Sylvia Townsend Warner, The scapegoat, and the Diodorus phallic thimble quatrain

Here’s a devilishly lovely thing, apparently from 1925, of which your man knows the last couplet:

See the scapegoat, happy beast,
From every personal sin released,
And in the desert, hidden apart,
Dancing with a careless heart.

“Lightly weigh the sins of others.”
See him skip! “Am I my brother’s
Keeper? Oh, never, no, no, no!
Lightly come and lightly go!”

In the town, from sin made free,
Righteous men hold jubilee.
In one desert all alone
The scapegoat dances on and on.

The Living Age was not afaik on sale anywhere convenient, and The Spectator was probably off-limits for a multitude of reasons, so perhaps school rather than family was the slow-flowing conduit.

Another scapegoating conundrum from the troublesome 20s, all of which your man was able to recite:

Diodorus Siculus
Made himself ridiculous,
By thinking thimbles
Were phallic symbols.

Bristol was cited, though I suppose this is a possibility, but still: WTF?

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