on the expansion of a lad's character by intimacy with his mates. The sexual danger must remain side by side with the good, in our educational systems. Naturally the kind of school-life that is led by the boy at home is not so provocative of the similisexual instincts. 'The English public-school, the French lycée, the German 'Gymnasium,' the monastic school for young lads, offer
— 169 —
