Fearing his awesome mother, the trenches' cruelty and neurasthenic terror copied his inner war.

He galloped his marriage-bed with Materfamilias, booted and cruelly spurred, astride his back.

He worshipped a Great Mistress who guaranteed his art; she came from another country preaching unholy writ, the guardian of a secret wisdom which he could suffer only through her; there at her crumbling feet he grovelled for his pain.

Under a phallic hammer his Idol broke, so lost her esoteric power. A gentler woman came with no ordeals or torments, no sorcery but only uncomplicated love; their peace and tenderness thawed out each other's winter in a bleak Devon.

But in his mental womb a creature was conceived then born — the White Goddess,

a mythic metaphore of purity and terror. He'd stared into the heart of love and dreamed it barren. Come, mighty Mother, Muse and Mistress, mount his flanks again; he craves your spur to goad reluctant art from misery!

Time would wear out his body, whiten his hair but bring no wisdom; the surgeon's knife would hasten drooling-time. Then he would relive those wild white women of Euripides in the groves of Deiå, pitiless furies come to torment his age, chasing those Jill-O-Lanterns over their perilous mires into oblivion.