Collected Works (Vol. III)

LIBER QUARTUS VEL MORTIS 231 Idalian Aphrodite, strong as fair, Strong not to loosen Godhead’s crown by deed To blind eyes not a God’s Life, Apollo in his splendour, whom I praise Most, being his, and this song his, and his All my desire and all my life, and all My love, albeit he hath forsaken me. These are One God in many: praise ye Him ! : and praise pure AGAVE, We praise indeed who made the choral world And stars the greatest, and all these the least Flowers at our feet: but also we may praise This Dionysus, lord of life and joy, In whom we may perceive a subtle world Hidden behind this masquerade of things. O sisters, thither, thither ! ORPHEUS., All deceit. Delusive as this world of shadows is, That subtler world is more delusive yet, Involving deeper and still deeper: thought, Desire of life, in that warm atmosphere Spring up and blossom new, rank poisonous flowers, The enemies of peace. Nay! matter’s all, And all is sorrow. Therefore not to be, Not to think, love, know, contemplate, exist ; This Not is the one hope. AGAVE. Believe it not ! Here is true joy—the woodland revellings, The smile, the kiss, the laughter leaping up, And music inward, musings multiform, Manifold, multitudinous, involved Fach in the deep bliss of the other’s love ;— Ay me! my sisters. Thither! AUTONOE. Wake the dance! MANADS. Pour luscious wine, cool, sweet, strong wine ! Bring life, Life overflowing from the cup! ORPHEUS. Hush ! I hymn the eternal matter, absolute, Divided, chaos, formless frame of force, Wheels of the luminous reach of space that men Know by the name of Pan. Hush ! MAENADS. Hail! Hail! Pan! Son of Hermes! God of Arcady And all wild woodlands ! ORPHEUS, Neither Son, nor Sire, Nor God: but he is all: all else in him Is hidden: he the secret and the self Shrined central in. this orb of eyeless Fate, | Phantom, elusive, permanent. In all, In spirit and in matter immanent, He also is the all, and all is ill. Three forms and functions hath the soul; the sea Murmurs their names repeating: Marts call The soul as it engendereth things below ; Neptune the soul that contemplateth things Above ; and Ocean as itself retracts Itself into itself: choose ye of these !? But I hymn Pan. Awake, O lyre, awake ! As if it were for the last time, awake ! [He sings. In the spring, in the loud last: places, In the groves of Arcadian green, There are sounds and shadowy faces And strange things dimly seen. Though the face of the springtide as grace is, The sown and the woodland demesne Have a soul caught up in their spaces, Unkenned, and unclean! 1 Again from pseudo-Orpheus.