178 THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY GHOST
SIDONIA THE SORCERESS.!
SIDONIA the Sorceress ! I revel in her amber
skin,
Dream in her eyes and die in her caress.
She is for me the avatar of sin,
Sidonia the Sorceress.
The one unpardonable wickedness,
Strange serpent-blasphemies, are curled
within
The heart of her Hell gives me to possess.
Her hair is fastened with a dagger thin ;
A dead man’s heart is woven with each
tress.
I murdered Christ before my lips could win
Sidonia the Sorceress.
THE GROWTH OF GOD.
(AS DEVELOPED ON A MOONLESS NIGHT
IN THE TROPICS.)?
EVEN as beasts, where the sepulchral ocean
Sobs, and their fins and feet keep Runic
pace,
Treading in water mysteries of motion,
Witch-dances : where the ghastly carapace
Of the blind sky hangs on the monstrous
verge:
Even as serpents, wallowing in the slime ;
So my thoughts raise misshapen heads, and
urge
Horrible visions of decaying Time.
For in the fiery dusk arise distorted
Grey shapes in moonless phosphorus glow
of death ;
The keen light of the eyes thrust back and
thwarted,
The quick scent stabbed by the miasma
breath.
1 For her history see Wilhelm Meinhold.,
2 When Crowley was benighted on the way
from Iguala to Mexico City, whither he was
riding unattended.
The day is over, when the lizard darted,
A flash of green, the emerald outclassed ;
Night is collapsed upon the vale: departed
All but the Close, suggestive of the Vast.
The heavy tropic scent-inspiring gloom
Clothes the wide air, the circumambient
cether.
The earth grins open, as it were a tomb,
_ And struggling earthquakes gnash their
teeth beneath her.
The night is monstrous: in the flickering fire
Strange faces gibber as the brands burn
low ;
Old shapes of hate, young phantoms of desire
More hateful yet, shatter and change and
grow.
There is a sense of terror in the air,
And dreadful stories catch my breath and
bind me,
Soft noises as of breathing: unaware
What devils or what ghosts may lurk
behind me!
Even my horse is troubled : vain it is
Invoking memory for sweet sound of
youth ;
The song, the day, the cup, the shot, the kiss !
This night begets illusion—ay ! the truth.
I know the deep emotion of that birth,
When chaos rolled in terror and in
thunder;
The abortion of the infancy of earth;
The monsters moving in a_ world of
wonder3;
The Shapeless, racked with agony, that
grew
Into these phantom forms that change and
shatter3
The falling of the first toad-spotted dew ;
The first lewd heaving ecstasy of matter.
I see all Nature claw and tear and bite,
All hateful love and hideous: and the
brood
Misshapen, mishegotten out of spite ;
Lust after death ; love in deerepitude.