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The Spike or Victoria University College Review 1931

Strictly Blasphemous

page 8

Strictly Blasphemous

We have been told that "by nothing is England so glorious as by her poetry." Possibly—but have you ever considered what a mixed lot the poets really were? And what different philosophies they preached? Have you thought of:

Wordsworth: who enjoyed loafing about the countryside in his old clothes and tried to make a philosophy out of it?

Browning: who thought all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds, even if Guido Franceschini did murder his wife.

Tennyson: whose admiration of the old legends was sadly marred by Sir Galahad's failure to reach the high standard of moral perfection set By Prince Albert. And as for Guinevere and Queen Victoria! Simply too progressive.

Milton: who was Puritan, but thought the divorce laws somewhat too strict.

Herrick: who found Devon a wretchedly dull place, but, after all, the girls were rather pretty and the cream was good.

Fitzgerald: who had nasty Epicurean ideas and palmed them off on an unfortunate Persian called Omar Khayyam.

Lord Byron: who thought people made too much fuss over other people's love affairs.

Swinburne: who called on Dolores to "come down and redeem us from virtue," and was rather annoyed with Napoleon III. for anticipating her in that function.

Masefield: who thought a visit to a newly-ploughed field would do much towards reducing the sad standard of profanity common to the lower classes.

Shelley: who believed that if we all ate vegetables and were allowed to marry our sisters and then abolished everything else, we should have attained perfect Beauty.

Keats: who liked telling long stories in verse, and when one of those serious fellows like Wordsworth or Shelley came along with a "But where's your moral?" used to shove in something about beauty or art.

Pope: who borrowed other people's ideas and put them into verse that scanned.

Rudyard Kipling: who believed that it was the duty of every good Englishman to kick niggers, and who spoke enthusiastically of the White Man's Burden—and

Shakespeare: who didn't know what he thought.

—C. G. W.