Leda by Aldous Huxley

 

It's a set of poems and short prose pieces that Project Gutenberg provided. I have not come across these before. In the title piece, Leda, Huxley offers these lines...

 

The smell of his own sweat

Brought back to mind his Libyan desert-fane

Of mottled granite, with its endless train

Of pilgrim camels, reeking towards the sky

Ammonian incense to his horned deity;

The while their masters worshipped, offering

Huge teeth of ivory, while some would bring

Their Ethiop wives - sleek wine skins of black silk,

Jellied and huge from drinking asses' milk

Through years of tropical idleness, to pray

For offspring (whom he ever sent away

With prayers unanswered, lest their ebon race

Might breed and blacken the earth's comely face).

Do we read Brave New World differently once we know these lines? Or do we ascribe to Huxley merely the adopted assumptions of his times?