LIBER CORDIS CINCTI SERPENTE
39. Before I saw Thee Thou wast already with me; I was
smitten through by Thy marvellous spear.
40. I was stricken as a bird by the bolt of the thunderer;
I was pierced as the thief by the Lord of the Garden.
41. O my Lord, let us sail upon the sea of blood!
42. There is a deep taint beneath the ineffable bliss; it is
the taint of generation.
43. Yea, though the flower wave bright in the sunshine,
the root is deep in the darkness of earth.
44. Praise to thee, O beautiful dark earth, thou art the
mother of a million myriads of myriads of flowers.
45. Also I beheld my God, and the countenance of Him
was a thousandfold brighter than the lightning. Yet in his
heart I beheld the slow and dark One, the ancient one, the
devourer of His children.
46. In the height and the abyss, O my beautiful, there is
no thing, verily, there is no thing at all, that is not altogether
and perfectly fashioned for Thy delight.
47. Light cleaveth unto Light, and filth to filth; with pride
one contemneth another. But not Thou, who art all, and
beyond it; who art absolved from the Division of the
Shadows.
48. O day of Eternity, let Thy wave break in foamless
glory of sapphire upon the laborious coral of our making!
49. We have made us a ring of glistening white sand,
strewn wisely in the midst of the Delightful Ocean.
50. Let the palms of brilliance flower upon our island; we
shall eat of their fruit, and be glad.
51. But for me the lustral water, the great ablution, the
dissolving of the soul in that resounding abyss.
52. [havea little son like a wanton goat; my daughter is
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