Collected Works (Vol. II)

VENUS 29 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, Iam Nothing, and dissolved in Night ! (THE SPIRIT OF GOD, DESCENDING, ASSUMETH HER INTO THE GLORY OF Gon.) VENUS. Written in the temple of the L.I.L.,1 No. 9, Central America. MISTRESS and maiden and mother, im- mutable mutable soul! Love, shalt thou turn to another? I give thee the whole ! Light, shalt thou flicker or darken? Thou and thy lover are met. Bend from thy heaven and hearken! Life, Surely 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! not followed thy star? I have gone whither thou goest, bitterly followed afar, Have I 1 A secret Order, probably established by Crowley himself, 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 pre- suming to be ; Share me intense and emaciate, waste me, are nothing tome. 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! is the lover I see. But thou art in the above, and thy kiss is not for me. Thyself 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! Iam broken in the wheelings of thy car ; Thy love-song unheard or ‘unspoken, and I cannot see thy star.