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.