CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX




OF THE EARLY OPINIONS OF SIR ROGER BLOXAM CONCERNING THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.





   IN his third year at Cambridge Sir Roger Bloxam, prompted by the Cardinal and his suite, was already a famous poet. In his second year he had taken the Chancellor's medal with a poem on `Gehenna' -- not Ravenna, Mr Clever, of course,, you think you know everything. Ravenna was by Wilde and won the Newdigate, which rather gives Oxford away. No, Gehenna was a hell of a poem, and he ruined it quite correctly with `senna'. But hje beat this hollow in a month. Yes: of course I mean to give the chapter and verse; I told you before I would never bluff. Here's the opening chorus. ``From life hath death the power to bar souls? Are souls immortal? Are souls? Are souls?'' He goes on ``Are souls of boys with glamour gilded? Shall not love right the wrong the pill did?'' referring, apparently, to the bitter pill of punishment for sin. Cf. Milton Paradise Lost: a much duller poem. The yearning earnestness of this poem won him many a friend. The exordium is truly superb.




Are souls divine? Those crimson piles

Bear witness, while the sun-god smiles.

Reared in the desert -- blood and wine

Answer our sob ``Are souls divine?''

Is that last Angel's trumpet-boom

Not puissant on the mortal's tomb?

Are souls divine? Yes, cries the heart;

By the strong argument -- of art!''





   Porphyria Poppoea was indeed his Egeria -- that's the cliche', isn't it? -- in philosophy. He was in her the whole of divinity. She taught him that he could shed mortality, and feel the better for it; and also that great lesson of unselfishness. For he was never able to behold her face to face, but in a glass, darklyl; and love must come to him from another, and that other one like unto himself, id est, God. As he spent many an hour, his fingers coyly straying in her wine-dark hair, while her voice, like perfume, declared the glory and the goodness of God. I wish you could see her rosy lips pursed up and puckered with merry impudence -- yet utter holiness. See them part softly to the pressure of a gentle sigh! Hullo! what's this? what golden god comes flaming from the portal, his disk cloud-capped like a volcano? Let us cover our eyes in reverence, and begone  -- is it not written ``Upon whom this stone shall fall?'' You may not be expert enough in Attic to read ;gkKOPROS `O TEOS you are still playing with ;gkKUPRIS in the shade, or with the tangles of Neaera's hair. Shame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise, that last infirmity of noble mind, But the fair guerdon when we hope to find And think to burst out in sudden blaze Comes the blind Fury with the abhorre'd shears, and mixes our metaphors still more, I'm afraid. Surely this is the place to insert Sir Roger Bloxam's views on Death, regarded as an art, a science, and a social pleasure.