The Life Theoretic

While I have been fumbling over books
And thinking about God and the Devil and all,
Other young men have been battling with the days
And others have been kissing the beautiful women.
They have brazen faces like battering-rams.
But I who think about books and such -
I crumble to impotent dust before the struggling,
And the women palsy me with fear.
But when it comes to fumbling over books
And thinking about God and the Devil and all,
Why, there I am.
But perhaps the battering-rams are in the right of it,
Perhaps, perhaps ... God knows.

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Aldous Leonard Huxley was a renowned English writer and philosopher recognized for his wide-ranging output, including novels, essays, and professional writings. His most famous work, 'Brave New World,' presents a dystopian vision of the future. Born on July 26, 1894, into an intellectually distinguished family, Huxley’s works explore the implications of scientific progress, drug use, and authoritarianism. He died on November 22, 1963. Huxley’s ideas continue to be influential in discussions about society and culture.

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Stanzas

Aldous Leonard Huxley, Simple Poetry

Social Amenities

Aldous Leonard Huxley, Simple Poetry

Return From Business

Aldous Leonard Huxley, Simple Poetry

The Louse-Hunters

Aldous Leonard Huxley, Simple Poetry

English

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Crapulous Impression

(To J.S.)


Still life, still life ... the high-lights shine
Hard and sharp on the bottles: the wine
Stands firmly solid in the glasses,
Smooth yellow ice, through which there passes
The lamp's bright pencil of down-struck light.
The fruits metallically gleam,
Globey in their heaped-up bowl,
And there are faces against the night
Of the outer room - faces that seem
Part of this still, still life ... they've lost their soul.

And amongst these frozen faces you smiled,
Surprised, surprisingly, like a child:
And out of the frozen welter of sound
Your voice came quietly, quietly.
"What about God?" you said. "I have found
Much to be said for Totality.
All, I take it, is God: God's all -
This bottle, for instance ..." I recall,
Dimly, th...

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Scenes Of The Mind

I have run where festival was loud
With drum and brass among the crowd
Of panic revellers, whose cries
Affront the quiet of the skies;
Whose dancing lights contract the deep
Infinity of night and sleep
To a narrow turmoil of troubled fire.
And I have found my heart's desire
In beechen caverns that autumn fills
With the blue shadowiness of distant hills;
Whose luminous grey pillars bear
The stooping sky: calm is the air,
Nor any sound is heard to mar
That crystal silence - as from far,
Far off a man may see
The busy world all utterly
Hushed as an old memorial scene.
Long evenings I have sat and been
Strangely content, while in my hands
I held a wealth of coloured strands,
Shimmering plaits of silk and skeins
Of soft bright wool. Each co...

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Topiary

Failing sometimes to understand
Why there are folk whose flesh should seem
Like carrion puffed with noisome steam,
Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it,
Fly-blown to the touch of a hand;
Why there are men without any legs,
Whizzing along on little trollies
With long long arms like apes':
Failing to see why God the Topiarist
Should train and carve and twist
Men's bodies into such fantastic shapes:
Yes, failing to see the point of it all, I sometimes wish
That I were a fabulous thing in a fool's mind,
Or, at the ocean bottom, in a world that is deaf and blind,
Very remote and happy, a great goggling fish.

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Private Property

All fly - yet who is misanthrope? -
The actual men and things that pass
Jostling, to wither as the grass
So soon: and (be it heaven's hope,
Or poetry's kaleidoscope,
Or love or wine, at feast, at mass)
Each owns a paradise of glass
Where never a yearning heliotrope
Pursues the sun's ascent or slope;
For the sun dreams there, and no time is or was.

Like fauns embossed in our domain,
We look abroad, and our calm eyes
Mark how the goatish gods of pain
Revel; and if by grim surprise
They break into our paradise,
Patient we build its beauty up again.

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Life

I.

Pessimist

There is never a thing we dream or do
But was dreamed and done in the ages gone;
Everything's old; there is nothing that's new,
And so it will be while the world goes on.

The thoughts we think have been thought before;
The deeds we do have long been done;
We pride ourselves on our love and lore
And both are as old as the moon and sun.

We strive and struggle and swink and sweat,
And the end for each is one and the same;
Time and the sun and the frost and wet
Will wear from its pillar the greatest name.

No answer comes for our prayer or curse,
No word replies though we shriek in air;
Ever the taciturn universe
Stretches unchanged for our curse or prayer.

With our mind's small light in the dark we crawl,<...

Madison Julius Cawein

From Lucretius.

BOOK II.


Sweet, when the great sea's water is stirred to his depths by the storm- winds,
Standing ashore to descry one afar-off mightily struggling:
Not that a neighbour's sorrow to you yields blissful enjoyment;
But that the sight hath a sweetness, of ills ourselves are exempt from.
Sweet 'tis too to behold, on a broad plain mustering, war-hosts
Arm them for some great battle, one's self unscathed by the danger:-
Yet still happier this:- To possess, impregnably guarded,
Those calm heights of the sages, which have for an origin Wisdom;
Thence to survey our fellows, observe them this way and that way
Wander amidst Life's paths, poor stragglers seeking a highway:
Watch mind battle with mind, and escutcheon rival escutcheon;
Gaze on that untold strife, which is waged 'ne...

Charles Stuart Calverley