THE WORKS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY Vol. II ASCII VERSION
March 4, 1993 e.v. key entry by Bill Heidrick, T.G. of O.T.O.
January 11, 1994 e.v. proofed and conformed to the "Essay Competition Copy"
edition of 1906 e.v. by Bill Heidrick T.G. of O.T.O. Descriptions of
portraits retained, even though they are not in this edition.
(The winner of the competition was J.F.C.Fuller's "The Star in the West")
October 8, 1993 e.v. key entry by Bill Heidrick, T.G. of O.T.O.
January 16, 1994 e.v. proofed and conformed to the "Essay Competition Copy"
edition of 1906 e.v. by Bill Heidrick T.G. of O.T.O.
October 8, 1993 e.v. key entry by Bill Heidrick, T.G. of O.T.O.
January 23, 1994 e.v. proofed and conformed to the "Essay Competition Copy"
edition of 1906 e.v. by Bill Heidrick T.G. of O.T.O.
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THE WORKS OF
ALEISTER CROWLEY
VOLUME II
ESSAY COMPETITION COPY
THE WORKS
OF
ALEISTER CROWLEY
"{variation: WITH PORTRAITS}"
VOLUME II
FOYERS
SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF RELIGIOUS TRUTH
1906
["All rights reserved"]
{ILLUSTRATION ON PAGE FACING AND JUST BEFORE TITLE: in the delux edition:
This is a dark photo of Crowley in his 20s, left side silhouette with part of
neck in light. The head is inclined downward slightly and an open MS is in
hand. Background upper right shows a simple frame on the wall with white
matte and two oblong documents, part of a third just visible at the right
edge. Below this photo is "Aleister Crowley", signature.}
CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.
ORACLES --
PAGE
THE DEATH OF THE DRUNKARD . . . . . 1
A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES . . . . . 1
LINES ON BEING INVITED TO MEET THE PREMIER IN
WALES, SEPTEMBER 1892 . . . . . 1
THE BALLOON . . . . . . . 2
SPOLIA OPIMA . . . . . . . 2
A WELCOME TO JABEZ . . . . . . 3
ELVINA . . . . . . . . 3
ADAPTATION OF "ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS" TO
THE NEEDS OF BRETHREN . . . . . 3
TO MRS. O. ......N C...T . . . . . 5
THE LITTLE HALF-SOVEREIGN . . . . . 5
ODE TO SAPPHO . . . . . . . 6
IN A LESBIAN MEADOW . . . . . . 7
"'TIS PITTY --" . . . . . . . 7
EPILOGUE TO "GREEN ALPS" . . . . . 8
TWO SONNETS IN PRAISE OF A PUBLISHER . . . 8
MY WIFE DIES . . . . . . . 9
ODE TO VENUS CALLIPYGE. . . . . . 9
THE CANNIBALS . . . . . . . 10
THE BLOOD-LOTUS . . . . . . . 12
THE NATIVITY . . . . . . . 14
TRANSLATIONS FROM BAUDELAIRE. . . . . 15
CHALDEAN FOOLS . . . . . . . 19
CALL OF THE SYLPHS . . . . . . 19
INVOCATION. . . . . . . . 20
HYMN TO APOLLO . . . . . . . 22
THE HERMIT'S HYMN TO SOLITUDE . . . . 23 {vA}
ORACLES -- "Continued"
PAGE
THE STORM . . . . . . . . 25
ASSUMPTA CANIDIA. . . . . . . 26
VENUS . . . . . . . . 29
A LITANY . . . . . . . . 30
MARCH IN THE TROPICS . . . . . . 31
NIGHT IN THE VALLEY . . . . . . 32
METEMPSYCHOSIS . . . . . . . 33
ADVICE OF A LETTER . . . . . . 33
ON WAIKIKI BEACH. . . . . . . 33
THE TRIADS OF DESPAIR . . . . . . 34
THE DANCE OF SHIVA . . . . . . 36
SONNET FOR A PICTURE . . . . . . 36
THE HOUSE . . . . . . . . 37
ANIMA LUNAE . . . . . . . 38
"SABBE PI DUKKHAM" . . . . . . 43
DHAMMAPADA. . . . . . . . 44
ST. PATRICK'S DAY, 1902 . . . . . 48
THE EARL'S QUEST. . . . . . . 49
EVE . . . . . . . . . 52
THE SIBYL . . . . . . . . 52
LA COUREUSE . . . . . . . 52
SONNET FOR A PICTURE . . . . . . 52
TO "ELIZABETH" . . . . . . . 53
RONDELS (AT MONTE CARLO) . . . . . 53
IN THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GHIZEH . . . . 53
THE HILLS . . . . . . . . 55
ALICE: AN ADULTERY --
INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR . . . . . 58
WHAT LAY BEFORE --
WHITE POPPY . . . . . . . 61
MESALINE. . . . . . . . 62 {vB}
PAGE
ALICE: AN ADULTERY -- "Continued"
CALIFORNIA . . . . . . . 63
MARGARET. . . . . . . . 63
ALICE: AN ADULTERY . . . . . . 64
THE FIRST DAY . . . . . . . 64
THE SECOND DAY. . . . . . . 65
THE THIRD DAY . . . . . . . 65
THE FOURTH DAY. . . . . . . 65
REINCARNATION . . . . . . . 65
THE FIFTH DAY . . . . . . . 66
THE SIXTH DAY . . . . . . . 66
THE SEVENTH DAY . . . . . . 66
THE EIGHTH DAY. . . . . . . 67
THE NINTH DAY . . . . . . . 67
THE TENTH DAY . . . . . . . 67
THE ELEVENTH DAY . . . . . . 68
THE TWELFTH DAY . . . . . . 68
RED POPPY . . . . . . . 68
THE THIRTEENTH DAY . . . . . . 69
THE FOURTEENTH DAY . . . . . . 70
THE FIFTEENTH DAY . . . . . . 70
THE SIXTEENTH DAY . . . . . . 70
ALICE . . . . . . . . 71
THE SEVENTEENTH DAY . . . . . . 71
LOVE AND FEAR . . . . . . . 72
THE EIGHTEENTH DAY . . . . . . 73
THE NINETEENTH DAY . . . . . . 73
THE TWENTIETH DAY . . . . . . 73
THE TWENTY-FIRST DAY. . . . . . 73
THE TWENTY-SECOND DAY . . . . . 74
THE TWENTY-THIRD DAY. . . . . . 74
THE TWENTY-FOURTH DAY . . . . . 74
THE TWENTY-FIFTH DAY. . . . . . 75
THE TWENTY-SIXTH DAY. . . . . . 75
UNDER THE PALMS . . . . . . 75
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY . . . . . 76
THE TWENTY-EIGHTH DAY . . . . . 77
THE TWENTY-NINTH DAY. . . . . . 77
THE THIRTIETH DAY . . . . . . 77
A DAY WITHOUT A NUMBER . . . . . 78
THE THIRTY-FIRST DAY. . . . . . 78
THE THIRTY-SECOND DAY . . . . . 78
THE THIRTY-THIRD DAY. . . . . . 78 {viA}
PAGE
ALICE: AN ADULTERY -- "Continued"
THE THIRTY-FOURTH DAY . . . . . 79
THE THIRTY-FIFTH DAY. . . . . . 79
THE THIRTY-SIXTH DAY. . . . . . 79
LETHE . . . . . . . . 80
THE THIRTY-SEVENTH DAY . . . . . 80
THE THIRTY-EIGHTH DAY . . . . . 80
THE THIRTY-NINTH DAY. . . . . . 81
THE FORTIETH DAY . . . . . . 81
THE FORTY-FIRST DAY . . . . . . 81
THE FORTY-SECOND DAY. . . . . . 82
AT LAST . . . . . . . . 82
THE FORTY-THIRD DAY . . . . . . 82
THE FORTH-FOURTH DAY. . . . . . 82
THE FORTY-FIFTH DAY . . . . . . 83
THE FORTY-SIXTH DAY . . . . . . 83
THE FORTY-SEVENTH DAY . . . . . 83
THE FORTY-EIGHTH DAY. . . . . . 84
THE FORTY-NINTH DAY . . . . . . 84
THE FIFTIETH DAY --
I. . . . . . . . . 84
II. . . . . . . . . 85
III. . . . . . . . . 85
AFTER . . . . . . . . 85
THE ARGONAUTS --
ACTUS PRIMUS -- JASON . . . . . 86
ACTUS SECUNDUS -- ARGO . . . . . 92
ACTUS TERTIUS -- MEDEA . . . . . 98
ACTUS QUARTUS -- SIRENAE . . . . . 104
ACTUS QUINTUS -- ARIES . . . . . 112
AHAB AND OTHER POEMS --
DIDICACE. . . . . . . . 121
RONDEL . . . . . . . . 121
AHAB --
PART I. . . . . . . . 121
" II. . . . . . . . 124
NEW YEAR, 1903. . . . . . . 127
MELUSINE. . . . . . . . 127
THE DREAM . . . . . . . 128
THE GOD-EATER --
ACT I. . . . . . . . . 130
" II. . . . . . . . . 136 {viB}
PAGE
THE SWORD OF SONG . . . . . . . 140
PRELIMINARY INVOCATION -- NOTHUNG . . . . 141
INTRODUCTION TO "ASCENSION DAY AND PENTECOST" . 141
ASCENSION DAY . . . . . . . 144
PENTECOST . . . . . . . 164
NOTES TO ASCENSION DAY AND PENTECOST --
NOTE TO INTRODUCTION . . . . . 185
NOTES TO ASCENSION DAY . . . . . 190
NOTES TO PENTECOST. . . . . . 203
AMBROSII MAGI HORTUS ROSARUM . . . . . 212
THE THREE CHARACTERISTICS --
I. . . . . . . . . 225
II. . . . . . . . . 226
III. . . . . . . . . 226
IV. . . . . . . . . 226
V. . . . . . . . . 227
VI. . . . . . . . . 227
VII. . . . . . . . . 227
VIII. . . . . . . . . 228
IX. . . . . . . . . 228
X. . . . . . . . . 229
XI. . . . . . . . . 230
XII. . . . . . . . . 231
XIII. . . . . . . . . 231 {viiA}
PAGE
HB:Bet-Resh-Aleph-Shin-Yod-Taw --
AN ESSAY ON ONTOLOGY. . . . . . 223
SCIENCE AND BUDDHISM --
I. . . . . . . . . 244
II. . . . . . . . . 244
III. THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS . . . . . 245
IV. THE THREE CHARACTERISTICS . . . . 246
V. KARMA. . . . . . . . 249
VI. THE TEN FETTERS OR SANYO"G"ANAS . . . 249
VII. THE RELATIVE REALITY OF CERTAIN STATES OF
CONSCIOUSNESS. . . . . . 250
VIII. MAHASATIPA"TTH"ANA . . . . . 252
IX. AGNOSTICISM. . . . . . . 254
X. THE NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH . . . . 256
XI. THE TWILIGHT OF THE GERMANS . . . . 258
XII. THE THREE REFUGES. . . . . . 259
XIII. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . 260
THE EXCLUDED MIDDLE; OR THE SCEPTIC REFUTED . . . 262
TIME . . . . . . . . . 267
EPILOGUE. . . . . . . . . 283 {viiB}
{Full page announcement in the competition edition. Not in all editions.}
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
WE beg to express regret for the delay in issuing Vol. II. As originally made up, it was too big, and had to be recast completely. Mr. Crowley's Works to date will thus be complete in three volumes of this edition.
Advance copies or sets of proofs of Vol. III. will be sent to "bona-fide" competitors on their written application. The volume should be issued in December.
Owing to the severe and continuous illness of the artist to whom the Table of Correspondences was entrusted, we are compelled to delay its issue.
The Essay Competition will definitely close three months from date.
"Oct." 15, 1906.
"Crowley's Works, Vol. II."
ORACLES
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ART<<1>>
1905 {columns commence}
<<1. This volume consists of unpublished poems dating from 1886-1903. Concerning the title Crowley writes, "The sense is of dead leaves drifting in the dusty cave of my mind." He does not seem to have been aware that Coleridge gave the title "Sibylline Leaves" to a similar collection.>>
THE DEATH OF THE DRUNKARD.<<1>>
I.
TERROR, and darkness, and horrid despair!
Agony painted upon the once fair
Brow of the man who refused to give up
The love of the wine-filled, the o'erflowing cup.
"Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging."
No wine in death is his torment assuaging.
II.
. . . . .
. . . . .
Just what the parson had told me when young:
Just what the people in chapel have sung:
"Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging."
. . . . .
"Desunt cetera."
<<1. This, the earliest poem ever written by me, has perished save the above fragment. Its date is 1886. -- A.C.
It should be noted that this fragment is of a wildly revolutionary tendency. It made him the Ibsen of a school where a parson and a chapel were considered with the rest of the non- Plymouth-Brethren world as so many devils let loose from hell.>>
A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES.
In the hospital bed she lay,
Rotting away!
Cursing by night and cursing by day,
Rotting away! {1A}
The lupus is over her face and head,
Filthy and foul and horrid and dread,
And her shrieks they would almost wake the dead;
Rotting away!
In her horrible grave she lay,
Rotting away!
Rotting by night, and rotting by day,
Rotting away!
In the place of her face is a gory hole,
And the worms are gnawing the tissues foul,
And the devil is gloating over her soul,
Rotting away!
LINES ON BEING INVITED TO MEET THE PREMIER IN WALES, SEPTEMBER 1892.
I WILL not shake thy hand, old man,
I will not shake thy hand;
You bear a traitor's brand, old man,
You bear a liar's brand.
Thy talents are profound and wide,
Apparent power to win;
It is not everyone has lied
A nation into sin.
And look thou not so black, my friend,
Nor seam that hoary brow;
Thy deeds are seamier, my friend,
Thy record blacker now. {1B}
Your age and sex forbid, old man,
I need not tell you how,
Or else I'd knock you down, old man,
Like that extremist cow.<<1>>
<<1. Mr. Gladstone was attacked by a cow in Hawarden Park in 1891.>>
You've gained your every seat, my friend,
By perjuring your soul;
You've climbed to Downing Street, my friend,
A very greasy poll.
You bear a traitor's brand, old man,
You bear a liar's brand;
I will "not" shake thy hand, old man,
I will "not" shake thy hand.
["And I didn't."
THE BALLOON.
"Written (at the age of fifteen, and still unsurpassed) while in bed with
measles at Tonbridge in Kent."
FLOATING in the summer air,
What is that for men to see?
Anywhere and everywhere,
Now a bullet, now a tree --
Till we all begin to swear:
What the devil can it be?
See its disproportioned head,
Tiny trunk and limbs lopped bare,
Hydrocephalus the dread
With a surgeon chopping there;
Chopping legs and arms all red
With the sticky lumps of hair.
Like a man in this complaint
Floats this creature in the sky,
Till the gaping rustics faint
And the smirking milkmaids cry,
As the chord and silk and paint,
Wood and iron drifteth by.
Floating in the summer sky
Like a model of the moon: --
How supreme to be so high
In a treacherous balloon,
Like the Kings of Destiny,
All the earth for their spittoon. {2A}
Toads are gnawing at my feet.
Take them off me quick, I pray!
Worms my juicy liver eat.
Take the awful beasts away!
Vipers make my bowels their meat.
Fetch a cunning knife and slay!
Kill the tadpoles in my lung,
And the woodlice in my spine,
And the beast that gnaws my tongue,
And the weasel at my chine,
And the horde of adders young
That around mine entrails twine!
Come, dissect me! Rip the skin!
Tear the bleeding flesh apart!
See ye all my hellish grin
While the straining vitals smart.
Never mind! Go in and win,
Till you reach my gory heart!
While my heart's soft pulse did go,
Devils had it in their bands.
Doctors keep it in a row,
Now, on varnished wooden stands:
And I really do not know
If it is in different hands.
SPOLIA OPIMA.
MY home is set between two ivory towers,
Fresh with the fragrance of a thousand flowers.
And the twin portals of a ruby door,
Portcullissed with the pearls of India's shore,
Loosed with a smile and opened with a kiss,
Bid me a joyous welcome there, I wis.
My home is on the brink of heaven's delight,
But for that endless day a lovelier night
Is in my home, that sunset's arms enfold,
Lit with the mellowness of autumn gold.
. . . . .
Pillowed on linen of the purest white,
Half-hidden by her locks' luxurious night,
Maddened by those soft eyes of melting glow,
Enamoured of that breast of breathing snow,
Caught in the meshes of her fine-spun hair,
Rocked by the beating of her bosom fair, {2B}
Held by her lips too tempting and too warm,
Bewitched by every beauty of her form,
The blush upon her cheek is deeper red,
Half glad, and half repenting what she said.
A moment's struggle, as her form I press: --
One soft sad sigh. Love conquers. I possess.
A WELCOME TO JABEZ.<<1>>
<<1. Jabez Balfour, author of the "Liberator" frauds.>>
"Reprinted from the 'Eastbourne Chronicle.'"
GREAT Liberator, come again,
Thy country needs thee sadly;
In Scotland Yard they all complain
They "want" thee, oh! so badly.
Thou canst not tell the signs and sobs
That for thy presence yearn;
And the great heart of England throbs
With joy at thy return.
For many a year prolong thy stay
By Portland's shady harbour;
And all expenses we will pay --
Especially the barber.
A change of work is rest, they say,
So honest toil shall rest thee;
No fears that thou must go away
Need haunt thee and molest thee.
We pray a level-headed set
Of fellow men, who know thee,
In some small measure grateful yet,
May pay thee what is owed thee.
The joys of single blessedness,
And undisturbed seclusion,
We envy for thee, we confess,
Until thy final fusion.
ELVINA.
"Written at Eastbourne."
"Tune" -- "German Evening Hymn."
WAS thy fault to be too tender?
Was thine error to be weak?
Was my kiss the chief offender
Pressed upon thy blushing cheek? {3A}
Was it sin to press and press thee
Till thy burning lips at last
Madly kissed me? How I bless thee,
Now, for that superb repast!
All-consuming, all-devouring,
All-absorbing, burnt the flame;
Burnt unchecked till, hotly showering,
Passion disregarded Shame!
Was it sin -- that moonlight madness?
Was our passion so accurst?
Sweetness damned to mother Sadness?
Satisfaction to bring Thirst?
Was our love to bring division?
Nay! ten thousand devils! nay!
And a devil in a vision
Hisses as I slumber, "Yea!
"Heaven of your accurst creation
Shall become a hell of fire;
Death for kisses, and damnation
For your love shall God require."
ADAPTATION OF "ONWARD, CHRISTIAN
SOLDIERS" TO THE NEEDS OF BRETHREN.<<1>>
<<1. This astonishing piece of satire was composed after some weeks in the house of a Plymouth Brother. Almost every phrase used therein is a quotation, not a parody.>>
PREFACE.
IN response to many suggestions from dear Brethren, I have adapted a hymn to the wants of the Church. In view of the grossly unscriptural nature of the original hymn (so-called) many changes have been rendered necessary, but I hope and trust that this has been effected without losing the grandeur of the original.<
Let me, however, tell these "wolves in {3B} sheep's clothing," these "clouds without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever (Jude 12,13), that they are "dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters" (Rev. xxii. 15), and again, that they are "fearful and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and idolaters, and all liars" (Rev. xxi. 8), and that they "shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death" (Rev. xxi. 8), "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched" (Mark. ix. 44).
Let me only add that they are "a herd of many swine feeding" (Matt. viii. 30).
"Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" (Matt. xxiii. 33).
And now, beloved brethren, with every prayer that this adaptation may prove of lasting blessing to You all, bringing forth "the fruits of the Spirit" (Gal. v. 22), especially "faith, hope and charity." "But the greatest of these is charity" (1 Cor. xiii. 13).
"ONWARD, PLYMOUTH BRETHREN."
"Chorus."
ONWARD, Plymouth Brethren, marching as to war,
With the cross of jesus trampled on the floor;
Kelly, Lowe or Jewell<<1>> lead against the foe,
Forward into battle, see their followers go.
Onward, Plymouth Brethren, marching as to war,
With the cross of jesus trampled on the floor.
<<1. These and other mentioned are or were great names among the contending "Brethren.">>
At the name of Barton, Raven's host doth flee,
On, M'Arthy's following, on to victory, {4A}
Stoney's scoundrels shiver at Our howls of rage,
Brothers, lift Your voices, Shriek aloud, Rampage!
Like a mighty army moves the Church of god.
Brothers, We are treading where the saints have trod.
We are all divided, fifty bodies We,
Fifty hopes and doctrines, nary charity.
Church and chapel perish! Open Plyms to hell!
But Our kind of Brethren still in safety dwell.
Raven's lot can never 'gainst the lord prevail,
We are his brave followers, you are Satan's tail.
Come then, outside peoples, join Our noble throng!
Blend with Ours your voices in the triumph song!
Glory, praise and honour unto Us alone!
Christians' necks our footstool, Heaven itself Our throne!
"P.S." -- BELOVED BRETHREN, -- The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. For I, like Balaam (in the old legend), was compelled to express our real feelings and not our pretended ones. This, of course, absolutely ruins the adaptation. In fact, I am not certain as to whether it does not rather give us away!
Alas! we are only poor, weak, failing creatures!
Your broken-hearted, broken-winded, broken-kneed brother,
JUDAS CAIAPHAS TRUELOVE.
[The man Truelove was at once put our of fellowship. He will be certainly damned.
-- PILATE CROSSPATCH.] {4B}
TO MRS O...... N C...T.
"Written during the first session of the Licensing Committee of the London
County Council."
I WILL not bring abuse to point my pen,
Nor a sarcastic tongue.
Think only what you might be, before men,
If you were young.
What fierce temptations might not lovers bring
In London's wicked city?
Perhaps you might yourself have one wee fling,
If you were pretty.
What might not hard starvation drive you to,
With Death so near and sure?
Perhaps it might drive even virtuous you,
If you were poor.
But is it just, or grateful to the One
That keeps even you from wrong,
Or even humble to shriek, "Get you gone,
For I am strong"?
Temptation has not touched you, Mrs. C...t!
Forsooth, I do not lie there,
For you are only not the thing you aren't
Through being neither.
And since some fall in Life's tremendous storm,
And you are on your feet,
Were it not better with a bosom warm
And accents sweet
To help to raise (and no man will upbraid you)
Your sisters fallen far?
'Tis vain! God's worst omission -- Heart -- has made you
The thing you are! {5A}
THE LITTLE HALF-SOVEREIGN.<<1>>
<<1. The occasion of this poem was the meeting of the author with a fair and virtuous damsel of pleasant address and conversation. She politely asked him to call at her residence on the following Sunday: but, on his doing so, she straightway demanded half-a-sovereign, and proffered a shameful equivalent. The indignant boy went off and gave vent to his feelings in the above rhymes.>>
RED is the angry sunset,
Murk is the even grey,
Heavy the clouds that hover
Over our Hell to-day.
"Say, in our dark Gomorrah,
Lord, can an angel find
Fifty, but fifty, righteous --
body -- I say not Mind."
Sadly the angel turneth --
"Stay, ere thou fleest, stay;
Canst thou not find me twenty?"
"Nay" is the answer, "nay."
"Are there not ten, bright spirit,
Hidden, nor quickly seen,
Somewhere in Hell's dark alleys,
Somewhere in Walham Green?
"Speak, for I see thy forehead
Sadden in dark denial,
Is there not one that standeth
Tempter and longsome trial?
"Is not a candle burning
Somewhere amid the flame
Scorching the smoke of London
With its eternal shame?
"Is there no gate so stubborn
That shall not find a key,
That with our Sovereign's image
Graven in majesty?" {5B}
Why not the Devil's portrait
Graven in Walham Green?
Why with the bare suggestion
Dare we insult our Queen?
Give me the golden trumpet
Blown at the judgment-day,
Closing the gate of mercy
Over the Cast Away.
Melt me its gold to money,
Coin me that small, small ring
Stamped with the Hoof of Satan,
Bearing the name of King.
Then, in the murky midnight,
Silently lead me down,
Down into Hell's dark portals,
Far in the West of Town.
Then to the shrieks of devils
Writhing in torments keen,
Sing me the song that tells me
Ever of Walham Green.
Sing of the little half-sovereign
Dancing in golden sheen;
Leave me in Hell -- or, better,
Leave me in Walham Green.
ODE TO SAPPHO.
O LESBIAN maiden!
O plumed and snowlike in glory of whiteness!
O mystical brightness
With love-lyrics laden!
Joy's fulness is fainting for passion and sorrow.
To-night melts divine to the dawn of to-morrow,
O Lesbian maiden! {6A}
The flame-tongue of passion
Is lambent and strong;
In mystical fashion
Sucks sweetness from shade,
As the voice of thy song
In the halls of the dead,
Breaking fitful and wild,
Weird waking the slumber of Venus, the sleep of her child,
O Lesbian maiden!
Thy tongue reaches red
On that pillar of might!
Flaming gold from thy head
Is a garland of light
On the forehead of night,
As we lie and behold
All the wonders untold
That the joys of desire
In their secrets enfold,
As the pillars of fire
On the ocean of old!
O Lesbian maiden!
The delight of thy lips
Is the voice of the Spring
That the nightingales sing
Over Winter's eclipse,
While my fingers enring
The white limbs of thy sleep
And my lips suck the lips
Of the house of my dream,
And press daintily deep,
Till the joys are supreme
That thine amorous mouth
On the home of thy love
Would exhaust the fierce drouth
Of the rivers thereof,
Till thy white body quiver
With mystic emotion
As the star-blossoms shiver
On silvery river
Rushed into the ocean!
O Lesbian maiden! {6B}
IN A LESBIAN MEADOW.
I.
UNDER the summer leaves
In the half-light
Love his old story weaves
Far out of sight.
Here we are lone, at last.
Heaven is overcast
Yet with no night.
Ere her immortal wings
Gather the thread of things
Into her might,
Up will the moon arise
Through the black-azure skies:
Birds shall sing litanies
Still of delight.
II.
Let my lips wander where
Tender moss grows,
Where through their dusky air
Beams a red rose.
Where the bee honey sips
Let my desirous lips,
Kissing, unclose
Delicate lips and chaste,
Sweetness divine to taste
While the sun glows;
There in the dusk to dwell
By the sweet water-well
In the wood's deepest dell
Where -- my love knows.
III.
Skies are grown redder far;
Tempest draws nigher;
Dark lowers a single star;
Mars, like the fire!
Fiercer our lips engage;
Limbs, eyes, ears gather rage;
Sharp grows desire. {7A}
Hear thy short bitter cries?
Pity thine agonies?
Loose, though love tire?
Nay, neither hear nor spare;
Frenzy shall mock at prayer;
Torture's red torch shall flare
Till thou expire.
IV.
Stars stud a cloudless sky;
Moon silvers blue;
Breeze is content to die;
Lightly falls dew.
Calm after strain and stress
Now to our weariness
Brings love anew.
Peace brings her balm to us,
Lying as amorous
Still, and as true,
Linked by new mystery,
Lovers confessed. A sigh
Sobs to the happy sky,
"Sorrow, go to!"
"'TIS PITTY ---"
-- FORD.<<1>>
<<1. John Ford, author of "'Tis Pity she's a Whore," a drama of fraternal incest, and other well-known plays.>>
BLOW on the flame!
The charcoal's vaporous fume
Shall hide our shame!
Come, love, within the gloom!
For one last night, sweet sister, be the same;
Come, nestle with me in sweet Death's hot womb!
Two sunny eyes!
And this is all my ruin!
Two gleaming thighs!
And all to my undoing!
Far-swelling curves in ivory rapture rise
Warm and too white -- bethink you of the wooing! {7B}
A kiss of fire;
A touch of passionate yearning
Steals higher and higher --
And kisses are returning!
The strong white grasp draws me still nigher and nigher,
Our fusing forms in one fierce furnace burning!
Fails to us speech
In Love's exultant leaping!
Each merged in each
The golden fruit is reaping!
. . . . . .
Wilt slumber, dear? One last kiss, I beseech!
. . . . . .
Come to us, Death! My love and I are sleeping!
EPILOGUE TO "GREEN ALPS."<<1>>
<<1. A volume which was never issued. MSS. and proofs have been carefully destroyed. Several of the poems in this volume are taken from that, viz. pp. 6-19.>>
FAREWELL, my book, whose words I have not given
One tithe of those fierce fires that in me dwell!
Now, after these long nights that I have striven,
Farewell!
My spirit burns to know, but may not tell,
Whether thy leaves, by autumn breezes driven,
Fly far away beyond the immutable;
Whether thy soul shall find its home in heaven,
Or dart far-flaming through the vaults of hell --
To him that loveth much is much forgiven.
Farewell! {8A}
TWO SONNETS IN PRAISE OF
A PUBLISHER,
WHO SOUGHT TO INFECT OUR YOUTH
WITH HIS NOXIOUS WARES.
The ordure of this goat, who is called "Master Lenonard." -- ELIPHAZ
LEVI.
He's the man for muck. -- BROWNING.
I.
SMALL coffin-worms that burrow in thy brain
Writhe with delight; thy rotten body teems
With all infesting vermin, as beseems
The mirror of an obscene mind. In vain
Thy misbegotten brutehood shirks the pain
Of its avenging leprosies: death steams
In all thy rank foul atmosphere: the gleams
Of phosphorescent putrefaction wane.
Thy sordid hands reach through the filth to snatch
The offal money of a prurient swarm.
Thy liar's tongue licks liquid dung to hatch
From fetid ulcers with its slimy warm
Venom some fouler vermin, in their nest
Thy rotten heart and thy polluting breast!
II.
Egg of the Slime! Thy loose abortive lips
Mouth hateful things: thy shifty bloodshot eyes
Lurk craftily to snare some carrion prize,
The dainty morsel whence the poison drips
Unmarked: the masked infamy that slips
Into an innocent maw: corrupter wise!
Sly worm of hell! that close and cunning lies
With sucking tentacles for finger-tips.
Earth spits on thee, contagious Caliban!
Hell spits on thee; her sin is spiritual.
Only the awful slime and excrement
That sin sheds off will own thee for a man.
Only the worms in dead men's bowels that crawl
To lick a loathlier brother are content. {8B}
MY WIFE DIES.
THE sun of love shone through my love's deep eyes
And made a rainbow of her tender tears,
And on her cheeks I saw a blush arise
When her lips opened to say, loverwise,
"I love" -- and light broke through the cloud of fears
That hid her eyes.
The storm of passion woke in her red lips,
When first they clung to mine and rested there;
Lightnings of love were eager to eclipse
That earlier sunshine, and her whole soul clips
My soul -- I kissed out life, within her hair
Upon her lips.
We parted lips from lips and soul from soul
To new strange passions in unholy lands,
Where love's breath chars and scorches like a coal.
So she is dead to-day -- the sweet bells toll
A lost, lost soul, a soul in Satan's bands,
A lost, lost soul!
ODE TO VENUS CALLIPYGE.<<1>>
<<1. A statue in Naples. Callipyge means "having beautiful buttocks.">>
WHERE was light when the body came
Out of the womb of a perished prayer?
Where was life when the sultry air,
Hot with the lust of night and shame,
Brooded on dust, when thy shoulders bare
Shone on the sea with a sudden flame
Into all Time to abundant fame?
"Daughter of Lust by the foam of the sea!"
"Mother of flame! Sister of shame!"
"Tiger that Sin nor her son cannot tame!"
"Worship to thee! Glory to thee!"
"Venus Callipyge, mother of me." {9A}
Fruitless foam of a sterile sea,
Wanton waves of a vain desire,
Maddening billows flecked with fire,
Storms that lash on the brine, and flee,
Dead delights, insatiate ire
Broke like a flower to the birth of thee,
Venus Callipyge, mother of me!
Deep wet eyes that are violet-blue!
Haggard cheeks that may blush no more!
Body bruised daintily, touch of gore
Where the sharp fierce teeth have bitten through
The olive skin that thy sons adore,
That they die for daily, are slain anew
By manifold hate; for their tale is few.
Few are thy sons, but as fierce as dawn.
Sweet are the seconds, weary the days.
Nights? Ah! thine image a thousand ways
Is smitten and kissed on the fiery lawn
Where the wash of the waves of thy native bays
Laps weary limbs, that of thee have drawn
Laughter and fire for their souls in pawn.
O thy strong sons! they are dark as night,
Cruel and barren and false as the sea.
They have cherished Hell for the love of thee,
Filled with thy lust and abundant might,
Filled with the phantom desire to free
Body and soul from the sound and sight
Of a world and a God that doth not right.
O thy dark daughters! their breasts are slack,
Their lips so large and as poppies red;
They lie in a furious barren bed;
They lie on their faces; their eyelids lack
Tears, and their cheeks are as roses dead;
White are their throats, but upon the back
Red blood is clotted in gouts of black. {9B}
All on their sides are the wounds of lust
Wet, from the home of their auburn hair
Down to the feet that we find so fair;
Where the red sword has a secret thrust,
Pain, and delight, and desire they share.
Verily pain! and thy daughters trust
Thou canst bid roses spring out of dust.
Mingle, ye children of such a queen,
Mingle, and meet, and sow never a seed!
Mingle, and tingle, and kiss, and bleed
With the blood of the life of the Lampsacene,<<1>>
With the teeth that know never a pitiful deed
But fret and foam over with kisses obscene --
Mingle and weep for what years have been.
<<1. Priapus.>>
Never a son nor a daughter grow
From your waste limbs, lest the goddess weep;
Fill up the ranks from the babes that sleep
Far in the arms of a god of snow.
Conquer the world, that her throne may keep
More of its pride, and its secret woe
Flow through all earth as the rivers flow.
Which of the gods is like thee, our queen?
Venus Callipyge, nameless, nude,
Thou with the knowledge of all indued,
Secrets of life and the dreams that mean
Loves that are not, as are mortals', hued
All rose and lily, but linger unseen,
Passion-flowers purpled, garlands of green!
Who like thyself shall command our ways?
Who has such pleasures and pains for hire?
Who can awake such a mortal fire
In the veins of a man, that deathly days
Have robbed of the masteries of desire?
Who can give garlands of fadeless bays
Unto the sorrow and pain we praise? {10A}
Yea, we must praise, though the deadly shade
Fall on the morrow, though fires of hell
Harrow our vitals; a miracle
Springs at thy kisses, for thou hast made
Anguish and sorrow desirable;
Torment of hell as the leaves that fade
Quickly forgotten, despised, decayed.
They are decayed, but thou springest again,
Mother of mystery, barren, who bearest
Flowers of most comeliest children, who wearest
Wounds for delight, whose desire shall stain
Star-space with blood as the price thou sharest
Sweet with thy lovers, whose passing pain
Ripens to marvellous after-gain.
Thou art the fair, the wise, the divine!
Thou art our mother, our goddess, our life!
Thou art our passion, our sorrow, our strife!
Thou, on whose forehead no lights ever shine,
Thou, our redeemer, our mistress, our wife,
Thou, barren sister of deathlier brine,
Venus Callipyge, mother of mine!
"Daughter of lust by the foam of the sea!"
"Mother of flame! Sister of shame!"
"Tiger that Sin nor her son cannot tame!"
"Worship to thee! Glory to thee!"
"Venus Callipyge, mother of me."
THE CANNIBALS.
ALL night no change, no whisper. Scarce a breath,
But lips closed hard upon the cup of death
To drain its sweetest poison. Scarce a sigh
Beats the dead hours out; scarce a melody {10B}
Of measured pulses quickened with the blood
Of that desire which pours its deadly flood
Through soul and shaken body; scarce a thought,
But sense through spirit most divinely wrought
To perfect feeling; only through the lips
Electric ardour kindles, flashes, slips
Through all the circle to her lips again,
And thence, unwavering, flies to mine, to drain
All pleasure in one draught. No whispered sigh;
No change of breast; love's posture perfectly
Once gained, we change no more. The fever grows
Hotter or cooler, as the night wind blows
Fresh gusts of passion on the outer gate.
But we, in waves of frenzy, concentrate
Our thirsty mouths on that hot drinking cup,
Whence we may never suck the nectar up
Too often or too hard; fresh fire invades
Our furious veins, and the unquiet shades
Of night make noises in the darkened room.
Yet, did I raise my head, throughout the gloom
I might behold thine eyes as red as fire
A tigress maddened with supreme desire;
White arms that clasp me; fervent breast that glides
An eager snake, about my breast and sides;
Teeth keen to bite, red tongue that never tires,
And lips ensaguine with unfed desires,
A very beast of prey; hot hands caress,
And violent breath that surfeits not excess.
But raise no head! I know thee, breast and thigh,
Lips, hair, and eyes, and mouth: I will not die
But thou come with me o'er the gate of death.
So, bloody and body furious with breath
That pants through foaming kisses, let us stay
Gripped hard together to kiss life away,
Mouths drowned in murder, never satiate,
Kissing away the hard decrees of Fate,
Kissing insatiable in mad desire,
Kisses whose agony may never tire,
Kissing the gates of hell, the sword of God,
Each unto each a serpent or a rod, {11A}
A well of wine and fire, each unto each,
Whose lips are fain convulsively to reach
A higher heaven, a deeper hell. Ah! day
So soon to dawn, delight to snatch away!
Damned day, whose sunlight fins us as with wine
Drunken, with lust made manifest divine
Devils of darkness, servants unto hell --
Yea, king and queen of Sheol, terrible
Above all fiends and furies, hating more
The high Jehovah, loving Baal Peor,
Our father and our love and our god!
Yea, though he lift his adamantine rod
And pierce us through, how shall his anger tame
Fire that glows fiercer for the brand of shame
Thrust in it; so, we who are all fire,
One dull red flare of devilish desire,
The God of Israel shall not quench with tears,
Nor blood of martyrs drawn from myriad spheres,
Nor watery blood of Christ; that blood shall boil
With all the fury of our hellish toil;
His veins shall dry with heat; his bones shall bleach
Cold and detested, picked of dogs, on each
Dry separate dunghill of burnt Golgotha.
But we will wrest from heaven a little star,
The Star of Bethlehem, a lying light
Fit for our candle, and by devils' might
Fix in the vast concave of hell for us
To lume its ghastly shadows murderous,
That in the mirror of the lake of fire
We may behold the image of Desire
Stretching broad wings upon us, and may leap
Each upon other, till our bodies weep
Thick sweet salt tears, till, perfected of shames,
They burn to one another as the flames
Of our hell fuse us into one wild soul:
Then, one immaculate divinest whole,
Plunge, fire, within all fire, dive far to death;
Till, like king Satan's sympathetic breath,
Burn on us as a voice from far above
Strange nameless elements of fire and love;
And we, one mouth to kiss, one soul to lure,
For ever wedded, one, divine, endure {11B}
Far from sun, sea, and spring, from love or light,
Imbedded in impenetrable night;
Deeper than ocean, higher than the sky,
Vaster than petty loves that dream and die,
Insatiate, angry, terrible for lust,
Who shrivel God to adamantine dust
By our fierce gaze upon him, who would strive
Under our wrath, to flee away, to dive
Into the deep recesses of his heaven.
But we, one joy, one love, one shame for leaven,
Quit hope and life, quit fear and death and love,
Implacable as God, desired above
All loves of hell or heaven, supremely wed,
Knit in one soul in one delicious bed
More hot than hell, more wicked than all things,
Vast in our sin, whose unredeeming wings
Rise o'er the world, and flap for lust of death,
Eager as any one that travaileth;
So in our lust, the monstrous burden borne
Heavy within the womb, we wait the morn
Of its fulfilment. Thus eternity
Wheels vain wings round us, who may never die
But cling as hard as serpent's wedlock is,
One writhing glory, an immortal kiss.
THE BLOOD-LOTUS.
THE ashen sky, too sick for sleep, makes my face grey; my senses swoon.
Here, in the glamour of the moon, will not some pitying godhead weep
For cold grey anguish of her eyes, that look to God, and look in vain,
For death, the anodyne of pain, for sleep, earth's trivial paradise?
Sleep I forget. Her silky breath no longer fans my ears; I dream
I float on some forgotten stream that hath a savour still of death, {12A}
A sweet warm smell of hidden flowers whose heavy petals kiss the sun,
Fierce tropic poisons every one that fume and sweat through forest hours.
They grow in darkness; heat beguiles their sluggish kisses; in the wood
They breathe no murmur that is good, and Satan in their blossom smiles.
They murder with the old perfume that maddens all men's blood; we die
Fresh from some corpse-clothed memory, some secret redolence of gloom,
Some darkling murmurous song of lust quite strange to man and beast and
bird,
Silent in power, not overheard by any snake that eats the dust.
No crimson-hooded viper knows; no silver-crested asp has guessed
The strange soft secrets of my breast; no leprous cobra shall disclose
The many-seated, multiform, divine, essential joys that these
Dank odours bring, that starry seas wash white in vain; intense and warm
The scents fulfil; they permeate all lips, all arteries, and fire
New murmured music on the lyre that throbs the horrors they create.
Omniscient blossom! Is thy red slack bosom fresher for my kiss?
Are thy loves sharper? Hast thou bliss in all the sorrow of the dead?
Why art thou paler when the moon grows loftier in the troublous sky?
Why dost thou beat and heave when I press lips of fire, hell's princeliest
boon,
To thy mad petals, green and gold like angels' wings, when as a flood
God's essence fills them, and the blood throughout their web grows icy
cold? {12B}
To thy red centre are my eyes held fast and fervent, as at night
Some sad miasma lends a light of strange and silent blasphemies
To lure a soul to hell, to draw some saint's charred lust, to tempt, to
win
Another sacrifice to sin, another poet's heart to gnaw
With dubious remorse. Ho! flame of torturing flower-love! sacrament
Of Satan, triple element of mystery and love and shame,
Green, gold, and crimson, in my heart you strive with Jesus for its realm,
While Sorrow's tears would overwhelm the warriors of either part.
Jesus would lure me: from His side the gleaming torrent of the spear
Withdraws, my soul with joy and fear waits for sweet blood to pour its
tide
Of warm delight -- in vain! so cold, so watery, so slack it flows,
It leaves me moveless as a rose, albeit her flakes are manifold.
He hath no scent to drive men mad; no mystic fragrance from his skin
Sheds a loose hint of subtle sin such as the queen Faustina had.
Thou drawest me. Thy golden lips are carven Cleopatra wise.
Large, full, and moist, within them lies the silver rampart, whence there
slips
That rosy flame of love, the spring of blood at my light bidding spilt;
And thy desires, if aught thou wilt, are softer at my suffering.
Fill up with Death Life's loving-cup! Give me the knowledge, me the power
For some new sin one little hour, provoking Hell to belch us up. {13A}
So in some damned abyss of woe thy chant should dazzle as of old,
Thy kisses burn like molten gold, thy visions swing me to and fro.
Strange fascinations whirl and wind about my spirit lying coils;
Thy charm enticeth, for the spoils of victory, all an evil mind.
Thy perfume doth confound my thought, new longings echo, and I crave
Doubtful liaisons with the grave and loves of Parthia for sport.
I think perhaps no longer yet, but dream and lust for stranger things
Than ever sucked the lips of kings, or fed the tears of Mahomet.
Quaint carven vampire bats, unseen in curious hollows of the trees,
Or deadlier serpents coiled at ease round carcases of birds unclean;
All wandering changeful spectre shapes that dance in slow sweet measure
round
And merge themselves in the profound, nude women and distorted apes
Grotesque and hairy, in their rage more rampant than the stallion steed;
There is no help: their horrid need on these pale women they assuage.
Wan breasts too pendulous, thin hands waving so aimlessly, they breathe
Faint sickly kisses, and inweave my head in quiet burial-bands.
The silent troops recede; within the fiery circle of their glance
Warm writhing woman-horses dance a shameless Bacchanal of sin;
Foam whips their reeking lips, and still the flower-witch nestles to my
lips,
Twines her swart lissome legs and hips, half serpent and half devil, till
{13B}
My whole self seems to lie in her; her kisses draw my breath; my face
Loses its lustre in the grace of her quick bosom; sinister
The raving spectres reel; I see beyond my Circe's eyes no shape
Save vague cloud-measures that escape the dance's whirling witchery.
Their song is in my ears, that burn with their melodious wickedness;
But in her heart my sorceress has songs more sinful, that I learn
As she sings slowly all their shame, and makes me tingle with delight
At new debaucheries, whose might rekindles blood and bone to flame.
The circle gathers. negresses howl in the naked dance, and wheel
On poinard-blades of poisoned steel, and weep out blood in agonies;
Strange beast and reptile writhe; the song grows high and melancholy now;
The perfume savours every brow with lust unutterable of wrong.
Clothed with my flower-bride I sit, a harlot in a harlot's dress,
And laugh with careless wickedness that strews the broad road of the Pit
With vine and myrtle and thy flower, my harlot-maiden, who for man
Now first forsakest thy leman, thy Eve, my Lilith, in this bower
Which we indwell, a deathless three, changeless and changing, as the pyre
Of earthly love becomes a fire to heat us through eternity.
I have forgotten Christ at last; he may look back, grown amorous,
And call across the gulf to us, and signal kisses through the vast: {14A}
We shall disdain, clasp faster yet, and mock his newer pangs, and call
With stars and voices musical, jeers his touched heart shall not forget.
I would have pitied him. This flower spits blood upon him; so must I
Cast ashes through the misty sky to mock his faded crown of power,
And with our laughter's nails refix his torn flesh faster to the wood,
And with more cruel zest make good the shackles of the Crucifix.
So be it! In thy arms I rest, lulled into silence by the strain
Of sweet love-whispers, while I drain damnation from thy tawny breast:
Nor heed the haggard sun's eclipse, feeling thy perfume fill my hair,
And all thy dark caresses wear sin's raiment on thy melting lips --
Nay, by the witchcraft of thy charms to sleep, nor dream that God survive;
To wake, this only to contrive -- fresh passions in thy naked arms;
And, at that moment when thy breath mixes with mine, like wine, to call
Each memory, one merged into all, to kiss, to sleep, to mate with death!
THE NATIVITY.
CHRISTMAS 1897.
THE Virgin lies at Bethlehem.
(Bring gold and frankincense and myrrh!)
The root of David shoots a stem.
(O Holy Spirit, pity her!)
She lies alone amid the kine.
(Bring gold and frankincense and myrrh!)
The straw is fragrant as with wine.
(O Holy Spirit, pity her!) {14B}
Mine host protects an honest roof.
(Bring gold and frankincense and myrrh!)
His spouse sniffs loud and holds aloof.
(O Holy Spirit, pity her!)
The Angel has not come again.
(Bring gold and frankincense and myrrh!)
Why did God deal her out such pain?
(O Holy Spirit, pity her!)
Her love-hours held the Holy Ghost.
(Bring gold and frankincense and myrrh!)
Where is he now she needs him most?
(O Holy Spirit, pity her!)
Joseph drinks deep outside the inn.
(Bring gold and frankincense and myrrh!)
She is half hated by her kin.
(O Holy Spirit, pity her!)
The agony increases fast.
(Bring gold and frankincense and myrrh!)
Each spasm is a holocaust.
(O Holy Spirit, pity her!)
There are three kings upon the road.
(Bring gold and frankincense and myrrh!)
She hath thrice cursed the name of God.
(O Holy Spirit, pity her!)
There stands her star above the sky.
(Bring gold and frankincense and myrrh!)
She hath thrice prayed that she may die.
(O Holy Spirit, pity her!)
Her bitter anguish hath sufficed.
(Bring gold and frankincense and myrrh!)
She is delivered of the Christ.
(The angels come to worship her.)
TRANSLATIONS FROM BAUDELAIRE.<<1>>
<<1. The original metres are in all cases closely imitated.>>
CAIN ET ABEL.
I.
SEED of Abel, eat, drink, sleep!
God shall smile complaisantly.
Seed of Cain, in the muck-heap
Crawl and miserably die! {15A}
Seed of Abel, thine oblation
Sweet to Seraphim doth smell:
Seed of Cain, shall thy damnation
Ever find the bounds of Hell?
Race of Abel, see thy seed
And thy cattle flourish more!
Race of Cain, for hunger's need,
Like a dog thy bowels roar.
Seed of Abel, warm thy paunch
At the patriarchal hall!
Seed of Cain, on shivering haunch
Squat in cave, despised jackal!
Seed of Abel, love and swarm!
So thy gold shall also grow.
Seed of Cain, heart over-warm,
Guard thy lust and crush it low!
Seed of Abel, grow, well-faring
Like the bugs in forest beats!
Seed of Cain, at bay, despairing,
Throw thy children on the streets!
II.
Seed of Abel, carrion
Shall make fat the smoking soil.
Seed of Cain, on thee has none
Laid sufficient woes of toil.
Seed of Abel, this thy shame --
To the boar-spear yields the sword.
Seed of Cain, to heaven flame,
And to earth cast Heaven's Lord!
THE LITANY OF SATAN.
O thou, of Angels fairest and most wise,
God by Fate's treachery shorn of liturgies!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery!
O Prince of Exile, Sufferer of wrong,
Whose vengeance, conquered, rises triply strong!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery! {15B}
Who knowest all, of under earth the king,
Familiar healer of man's suffering!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery!
Who to the leper, even the cursed pariah,
Hast taught by love the taste of heavenly fire!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery!
Thou who on Death, thine old and strong leman,
Begottest Hope -- a charming madwoman!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery!
Who knowest in which caves of envious lands
God has hid precious stones with jealous hands!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery!
Thou whose clear eye discerns the arsenals deep,
Where the small folk of buried metals sleep!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery!
Whose broad hand hides the giddy precipice
From sleepers straying about some edifice!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery!
Whose skill makes supple the old bones, at needs,
Of the belated sot, 'mid surging steeds!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery!
Who taught frail man, to make his suffering lighter,
Consoling, to mix sulphur with salt nitre!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery!
O subtle complice, who as blatant Beast
Brandest vile Croesus, him that pities least!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery!
Who in girls' eyes and hearts implantest deep
Lust for the wound, the twain that wound bids weep!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery!
Staff of the exiled, the inventor's spark,
Confessor of hanged men and plotters dark!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery! {16A}
Adopted sire of whom black wrath and power
Of God the Father chased from Eden Bower!
O Satan, have pity of my long misery!
FEMMES DAMNEES.
Like pensive cattle couched upon the sand
They turn their eyes to ocean's distant ring;
Feet seek each other, hand desires hand,
With langour sweet and bitter shuddering.
Some, hearts love-captured with long whispering,
Spell out the love of timorous childhood,
Where babbles in deep dell the gentle spring,
And dive among the young trees of the green wood.
Other, like sisters, slowly, with grave eyes,
Cross the rocks filled with apparitions dim,
Where Antony beheld, like lavers, rise
The nude empurpled breasts that tempted him.
Some, by the dying torch-light call thy name,
In the dumb hollow of old pagan fanes,
To succour feverish shriekings of fierce flame,
O Bacchus, soother of men's ancient pains.
Others, whose throat is thirsty for breast-blood,
To hide a whip 'neath flowing robes are fain,
Mingling in lonely night and darksome wood
The foam of pleasure and the tears of pain.
O virgins, demons, monsters, O martyrs!
Great souls contemptuous of reality!
Seekers for the Infinite, satyrs, worshippers,
Now mad with cries, now torn with agony!
You whom my soul has followed to your hell,
Poor sisters, more beloved than wept by me,
For your fierce woes, your lusts insatiable,
And the urns of love that fill the hearts of ye! {16B}
CARRION.
Recall, my soul, the sight we twain have looked upon
This summer morning soft and sweet,
Beside the path, an infamous foul carrion,
Stones for its couch a fitting sheet.
Its legs stretched in the air, like wanton whores
Burning with lust, and reeking venom sweated,
Laid open, carelessly and cynically, the doors
Of belly rank with exhalations foetid.
Upon this rottenness the sun shone deadly straight
As if to cook it to a turn,
And give back to great Nature hundredfold the debt
That, joining it together, she did earn.
The sky beheld this carcase most superb outspread
As spreads a flower, itself, whose taint
Stank so supremely strong, that on the grass your head
You thought to lay, in sudden faint.
The flies swarmed numberless on this putrescent belly,
Whence issued a battalion
Of lavrae, black, that flowed, a sluggish liquid jelly,
Along this living carrion.
All this was falling, rising as the eager seas,
Or heaving with strange crepitation --
Was't that the corpse, swollen out with a lascivious breeze,
Was yet alive by copulation?
And all the carcase now sounded strange symphonies
Like wind, or running water wan,
Or grain that winnower shakes and turns, whene'er he plies
With motion rhythmical his fan. {17A}
The shapes effaced themselves; no more their images
Were aught but dreams, a sketch too slow
To tint the canvas, that the artist finishes
By memory that does not go.
Behind the rocks a bitch unquietly gazed on
Ourselves with eye of wrathful woe,
Watching her time to return unto the skeleton
For tit-bits that she had let go.
Yet you are like to it, this dung, this carrion,
To this infection doubly dire,
Star of my eyes that are, and still my nature's sun,
You, O my angel! You, my own desire!
Yes! such will you be, queen, in graces that surpass,
Once the last sacraments are said;
When you depart beneath wide-spreading blooms and grass
To rot amid the bones of many dead.
Then, O my beauty! tell the worms, who will devour
With kisses all of you to dust;
That I have kept the form and the essential power
Divine of my distorted lust.
THE DENIAL OF ST. PETER.
I.
WHAT makes God then of all the curses deep
That daily reach his Seraphim divine?
Like to a tyrant gorged with meat and wine,
Our blasphemous music lulleth him to sleep.
II.
Tears of the martyrs, and saints tortured,
Must prove intoxicating symphonies,
Since, spite of blood-price paid to gain them ease,
The heavens therewith are not yet satiated. {17B}
III.
Jesus! recall Gethsemane afresh,
Where thy simplicity his pity sought
Who in his heaven heard, and mocked for nought,
Coarse hangmen pierce with nails thy living flesh.
IV.
When on thy godhead spat the virulence
Of scum of soldiery and kitchen-knaves;
When thou didst feel the thorns pierce bloody graves
Within thy brain where Manhood burnt intense;
V.
When thy bruised broken body's horrid weight
Racked thy stretched arms, that sweat and blood enow
Coursed down the marble paleness of thy brow,
Lift up on high, a butt for all men's hate: --
VI.
Dreamedst thou then of those triumphant hours
When, that the eternal promise might abide,
Thy steed a mild she-ass, thou once didst ride
On roads o'erstrewn with branches and fresh flowers;
VII.
When, thy heart beating high with hope and pride,
Thou didst whip out those merchants vile with force,
At last the master? Did not keen remorse
Bite thy soul ere the spear had pierced thy side?
VIII.
I, certes, I shall gladly quit this hell
Where dream and action walk not hand-in-hand!
May I use the brand and perish by the brand!
Saint Peter denied Jesus. He did well. {18A}
GLOIRE ET LOUANGE.
GLORY and praise to thee, O Satan, in the height
Of Heaven, where thou didst rule, and in the night
Of Hell, where conquered, dost dream silently!
Grant that one day my soul 'neath Knowledge-Tree
Rest near thine own soul, when from thy forehead
Like a new temple all its branches spread.
THE FOUNT OF BLOOD.
SOMETIMES I think my blood in waves appears,
Springs as a fount with music in its tears;
I hear it trickling with long murmuring sound,
But search myself in vain to find the wound.
Across the city, as in closed meres,
Making the pavements isles, it disappears;
In it all creatures' thirst relief hath found;
All nature in its scarlet hue is drowned.
I have often prayed these fickle wines to weep
For one day Lethe on my threatening fear --
Wine makes the ear more sharp, the eye more clear.
I have sought in Love forgetfulness and sleep --
My love's a bed of needles made to pierce,
That drink be given to these women fierce!
LA BEATRICE.
AS I one day to nature made lament
In burnt-up lands, calcined of nutriment,
As in my musing thought's vague random dart
I slowly poised my dagger o'er my heart,
I saw in full noon o'er my forehead form
A deathly cloud far pregnant with the storm,
That bore a flock of devils vicious
Most like to dwarfs cruel and curious. {18B}
Coldly they set themselves to gaze on me,
Like passers-by a madman that they see --
I heard them laugh and chuckle, as I think,
Now interchange a signal, now a wink.
"Let us at leisure view this caricature,
This shade of Hamlet mimicking his posture,
The doubting look and hair flung wide to wind!
A pity, eh? to see this merry hind,
This beggar, actor out of work, this droll,
Because he plays artistically his role,
Wishing to interest in his chanted woes
Brooks, eagles, crickets, every flower that blows,
And even to us the rubric old who made
To howl out publicly his wild tirade?"
I could have (for my pride is mountains high,
And dominates cloud tops or demon's cry) --
I could have simply turned my sovereign head,
Had I not seen, 'mid their obscene herd led,
Crime, that the sun has not yet brought to book,
Queen of my spirit with the peerless look.
And she laughed with them at my dark distress,
And turned them oft some dirtiest caress.
LE VIN DU SOLITAIRE.
THE strange look of a woman of the town,
Who glides toward us like the rays that slake
the wave-wrought moon within the trembling lake,
Where she would dip her careless beauty down;
The last crown unto which a gambler's fingers cling;
A libertine caress from hungry Adeline;
The sound of music, lulling, silver, clean,
Like the far cry of human suffering:
All these, deep bottle! are of little worth
Beside the piercing balm thy fertile girth
Holds in the reverent poet's lifted soul;
To him thou givest youth, and hope, and life,
And pride, this treasure of all beggar's strife
That gives us triumph, Godhead, for its dole. {19A}
CHALDEAN FOOLS.
CHALDEAN fools, who prayed to stars and fires,
Believed there was a God who punished liars.
These gods of theirs they often would invoke,
Apparently with excellent effect:
They trusted to escape the penal smoke
By making Truth the trade-mark of their sect.
How fortunate that we are Christian Folk,
And know these notions to be incorrect!
CALL OF THE SYLPHS.<<1>>
<<1. This Fragment is a paraphrase of one of the elemental invocations given in Dr. Dee's famous record of magical working. -- A.C.>>
BEHOLD, I am; a circle on whose hands
The twelvefold Kingdom of my Godhead stands.
Six are the mighty seats of living breath,
The rest sharp sickles, or the horns of death,
Which are, and are not, save in mine own power.
Sleep they? They rise at mine appointed hour.
I made ye stewards in the primal day,
And set your thrones in my celestial way.
I gave ye power above the moving time
That all your vessels to my crown might climb.
From all the corners of your fortress caves
Ye might invoke me, and your wise conclaves
Should pour the fires of increase, life and birth,
Continual dewfall to the thirsty earth.
Thus are ye made of Justice and of Truth,
The Souls of Fury, and the Lords of Ruth.
In His great Name, your God's, I say, arise!
Behold! His mercies murmur in the skies.
His Name is mighty in us to the end.
In Him we cry: Move, answer, and descend!
Apply yourselves to us; arise! For why?
We are the Wisdom of your God most high! {19B}
INVOCATION.<<1>>
<<1.Versified from the Manuscript called "HB:Shin of HB:Shin in Z2." -- A.C.
Z2 was a MS. of magical formulae given to advanced members of the Zelator Adeptus Minor grade in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.>>
O SELF Divine! O Living Lord of Me!
Self-shining flame, begotten of Beyond!
Godhead immaculate! Swift tongue of fire,
Kindled from that immeasurable light
The boundless, the immutable. Come forth,
My God, my lover, spirit of my heart,
Heart of my soul, white virgin of the Dawn,
My Queen of all perfection, come thou forth
From thine abode beyond the Silences
To me the prisoner, me the mortal man,
Shrined in this clay: come forth, I say, to me,
Initiate my quickened soul; draw near,
And let the glory of thy godhead shine
Through all the luminous aethers of the air
Even to earth, thy footstool; unto me
Who by these sacred invocations draw
The holy influence within myself,
To strengthen and to purify my will
And holy aspiration to thy Life.
Purge me and consecrate until my heart
Burn through the very limit of the veil,
And rend it at the hour of sacrifice
That even the secret pillar in the midst
May be made manifest to mortal eyes.
Behold upon my right hand and my left
The mighty pillars of amazing fire,
And terrible cloud. Their tops in Heaven are veiled,
Whereon the everlasting lamps rejoice.
Their pedestals upon the Universe
Are set in rolling clouds, in thunder-gusts,
In vivid flame, and tempest: but to me,
Balanced between them, burns the holy light
Veilless, one liquid wheel of sacred fire,
Whirling immutably within itself
And formulating in the splendid sun
Of its white moony radiance, in the light
Of its immaculate eternity,
Thy glorious vision! O thou Starlight face,
And crowned diamond of my self and soul, {20A}
Thou Queenly Angel of my Higher Will,
Form in my spirit a more subtle fire
Of God, that I may comprehend the more
The sacred purity of thy divine
Essence! O Queen, O Goddess of my life,
Light unbegotten, Scintillating spark
Of the All-Self! O holy, holy Spouse
Of my most godlike thought, come forth! I say,
And manifest unto thy worshipper
In more candescent fulgours! Let the air
Ring with the passion of my holy cry
Unto the Highest. For persistent will
And the continual fervour of my soul
Have led me to this hour of victory,
This throne of splendour. O thou Beauty's Self,
Thou holiest Crown thus manifest to me,
Come forth, I say, come forth! With mightier cries
Than Jesus uttered on the quivering cross:
"Eli, Eli, lamma sabachthani,"
Thee, thee, thee only I invoke! O Soul
Of my own spirit, let thy fervid eyes
Give me their light: for thou dost stand, as God
Among the Holy Ones. Before the gods
Thy music moves, coequal, coeterne,
Thou, Lord of Light and Life and Love! Come forth!
I call thee in the holiest name of Him
Lord of the Universe, and by His Name,
Jesus, the Godhead passing through the gates
Of Hell, that even there the rescuers
Might find the darkness, and proclaim the light;
For I invoke thee by the sacred rites
And secret words of everlasting power:
By the swift symbol of the Golden Dawn
And all its promise, by the Cross of Fire,
And by the Gleaming Symbol: by the Rose
And Cross of Light and Life: the holy Ankh,
The Rose of Ruby and the Cross of Gold.
By these I say, Come forth! my holy Spouse,
And make me one with thine abundant ray {20B}
Of the vast ocean of the unmanifest
Limitless Negativity of Light
Flowing, in Jesus manifest, through space,
In equilibrium, upon the world
Illumined by the White Supernal Gleam
Through the red Cross of Calvary: Come forth,
My actual Self! Come forth, O dazzling one,
Wrapped in the glory of the Holy Place
Whence I have called thee: Come thou forth to me,
And permeate my being, till my face
Shine with thy light reflected, till my brows
Gleam with thy starry symbol, till my voice
Reach the Ineffable: Come forth, I say,
And make me one with thee: that all my ways
May glitter with the holy influence,
That I may be found worthy at the end
To sacrifice before the Holy Ones:
That in thy Glory, Strength, and Majesty,
And by the Beauty and Harmony of Heaven
That fills its fountains at the Well of Life,
I may be mighty in the Universe.
Yea, come thou forth, I mightily conjure
Thy radiant Perfection, to compel
All Spirits to be subject unto Me,
That every spirit of the Firmament
And of the Ether, and upon the Earth
And under Earth, and of the stable land,
Of water, of the whirling of the air,
Of the all-rushing fire; and every Spell
And scourge of God the Vast One may be made
Obedient unto me, to the All-Good
And ultimate Redemption: Hear me, thou!
Eca, zodacare, Iad, goho,
Torzodu odo kikale qaa!
Zodacare od zodameranu!
Zodorje, lape zodiredo Ol
Noco Mada, das Iadapiel!
Ilas! hoatahe Iaida!<<1>>
<<1. This conjuration is in the "angelic" language of Dr. Dee. See the edition of Goetia published by the S.P.R.T.>>
O crowned with starlight! Winged with emerald {21A}
Wider than Heaven! O profounder blue
Of the abyss of water! O thou flame
Flashing through all the caverns of the night,
Tongues leaping from the immeasurable
Up through the glittering Steeps unmanifest
To the ineffable! O Golden Sun!
Vibrating glory of my higher self!
I heard thy voice resounding in the Abyss:
"I am the only being in the deep
Of Darkness: let me rise and gird myself
To tread the path of Darkness: even so
I may attain the light. For from the Abyss
I came before my birth: from those dim halls
And silence of a primal sleep! And He,
The voice of Ages, answered me and said:
Behold! for I am He that formulates
In darkness! Child of Earth! the Light doth shine
In darkness, but the darkness understands
No ray of that initiating light!"
Now, by Initiation's dangerous path
And groping aspiration, came I forth
Where the White Splendour shone upon the Throne,
Even to the Temple of the Holy Ones:
Now, by that Light, come forth, I say, to me,
My Lady of the Starlight and the Moon!
Come and be absolute within my mind,
That I may take no dim remembrance back
to drown this glory with earth's quivering gloom.
But, O abide within Me! Every hour
I need the lofty and the limpid stream
Of that White Brilliance: Leave me not alone,
O Holy Spirit! Come to comfort me,
To draw me, and to make me manifest,
Osiris to the weeping world; that I
Be lifted up upon the cross of Pain
And Sacrifice, to draw all human kind
And every germ of matter that hath life,
Even after me, to the ineffable
Kingdom of Light! O holy, holy Queen!
Let thy wide pinions overshadow me!
I am, the Resurrection and the Life!
The Reconciler of the Light and Dark.
I am the Rescuer of mortal things.
I am the Force in Matter manifest. {21B}
I am the Godhead manifest in flesh.
I stand above, among the Holy Ones.
I am all-purified through suffering,
All-perfect in the mystic sacrifice,
And in the knowledge of my Selfhood made
One with the Everlasting Lords of Life.
The Glorified through Trial is My Name.
The Rescuer of Matter is My Name.
I am the Heart of Jesus girt about
With the Swift Serpent! I, Osirified,
Stand in this Hall of Twofold Truth and say:
Holy art Thou, Lord of the Universe!
Holy art Thou, whom Nature hath not formed!
Holy art Thou, O Vast and Mighty One!
O Lord of Darkness and O Lord of Light!
Holy art Thou, O Light above all Gods!
O Holy, Holy, Holy, Holy King
Ineffable, O Consciousness Divine
I whose white Presence, even I, a god,
A god of gods, prostrate myself and say:
I am the spark of Thine abundant flame.
I am the flower, and Thou the splendid Sun
Wherefrom my Life is drawn! All hail to Thee,
For Holy, Holy, Holy, is Thy Name!
Holy art Thou, O Universal Lord!
Holy art Thou, whom Nature hath not formed!
Holy art Thou, the Vast and Mighty One!
O Lord of Darkness and O Lord of Light!
I see the Darkness fall as lightning falls!
I watch the Ages like a torrent roll
Past Me: and as a garment I shake off
The clinging skirts of Time. My place is fixed
In the abyss beyond all Stars and Suns.
I AM, the Resurrection and the Life!
Holy art Thou, Lord of the Universe!
Holy art Thou, whom Nature hath not formed!
Holy art Thou, the Vast and Mighty One!
O Lord of Darkness and O Lord of Light! {22A}
HYMN TO APOLLO.
"Written in the Temple of Apollo."
GOD of the golden face and fiery forehead!
Lord of the Lion's house of strength, exalted
In the Ram's horns! O ruler of the vaulted
Heavenly hollow!
Send out thy rays majestic, and the torrid
Light of thy song! thy countenance most splendid
Bend to the suppliant on his face extended!
Hear me, Apollo!
Let thy fierce fingers sweep the lyre forgotten!
Recall the ancient glory of thy chanted
Music that thrilled the hearts of men, and haunted
Life to adore thee!
Cleanse thou our market-places misbegotten!
Fire in my heart and music to my paean
Lend, that my song bow, past the empyrean,
Phoebus, before thee!
All the old worship in this land is broken;
Yet on my altar burns the ancient censer,
Frankincense, saffron, galbanum, intenser!
Ornaments glisten.
Robes of thy colour bind me for thy token.
My voice is fuller in thine adoration.
Thine image holds its god-appointed station.
Lycian, listen!
My prayers more eloquent than olden chants
Long since grown dumb on the soft forgetful airs --
My lips are loud to herald thee: my prayers
Keener to follow.
I do aspire, as thy long sunbeam slants
Upon my crown; I do aspire to thee
As no man yet -- I am in ecstasy!
Hear me, Apollo!
My chant wakes elemental flakes of light
Flashing along the sandal-footed<<1>> floor.
All listening spirits answer and adore
Thee, the amazing! {22B}
I follow to the eagle-baffling sight,
Limitless oceans of abounding space;
Purposed to bind myself, but know thy face,
Phoebus, in gazing.
<<1. Strewn with sandalwood(?)>>
O hear me! hear me! hear me! for my hands,
Dews deathly bathe them; sinks the stricken song;
Eyes that were feeble have become the strong,
See thee and glisten.
Blindness is mine; my spirit understands,
Weighs out the offering, accepts the pain,
Hearing the paean of the unprofane!
Lycian, listen!
God of the fiery face, the eyes inviolate!
Lord of soundless thunders, lightnings lightless!
Hear me now, for joy that I see thee sightless,
Fervent to follow.
Grant one boon; destroy me, let me die elate,
Blasted with light intolerant of a mortal,
That the undying in me pass thy portal!
Hear me, Apollo.
Hear me, or if about thy courts be girded
Paler some purple softening the sunlight
Merciful, mighty, O divide the one light
Into a million
Shattered gems, that I mingle in my worded
Measures some woven filament of passion
Caught, Phoebus, from thy star-girt crown, to fashion
Poet's pavilion.
Let me build for thee an abiding palace
Rainbow-hued to affirm thy light divided,
Yet where starry words, by thy soul guided,
Sing as they glisten,
Dew-drops diamonded from the abundant chalice!
Swoons the prayer to silence; pale the altar
Glows at thy presence as the last words falter --
Lycian, listen! {23A}
THE HERMIT'S HYMN TO SOLITUDE.
Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammasambuddhasa.
Venerable Lord and Best of Friends.
We, seeing the cycle in which Maha Brahma is perhaps more a drifting buoy than ourselves, knowing that it is called the walking in delusion, the puppet show of delusion, the writing of delusion, the fetter of delusion, are aware that the way out of the desert is found by going into the desert. Will you, in your lonely lamaserai, accept this hymn from me, who, in the centre of civilisation, am perhaps more isolated than you in your craggy fastness among the trackless steppes of your Untrodden Land?
ALEISTER CROWLEY.
PARIS, A.B. 2446.
I.
MIGHTIEST self! Supreme in Self-contentment!
Sole Spirit gyring in its own ellipse;
Palpable, formless, infinite presentment
Of thine own light in thine own soul's eclipse!
Let thy chaste lips
Sweep through the empty aethers guarding thee
(As in a fortress girded by the sea
The raging winds and wings of air
Lift the wild waves and bear
Innavigable foam to seaward), bend thee down,
Touch, draw me with thy kiss
Into thine own deep bliss,
Into thy sleep, thy life, thy imperishable crown!
Let that young godhead in thine eyes
Pierce mine, fulfil me of their secrecies,
Thy peace, thy purity, thy soul impenetrably wise.
II.
All things which are complete are solitary;
The circling moon, the inconscient drift of stars,
The central systems. Burn they, change they, vary?
Theirs is no motion beyond the eternal bars.
Seasons and scars {23B}
Stain not the planets, the unfathomed home,
The spaceless, unformed faces in the dome
Brighter and blacker than all things,
Borne under the eternal wings
No whither: solitary are the winter woods
And caves not habited,
And that supreme grey head
Watching the groves: single the foaming amber floods,
And O! most lone
The melancholy mountain shrine and throne,
While far above all things God sits, the ultimate alone!
III.
I sate upon the mossy promontory
Where the cascade cleft not his mother rock,
But swept in whirlwind lightning foam and glory,
Vast circling with unwearying luminous shock
To lure and lock
Marvellous eddies in its wild caress;
And there the solemn echoes caught the stress,
The strain of that impassive tide,
Shook it and flung it high and wide,
Till all the air took fire from that melodious roar;
All the mute mountains heard,
Bowed, laughed aloud, concurred,
And passed the word along, the signal of wide war.
All earth took up the sound,
And, being in one tune securely bound,
Even as a star became the soul of silence most profound.
IV.
Thus there, the centre of that death that darkened,
I sat and listened, if God's voice should break
And pierce the hollow of my ear that harkened,
Lest God should speak and find me not awake --
For his own sake. {24A}
No voice, no song might pierce or penetrate
That enviable universal state.
The sun and moon beheld, stood still.
Only the spirit's axis, will,
Considered its own soul and sought a deadlier deep,
And in its monotone mood
Of supreme solitude
Was neither glad nor sad because it did not sleep;
But with calm eyes abode
Patient, its leisure that glactic load,<<1>>
Abode alone, nor even rejoiced to know that it was God.
<<1. Via Lactea, the "Milky Way.">>
V.
All change, all motion, and all sound, are weakness!
Man cannot bear the darkness which is death.
Even that calm Christ, manifest in meekness,
Cried on the cross and gave his ghostly breath,
On the prick of death,
Voice, for his passion could not bear nor dare
The interlunar, the abundant air
Darkened, and silence on the shuddering
Hill, and the unbeating wing
Of the legions of His Father, and so died.
But I, should I be still
Poised between fear and will?
Should I be silent, I, and be unsatisfied?
For solitude shall bend
Self to all selffulness, and have one friend,
Self, and behold one God, and be, and look beyond the End.
VI.
O Solitude! how many have mistaken
Thy name for Sorrow's, or for Death's or Fear's!
Only thy children lie at night and waken --
How shouldst thou speak and say that no man hears?
O Soul of Tears!
For never hath fallen as dew thy word,
Nor is thy shape showed, nor as Wisdom's heard {24B}
Thy crying about the city
In the house where is no pity,
But in the desolate halls and lonely vales of sand:
Not in the laughter loud,
Nor crying of the crowd,
But in the farthest sea, the yet untravelled land.
Where thou hast trodden, I have trod;
Thy folk have been my folk, and thine abode
Mine, and thy life my life, and thou, who art thy God, my God.
VII.
Draw me with cords that are not; witch me chanted
Spells never heard nor open to the ear,
Woven of silence, moulded in the haunted
Houses where dead men linger year by year.
I have no fear
To tread thy far irremeable way
Beyond the paths and palaces of day,
Beyond the night, beyond the skies,
Beyond eternity's
Tremendous gate; beyond the immanent miracle.<<1>>
O secret self of things!
I have nor feet nor wings
Except to follow far beyond Heaven and Earth and Hell,
Until I mix my mood
And being in thee, as in my hermit's hood
I grow the thing I contemplate -- that selfless solitude!
<<1. The universe.>>
THE STORM.
"Written on the North Atlantic Ocean."
IN the sorrow of the silence of the sunset, when the world's heart sinks
to sleep,
And the waking wind arises from the wedding of the aether and the deep,
There are perfumes through the saltness of the even; there are hints of
flowers afar;
And the God goes down lamented by the lonely vesper star. {25A}
The monsters rise around us as we move in moving mist,
Slow whales that swim as musing, and lo! or ever we wist,
Looms northward in the grey, mysterious ice, cathedral high,
Clad in transparent clouds of cold, as a ghost in drapery.
The solemn dusk descending creeps around us from the East;
Clouded as with the ungainly head of a mysterious beast.
Long wisps of darkness (even as fingers) reach and hold
The sobbing West toward them, clasp the barred Hesperian gold.
Still pale a rose reflection lingers, in pure soft blue;
Even above the tempest, where a lonely avenue
Leads from the wan moon's image, shadowy in the air,
Waning, half hidden from the sun -- and yet her soul is there.
So stand I looking ever down to the rolling sea,
Breast-heaves of a sleeping mother, spouse of Eternity:
The dark deep ocean mother, that another<<1>> hath reviled,
Calling her bitter and barren -- and am I not her child?
<<1. It is not know to whom Crowley refers.>>
O mother sea, O beautiful, more excellent than earth,
How is thy travail understood, except thou give me birth?
O waves of death, O saltness, O sorrow manifold!
I see beneath thy darkness azure; deeper still, the heart of gold. {25B}
Am I not true, O mother, who hast held the lives of men
Sucked down to thy swart bosom -- O render not again!
Keep thou our life and mix it with thine eternal sleep:
Rest, let us rest from passion there, deep! O how deep!
Deep calleth unto deep, Amen! hast thou no passion, thou?
Even now the white flames kindle on thy universal brow.
I hear white serpents hiss and wild black dragons roll;
And the storm of love is on thee -- ah! shall it touch thy soul?
Nay, O my mother, in eternal calm thy virginal depths lie.
The peace of God, that passeth understanding, that am I!
Even I, perceiving deeply beneath the eyes of flame
The soul that, kindling, is not kindled: I have known thy Name.
Awake, O soaring billows! Lighten the raging dome,
Wrap the wide horizon in a single cloak of flaming foam,
Leap in your fury! Beat upon the shores unseen! Devour your food,
The broken cliff, the crumbled bank, the bar. I know the mood.
Even so I see the terror of universal strife:
Murderous war, and murderous peace, and miserable life:
The pang of childbirth, and the pain of youth, and the fear of age,
Life tossed and broken into dust in the elemental rage.
Is not God part of every the tiniest spark of man?
Is He not moulded also in His own eternal plan? {26A}
Even so; as the woes of earth is the angry crested sea.
Even so; as Her great peace abideth in the deep -- so He!
What wreck floats by us? What pale corpse rolls horribly above,
Tossed on the unbewailing foam, cast out of light and life and love?
The sea shall draw thee down, O brother, to her breast of peace,
Her unimaginable springs, her bridal secrecies.
Even so draw me in life, O mother, to thy breast!
Below the storm, below the wind, to the abiding rest!
That I may know thy purpose and understand thy ways:
So, weeping always for the woe, also the love to praise!
The darkness falls intensely: no light invades the gloom.
Stillness drops dew-like from the heaven's unreverberant womb.
Westward the ship is riding on the sable wings of night,
I understand the darkness -- why should I seek the light?
ASSUMPTA CANIDIA.
"Written in Mexico City."
WATERS that weep upon the barren shore
Where some lone mystery of man abides;
As if the wailing of forsaken brides,
Rapt from the kiss of love for evermore,
Impressed its memory on the desolate
Sounds at its edge; on such a strand of tears
I linger through the long forgetful years,
My sin for mother, and my woe for mate.
I am a soul lost utterly -- forbear!
I am unworthy both of tear and prayer. {26B}
The mystic slumber of my sense forlorn
Stirs only now and then; some deeper pang
Reminds despair there is a sharper fang,
Reminds my night of a tempestuous morn.
For I am lost and lonely: in the skies
I see no hope of any sun or star;
On earth there blooms no rose, no nenuphar;
No cross is set for hope of sacrifice.
I cannot sleep, I cannot wake; and death
Passes me by with his desired breath.
No shadow in my mind to prove a sun;
No sorrow to declare that joy exists;
A cycle of dim spectres in the mists
Moves just a little; lastly there is One,
One central Being, one elusive shape,
Not to aspire to, not to love; alas!
Only a memory in the aged mass
Of chained ones bound to me without escape!
Oh, doom of God! Oh, brand how worse than Cain's!
Divided being, undivided pains!
What is this life? (To call it life that grows
No inch throughout all time.) This bitterness
Too weak and hateful to be called distress?
Slow memory working backward only knows
There was some horror grown to it for kin;
Some final leprous growth that took my brain,
Weaving a labyrinth of dullest pain
From the sweet scarlet threat I thought was sin.
I cannot sin! Alas, one sin were sweet!
But sin is living -- and we cannot meet!
So long ago, so miserably long!
I was a maiden -- oh how rich and rare
Seemed the soft sunshine woven in my hair!
How keen the music of my body's song!
How white the bossom of my body's light!
How red the lips, how languorous the eyes,
How made for pleasure, for the sleepy sighs {27A}
Softer than sleep; amorous dew-dreams of night
That draw out night in kisses to the day!
So was I to my seeming as I lay.
That soft smooth-moving ocean of the west
Under the palm and cactus as it rolled,
Immortal blue, fixed with immortal gold,
Moving in rapture with my sleeping breast!
The young delicious green, the drunken smell
Of the fresh earth, the luxury of the glow
Where many colours mingled into snow,
Song-marvels in the air desirable.
So lazily I lay, and watched my eyes
In the deep fountain's sun-stirred harmonies.
I loved myself! O Thou! (I cried) divine
Woman more lovely than the flowers of earth!
O Self-hood softer than the babe at birth,
Sweeter than love, more amorous than wine,
Where is thy peer upon the face of life?
I love myself, the daughter of the dawn.
Come, silken night, in your deep wings withdrawn
Let me be folded, as a tender wife
In my own arms imagined! Let me sleep,
Unwaking from the admirable deep!
My arms fell lazily about the bed.
I lay in some delicious trance. I fell
Deep through sleep's chambers to the gate of Hell,
And on that flaming portalice I read
The legend, "Here is beauty, here delight,
Here love made more desirable than thine,
Fiercer than light, more dolorous than wine.
Here the embraces of the Sons of Night!
Come, sister, come; come, lonely queen of breath!
Here are the lustres and the flames of death."
Hence I was whirled, as in a wind of light,
Out to the fragrance of a loftier air,
A keener scent, and rising unaware
Out of the Palace of Luxurious Night, {27B}
I came to where the Gate of Heaven shone,
Battled with comet and with meteor.
Behold within that crested House of War,
One central glory of a sapphire stone,
Whereon there breathed a sense, a mist, a sun!
I stood and laughed upon the Ancient One.
For He was silent as my body's kiss,
And sleeping as my many-coloured hair,
And living as my eyes and lips; and where
The vast creation round him cried "He Is!",
No murmur reached Him; He was set alone,
Alone and central. Ah! my eyes were dim.
I worshipped even; for I envied Him.
So, moving upward to the azure throne,
I spread my arms unto that ambient mist;
Lifted my life and soul up to be kissed!
A million million voices roared aloud!
A million million sabres flashed between!
Flamed the vast falchion! Fiery Cherubin
Flung me astounded to the mist and cloud.
A stone, flung downward through eternal space,
I dropped. What bitter curses and despair
Rang through wide aether! How the trumpet blare
Cursed back at me! Thou canst not see His Face!
Equal and Spouse? Bring forth the Virgin Dower,
Eternal Wisdom and Eternal Power!
I woke! and in a well's untroubled pool
I saw my face -- and I was ugly now!
Blood-spattered ebony eyelash and white brow!
Blood on my lips, and hair, and breast! "Thou fool!"
A horrid torture in my heart -- and then
I licked my lips: the tigress tasted blood.
My changed features -- wash them in the flood
Of murder! This is power over men
And angels. I will lift the twisted rod,
And make my power as the power of God! {28A}
I made my beauty as it was before.
I learned strange secrets; by my love and skill
I bent creation to my wanded will.
I tuned the stars, I bound the bitter shore
Beyond the Pleiads: until the Universe
Moved at my mantra<<1>>: Heaven and Hell obeyed;
Creation at my orders stayed or swayed.
"Take back," I cried, "the mockery of a curse!"
"I wield Thy Power." With my magic rod
Again I strode before the Throne of God.
<<1. The Hindu equivalent for "spell.">>
"Forgone my Virgin Splendour! I aspire
No longer as a maiden to thy Love.
We twain are set in majesty above:
My cloud is mighty as thy mystic Fire."
Vanished the mist, the light, the sense, the throne!
Vanished the written horror of the curse;
Vanished the stars, the sun, the Universe.
I was in Heaven, lost, alone. Alone!
A new curse gathered as a sombre breath:
"Power without Wisdom is the Name of Death!"
And therefore form my devastating hand
(for I was then unwilling to be dead)
I loosed the lightning, and in hate and dread
Despairing, did I break the royal wand.
Mortal, a plaything for a thousand fears,
I found the earth; I found a lonely place
To gaze for ever on the ocean's face,
Lamenting through the lamentable years;
Without a god, deprived of life and death,
Sensible only to that sombre breath.
Thus wait I on the spring-forgotten shore;
Looking with vain unweeping eyes, for aye
Into the wedding of the sea and sky,
(That do not wed, ay me!) for evermore
Hopeless, forgetting even to aspire
Unto that Wisdom; miserably dumb;
Waiting for the Impossible to come,
Whether in mercy or damnation dire -- {18B}
I who have been all Beauty and all Power! --
This is thine hour, Apollyon, thine Hour!
I, who have twice beheld the awful throne;
And, as it were the vision of a glass,
Beheld the Mist be born thereon, and pass;
I, who have stood upon the four-square stone!
I, who have twice been One---! Woe, woe is me!
Lost, lost, upon the lifeless, deathless plane,
The desert desolate, the air inane;
Fallen, O fallen to eternity!
I, who have looked upon the Lord of Light;
I, I am Nothing, and dissolved in Night!
(THE SPIRIT OF GOD, DESCENDING, ASSUMETH HER INTO THE GLORY OF GOD.)
VENUS.
"Written in the temple of the L.I.L.,<<1>> No. 9, Central America."
<<1. A secret Order, probably established by Crowley himself.>>
MISTRESS and maiden and mother, immutable mutable soul!
Love, shalt thou turn to another? Surely I give thee the whole!
Light, shall thou flicker or darken? Thou and thy lover are met.
Bend from thy heaven and hearken! Life, shalt thou fade or forget?
Surely my songs are gone down as leaves in the dark that are blown;
Surely the laurel and crown have faded and left me alone.
Vainly I cry in the sunlight; moon pities my passion in vain.
Dark to my eyes is the one light, aching in bosom and brain.
Surely, O mother, thou knowest! Have I not followed thy star?
I have gone whither thou goest, bitterly followed afar, {29A}
Buried my heart in thy sorrow, cast down my soul at thy knees.
Thou, thou hast left me no morrow. Days and desires, what are these?
Nay, I have torn from my breast passion and love and despair:
Sought in thy palaces rest, sleep that awaited me there;
Sleep that awaits me in vain: I have done with the hope of things;
Passion and pleasure and pain have stung me, and lost their stings.
Only abides there a hollow, void as the heart of the earth.
Echo may find it and follow, dead from the day of her birth.
Life, of itself not insatiate; death, not presuming to be;
Share me intense and emaciate, waste me, are nothing to me.
Still in the desolate place, still in the bosom that was
Even as a veil for thy face, thy face in a breathed-on glass,
Hangs there a vulture, and tears with a beak of iron and fire.
I know not his name, for he wears no feathers of my desire.
It is thou, it is thou, lone maiden! My heart is a bird that flies
Far into the azure laden with love-lorn songs and cries.
O Goddess of Nature and Love! Thyself is the lover I see.
But thou art in the above, and thy kiss is not for me.
Thou art all too far for my kiss; thou art hidden past my prayer.
Thy wing too wide, and the bliss too sweet for me to share.
Thou art Nature and God! I am broken in the wheelings of thy car;
Thy love-song unheard or unspoken, and I cannot see thy star. {29B}
Thou art not cold, but bitter is thy burning cry to me.
My tiny heart were fitter for a mortal than for thee.
But I cast away the mortal, and I choose the tortured way,
And I stand before thy portal, and my face is cold and grey.
Thou lovest me with a love more terrible than death;
But thou art in the above, and my wings feel no wind's breath.
Thou art all to fierce and calm, too bitter and sweet, alas!
Thou weavest a cruel charm on my soul that is as glass.
I know thee not, who art naked; I lie beneath thy feet
Who hast called till my spirit ached with a pang too deathly sweet.
Thou has given thee to me dying, and made thy bed to me.
I shiver, I shrink, and, sighing, lament it cannot be.
I have no limbs as a God's to close thee in and hold:
Too brief are my periods, and my hours are barren of gold.
I am not thewed as Jove to kill thee in one caress!
Not a golden shower is my love, but a child's tear of distress.
Give me the strength of a panther, the tiger's strenuous sides,
The lion's limbs that span there some thrice the turn of the tides,
The mutinous fame, the terror of the royal Minotaur,
That our loves may make a mirror of the dreadful soul of war!
For love is an equal soul, and shares an equal breath.
I am nought -- and thou the whole? It were not love, but Death. {30A}
Give me thy life and strength, let us struggle for mastery,
As the long shore's rugged length that battles with the sea.
I am thine, I am thine indeed! My form is vaster grown,
And our limbs and lips shall bleed on the starry solar throne.
My life is made as thine; my blessing and thy curse
Beget, as foam on wine, a different universe.
I foam and live and leap: thou laughest, fightest, diest!
In agony swift as sleep thou hangest as the Christ.
My nails are in thy flesh; my sweat is on thy brow;
We are one, we are made afresh, we are Love and Nature now.
I am swifter than the wind: I am wider than the sea:
I am one with all mankind: and the earth is made as we.
The stars are spangles bright on the canopy of our bed,
And the sun is a veil of light for my lover's golden head.
O Goddess, maiden, and wife! Is the marriage bed in vain?
Shall my heart and soul and life shrink back to themselves again?
Be thou my one desire, my soul in day as in night!
My mind the home of the Higher! My heart the centre of Light!
A LITANY.<<1>>
<<1. The Table of Correspondences will elucidate any doubtful point in this poem.>>
I.
BLACK thine abyss of noon
Flings forth the thunder-swoon.
Smite us, and slay, Amoun,
Amoun, Achiha! {30B}
II.
Thoth, from the starry space
Flash out the splendid face!
Wisdom, immortal grace,
Thoth, turn to usward!
III.
Deep, deep thy sombre Sea,
Spouse of eternity!
Mother, we cry to Thee:
Hear us, Maut, Mother!
IV.
Sound, sistron, sound afar!
Shine, shine, O dawning Star!
Flame, flame, O meteor Car!
Isis, Our Lady!
V.
Strike, strike the louder chord!
Draw, draw the flaming sword,
Crowned child and conquering Lord:
Horus, avenger.
VI.
Dawn-star of flaming light,
Five rays in one unite,
Light, Life, Love, Mercy, Might,
Star of the Magi.
VII.
Lift, lift the Cross of Light,
Rose, golden, green, and white,
Rise, rise athwart the night!
Mighty Aeshuri!
VIII.
Flame, flame, thou Blazoned Sun!
Seal-Star of Solomon!
Seven Mysteries in One!
Godhead and Mankind!
IX.
Beauty and life and love!
Let fly thy darling dove!
Bend to us from above,
Lady Ahathor! {31A}
X.
Where light and darkness meet,
There shine thy flaming feet,
There is thy splendid seat;
Mighty Anubi!
XI.
Swift-winged Stability,
Lifting the earth and sky,
Hold me up utterly,
Keep me, O Shuwe!
XII.
Virginal Queen of Earth,
Late love, and last of birth,
Loose, loose the golden girth,
Nephthys, the crowned one!
XIII.
Hail, crowned Harpocrates,
Show, show thy secrecies,
Lotus-throned silences,
Typhon's replacer!
MARCH IN THE TROPICS.
"Written near Manzanillo."
WHAT ails thee, earth? Is not the breath of Spring
Exultant on thy breast? What aileth thee,
O many-mooded melancholy sea?
Hear the swift rush of that triumphant wing!
Listen! the world's whole heart is listening!
In England now the leaf leaps, and the tree
Gleams dewy, and the bird woos noisily.
Here in the tropics now is no such thing.
Dull heavy heat burns through the clouded sky,
And yet no promise of the latter rains.
Earth bears her fruit, but unrefreshed of death.
In winter is no sorrow, in the dry
Harsh spring no joy, while pestilence and pains
Hover like wolves behind the summer's breath. {31B}
NIGHT IN THE VALLEY.
"Written at the foot of Citlaltepetl."
I LAY within the forest's virgin womb
Tranced in the sweetness, nuptial, indolent,
Of the faint breeze and tropical perfume,
And all the music far lone waters lent
Unto the masses of magnolia bloom,
Tall scarlet lilies, and the golden scent
Shed by strange clusters of more pallid flowers,
And purple lustre strewn amid the twilight bowers.
Far, far the pastureless, the unquiet sea
Moaned; far the stately pyramid of cold
Shrouding the stars, arose: sweet witchery
That brought them in the drowsing eye, to fold
The picture in: with winged imagery
That Hermes gathers with that floral gold
Whose triple flower or flame or pinioned light
Lends life to death, and love and colour unto light.
How flames that scarlet stronger than Apollo,
Too swift and warm to know itself a bird!
How the light winds and waves of moonlight follow,
Shot from the West, cadence of Daylight's word!
How flock the tribes of wings within the hollow,
Even as darkness summons home the herd!
The still slow water slackens into sleep.
The rose-glow dies, leaves cold Citlaltepetl's<<1>> steep.
<<1. Called by the Spaniards Orizaba.>>
The chattering voices of the day depart.
Earth folds her limbs and leans her loving breast
Even to all her children: the great heart
Beats solemnly the requiem of rest.
The sea keeps tune; the silent stars upstart
Seeming to sentinel that sombre crest
Where of old time burst out the vulture fire
Cyclopean, that is dead, now, as a man's desire. {32A}
The drowsy cries of night birds, then the song
Lovely and lovelorn in the listening vale,
So wild and tender, swooping down in long
Notes of despair, then lifting the low tale
In golden notes to skyward in one throng
Of clustered silver, so the nightingale
Tunes the wild flute, as dryads he would gather
To roof with music in the palace of the weather,
With love despairing, dying as music dies;
With lost souls' weeping, and the bitter muse
Of such as lift their hearts in sacrifice
On some strange cross, or shed Sicillian dews
Over a sadder lake than Sicily's --
Hark! they are leaping from the valley views
Into the light and laughter and deep grief
Of that immortal heart that sings beyond belief.
How pitiful, how beautiful, the faces!
The long hair shed on shoulders ivory white!
Each note shoots down the dim arboreal spaces
Like amber or like hyaline lit with light.
Each spirit glimmers in the shadowy places
Like hyacinths or emeralds: or the night
Shows them as shadows of some antique gem
Where moonlight fills its cup and flashes into them.
So, in the moony twilight and the splendour
Of music's light, the desolate nightingale
Fills all the interlunar air with tender
Kisses like song, or shrills upon the scale,
Till quivering moonrays shake again, to send her
Luminous tunes through every sleepy vale,
While the slow dancers rhythmically reap
The fairy amaranth, and silver wheat of sleep. {32B}
Now over all that scythe of sleep impending
Mows the pale flowers of vision following;
Dryad and bird and fount and valley blending
Into one dreamy consciousness of spring;
And all the night and all the world is ending,
And all the souls that weep and hearts that sing!
So, as the dew hides in the lotus blossom,
Sleep draws me with her kiss into her bridal bosom.
METEMPSYCHOSIS.
"Written at Vera Cruz."
DIM goes the sun down there behind the tall
And mighty crest of Orizaba's snow:
Here, gathering at the nightfall, to and fro,
Fat vultures, foul and carrion, flap, and call
Their ghastly comrades to the domed wall
That crowns the grey cathedral. There they go --
The parasites of death, decay and woe,
Gorged with the day's indecent festival.
I think these birds were once the souls of priests.
They haunt by ancient habit the old home
Wherein they held high mass in days of old.
But now they soar above it -- for behold!
God hath looked mercifully down on Rome,
Promoting thus her children to be beasts.
ADVICE OF A LETTER.<<1>>
<<1. With a letter to Ceylon, sent from Mexico in duplicate for certainty by way both of England and Japan. The allusions are Hermetic or Alchemical.>>
THE Winged Bull that dwelled in the north
hath flown into the West, and uttered forth
His thunders in the Mountains. He shall come
Where blooms the sempiterne chrysanthemum.
The winged Lion, that wrought dire amaze
In the Dark Place, where Light was, did his ways {33A}
Take fiery to enkindle a new flame:
The Eagle of the High Lands yet that came
By the red sunset to an eastern sky
Shall plume himself and gather him and fly
Even as a Man that rideth on a Beast
Trained, to the Golden Dawn-sky of the East.
Therefore his word shall seek the Ivory Isle
By double winds and by the double Style,
Twin doorways of the Sunset and the Dawn.
And thou who tak'st it, shall be subtly drawn
Into strange vigils, and shalt surely see
The ancient form and memory of me,
Nor me distinct, but shining with that Light
Wherein the Sphinx and Pyramid unite.
ON WAIKIKI BEACH.<<1>>
<<1. Near Honolulu.>>
UPHEAVED from Chaos, through the dark sea hurled,
Through the cleft heart of the amazed sea,
Sprang, 'mid deep thunderous throats of majesty,
Titanic, in the waking of the world;
Sprang, one vast mass of spume and molten fire,
Lava, tremendous waves of earth; sprang higher
Than the sea's crest volcano-torn, to be
Written in Cyclopean charactery,
Hawaii. Here she stands
Queen of all laughter's lands
That dance for dawn, lie tranced in leisured noon,
Dreaming through day towards night,
Craving the perfumed light
Of the stars lustrous, and the gem-born moon.
Dewy with clustered diamond,
The long land swoons to sleep; the sea sleeps and yet wakes beyond. {33B}
Here, in the crescent beach and bay, the sea,