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Diablerie, February 1944

Page 7

                                              Lies there a country
BILL WATSON ~
                     
                Wherein the author rants and
                raves and comes to no positive
                conclusion - all of which makes
                         for good reading
                ________________________

   As stoutly and consistently proclaimed by the supposedly insurpassable fantasy poet, George Sterling, a never-never land might and probably does in all its fabulous glory and golden pageantry exist; but even the historical and equally nondescript bards are allowed their doubts, and of these weighty and seclusive gentlemen Sterling was no exception:
        "Lies there a country, not of time and space?
        Some fair and irrecoverable place
         I lost ere birth and cannot now recall.
        A land where petals fall
        On paths that I shall nevermore retrace?"

   It is highly doubtful, however, that Sterling ever lost his fanciful, extravagant dream. Essentially a romanticist, his Bacchanalian and women-waked life never marred or touched or even slightly rocked his constant, perpetual faith in a steepled, gaudily minareted land where sublime contentment, spiritual, mental, or otherwise, reigned.

   But enough; this is not - happily - a desertation on George Sterling, who quietly and hopelessly drowned his futility - particularly because he had failed in his unending quest - in a bottle marked with the ancient, antique sign of death: the ominous skull and cross bones. 

   Poverty and famine and the inevitable Dark Angel may ruled with mailed fist this paltry, spinning globe; but elsewhere? 

   Indeed, elsewhere! scoffs the realist, snickering faintly up his tattered, faded cuff, because these mythical paradises, or so it apparently seems, are accessable only by the coldly impersonal intervention of the gods, and they evidently appear to be keeping to their own playful selves; and one might appropriately add, "Damn them!"

   Probably the most prominent and certainly one of the more delightful paradises existent in the average and eagerly hopeful reader's mind is the fabulous, exaggerated Mohammedan heaven, where seductive and typically exotic Asiatic lassies cater fondly to the forever wantom physical senses of man. The age-old and recently tottering phrase, but still an indeed happy one, "wine, women, and song", is the Mohammedan rule after death, though through the bitter, (next page)

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Lies there a country BILL WATSON ~ Wherein the author rants and raves and comes to no positive conclusion - all of which makes for good reading ________________________ As stoutly and consistently proclaimed by the supposedly insurpassable fantasy poet, George Sterling, a never-never land might and probably does in all its fabulous glory and golden pageantry exist; but even the historical and equally nondescript bards are allowed their doubts, and of these weighty and seclusive gentlemen Sterling was no exception: "Lies there a country, not of time and space? Some fair and irrecoverable place I lost ere birth and cannot now recall. A land where petals fall On paths that I shall nevermore retrace?" It is highly doubtful, however, that Sterling ever lost his fanciful, extravagant dream. Essentially a romanticist, his Bacchanalian and women-waked life never marred or touched or even slightly rocked his constant, perpetual faith in a steepled, gaudily minareted land where sublime contentment, spiritual, mental, or otherwise, reigned. But enough; this is not - happily - a desertation on George Sterling, who quietly and hopelessly drowned his futility - particularly because he had failed in his unending quest - in a bottle marked with the ancient, antique sign of death: the ominous skull and cross bones. Poverty and famine and the inevitable Dark Angel may ruled with mailed fist this paltry, spinning globe; but elsewhere? Indeed, elsewhere! scoffs the realist, snickering faintly up his tattered, faded cuff, because these mythical paradises, or so it apparently seems, are accessable only by the coldly impersonal intervention of the gods, and they evidently appear to be keeping to their own playful selves; and one might appropriately add, "Damn them!" Probably the most prominent and certainly one of the more delightful paradises existent in the average and eagerly hopeful reader's mind is the fabulous, exaggerated Mohammedan heaven, where seductive and typically exotic Asiatic lassies cater fondly to the forever wantom physical senses of man. The age-old and recently tottering phrase, but still an indeed happy one, "wine, women, and song", is the Mohammedan rule after death, though through the bitter, (next page)