Ninth philosopher’s song, Aldous Huxley

NINTH PHILOSOPHER’S SONG

GOD’S in His Heaven: He never issues

  (Wise Man!) to visit this world of ours.

Unchecked the cancer gnaws our tissues,

  Stops to lick chops and then again devours.

Those find, who most delight to roam

  ’Mid castles of remotest Spain,

That there’s, thank Heaven, no place like home;

  So they set out upon their travels again.

Beauty for some provides escape,

  Who gain a happiness in eyeing

The gorgeous buttocks of the ape

  Or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.

And some to better worlds than this

  Mount up on wings as frail and misty

As passion’s all-too-transient kiss

  (Though afterwards—oh, omne animal triste!)

But I, too rational by half

  To live but where I bodily am.

Can only do my best to laugh.

  Can only sip my misery dram by dram.

While happier mortals take to drink,

  A dolorous dipsomaniac,

Fuddled with grief I sit and think,

  Looking upon the bile when it is black.

Then brim the bowl with atrabilious liquor!

  We’ll pledge our Empire vast across the flood:

For Blood, as all men know, than Water’s thicker,

  But water’s wider, thank the Lord, than Blood.

The end