Collected Works (Vol. I)

264 EPILOGUE Yet my heart looks to Madness as its mother, Remembering Who once caught me by the well; And the strange loves of that misshapen Other, The feast of blood, the cold enchanted dell, Where fire was filtered up through earth to smother Sick scents of hell. And that wild night when vine-leaves wooed and clustered Round my wild limbs, and like a woman I went Over the mountains—how the Northwind blustered !— And slew with them the beast, and was content. The madness :—Oh! the dreadful light that lustred The main event. Ay! the wild whirlings in the woodland reaches ; The ghastly smile upon the Stone God’s ! lip; The rigid tremors, anguish that beseeches From eye to eye fresh fervours of the whip ; The mounded moss below the swaying beeches— Kiss me and clip! Why ! the old madness grows !—how feebly lying Smooth by this bay where waves are tender flowers. Winds, soft as the old kisses were, are sighing. Clouds drift across the sun for silken bowers. The moon is up--an hastening nymph! I, dying, Await the Hours. 1 Priapus, like Jehovah, is the phallic god of generation. It is to be remarked that Crowley never uses Jehovah in this sense, but in the later spiritualised sense of the Qabalists. And thou, Persephone, I know thy story, That I must taste the terror of thy wrong : How Hades ride across the promontory, Snatch my pale body in mid over-song ; Drag me from sight of my Apollo’s glory With horses strong. Nay! as Apollo half the day is shrouded, As Artemis twice seven nights is dark ; Surely he shines in other lands unclouded, Surely her shaft shall find another mark. So dawns the day on Acheron ghost-crowded, And on my bark. I know not how yon world may prove, nor whither Hermes conduct me to what farther end. Yet if these bays abide, this heart not wither, 7 It cannot be I shall not find a friend. Some pale immortal lover draw me thither ! To kiss me bend ! Moreover, as Apollo re-arisen Flames, with a roaring of the morning sea, Up from the stricken gray, the iron-barred prison, Flashes his face again upon the lea, And diamond dews the woodland ones bedizen; So—so for me! Some forty years this earth knew song and passion Pour from my lips, saw gladness in mine eyes ! Some forty shall I sing some other fashion, Dance in strange measures, change the key of sighs. Then rise in Thessaly again, Thalassian ! Only, more wise,