Temperance: A Tract for the Times

In my passionate pilgrimage, Love, for Love is the Will toward change. Love is a lust and a prayer, and the soul of its act as its word Is of them that were Two to make One, and to seal the Event with a Third. Oh, Love, Astarte sea-born, oh Star blue bright in the West, I invoke thee, thy priest in the shrine that is built of my blood in my breast! Since thou art in me and of me, since thou art the heart of my heart, The soul of my soul, nay, the skin of my skin, not a being apart, I am thou, I accept the intent, acquiesce in the nature implied; If change be the purpose of Love, I am launched and afloat on the tide. I accept every phantom of Mind, vain dreams in fatuity curled; I accept the corruption of Body, delight to bring Death to the world. In measureless madness I bask, I gloat upon carrion flesh. I wallow with God in the mire, and of mire I create Him afresh. There is naught, nor shall be, that my love cannot gnaw with insatiate tooth: I will wring forth the Truth from the lies as I once found the lies in the Truth. Astarte, I know thee for rotten as others have seen thee for pure; I tear off the mask that smiled false on the slaves who would have them endure. But Thou and Thy masks are but one, Thy corruption the Essence of Thee, It is all of the nature of things, their virtue whereby they may be. So therefore I hail Thee divine, All-one with the substance of Truth; Mine age holds thee naked, the hem of whose garment bewildered my youth. My soul being thus with thy soul, shall not soul win at last to the wit That its changeless perfection is death, itself the assassin of it? Love under will is the law; all that exists, from the dust To the Gods, is but jetsam of Love, cast up by the tide of Her lust. So I hail thee, Astarte, and hymn thee in brothel and temple the same, Who are seed of all change, being Love, by Corruption Thine innermost Name! I know Thy device to deceive Thy servants Thine image that hailed How none, being mortal, might learn Thy name, or behold Thee unveiled. For Thy secret is this, that immortals are crowned with the virtue to die; And I, oh Astarte, bear death in my body—Of ye am I.