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Page 1 of 21909 · PDF PAGE 54
Even as the holy Rathat travelleth Within his bark upon the firmament, Looking with fire-keen evvs on life and death In simple state and cardinal content : Even as the holy hawk that towers sublime Into the great abyss, with icy gaze Fronting the calm immensities of time And making space to shudder; so I praise With infinite contempt the joyous world That I have figured in this brain of mine. The sails of this life’s argosy are furled; The anchor drops in those abodes divine. Master of self and God, freewill and Fate. [ am alone — at last — to …
1909 · PDF PAGE 46
Lord ! on love’s altar lies the sacrament. O willing victim, eager to be slain, Lusting to feel the knife, the life-veil rent, Assumption energized by death ! O fain To feel the murderous ardour of the priest Clutch at his throat, theurgic frenzy fly About the initiates of the Paschal feast And know it centred in the dim dead I Loosed by the pang — even thus you know it is, Even thus, when I invoke your harsh caress, Put up my mouth to your immortal kiss, Confess you for my lady and murderess — In mine own life-blood I exult to float Even as yo…
1909 · PDF PAGE 30
Lonely, o life, art thou when circumstance Occult or open keeps us twain apart! Lamenting through the dreary day there dance Anaemic thoughts; the bruised and bloodless heart Beats as if tired of life, as I am tired Who all these days have never seen your face, Nor touched the body that my soul desired, Nor have inhaled the perfume of the place That you make sweet —- black dogs of doubt and fear Howl at my heels while care plies whip and spur, Driving me down to the dull damned dead sphere Where is no sight or sound or scent of Her Our Lady Dia…
1909 · PDF PAGE 34
…TI One writes, and all is easy. Drop the pen, And Paradise is blotted out ! The earth, Fair as it seemed, becomes a hideous den, And all life’s promises of little worth. Like to a mother whose one child is dead I wander, aching for the sight, the sound, The touch — familiar, now inhibited. The child is under ground — is under ground— The child is under ground-— who comforts her ? The bastard fool her priest ? The useless clod Her husband? The accursed murderer Her God ? — if so be that she hath a God. Foul curses from my life’s envenomed flood …
1909 · PDF PAGE 57
…d seductions of a queen of Khem Wrapped with much spice and linen and red gold And guardian gods on every side of them ; Yet inasmuch as life is life, they shrink, Shrivel and waste to ashes as men gaze : So doth the world grow giddy at the brink Of these unfathomable eyes, that blaze Swifter and deadlier than storms or snakes. Then — o what wonder, as I strain afar The basilisk flame ! — what breathless wonder wakes That I behold unsinged a silver star ! O joy! O terror! O! — O can it be There is a thing that is, apart from me? -- 88 -— VII I …
1909 · PDF PAGE 75
…f snuffle and twang ? May not their stinking souls Interpret our last sighs as penitence When we close up the coruscating scrolls Of our life's joy, seal up the jar of sense To broach the starry flagon — splendid spilth? These creeping cravens shall be circumvented; They shall not belch their flatulence and filth On us, or tell the world that we repented. Come, as we strained it, let us break the tether ~Tn the last luxury — to die together ! IX Let Death steal softly through the gate of sleep On tiptoe ! win away the maiden life On velvet pini…
1909 · PDF PAGE 65
…e trick — when from your lips I see a thin chill stream of stark black blood Trickling, the stream ofhate that glows and grips My lesser life within its sickening flood. Be pitiful, and end your cruelty ! Suck out the life of me, that I may die! an { O.f —— V O brooding vampire, why art thou arisen? Why art thou so unquiet in the tomb? Why hasthy corpse burst brilliant out of prison ? Whence get the lips their blood, the cheeks their bloom? Is there no garlic I may wear against thee ? No succour in the consecrated Host? ~ Nay, if thou slay not …
1909 · PDF PAGE 22
Love is sore wounded by the dragon shame, O maiden o' mine! its life in jets of blocd Languidly ebbs. I see the gathering flame Aspire — expire. I see the evil flood Of time roll even and steady over it, Bearing our God to the accurst ravines; Bearing our God to the abysmal pit Whence never a God may rise. The wolfish queens Of earth have set their faces stern and sour Against us ; we are bidden to cease — to cease! Ha ! how eternity laughs down their hour, Dragoons their malice with its dominant peace. We are forbidden to love — as one who tri…
1909 · PDF PAGE 53
…esses Or pluck its pallium from the demon-kings, My spirit rests at ease in your caresses, And cares not for the song, so that it sings. Life is but one caress, one song of gladness, One infinite pulse of love in tune with you; One infinite pulse, upsoaring into madness, Down sinking to content, O far and few The stars that follow our lofty pilgrimage Into the abyss of silence and delight Beyond the glamour of the world, the age, The illusions of the light and of the night. Wherefore accept these meteor flames that dance Pale coruscations to ou…
1909 · PDF PAGE 21
…e Of this our deed obscure we shall not skry. We know " no happy end! — but we endure, Abiding as the Pole Star in the sky. You mix your life in mine — then soul in soul We shoot forth, meteors, travelling on and on Far beyond Space to some dark-glimmering goal Where never a sun or star hath risen or shone ; Where we shall be the evil light beyond time, Beyond space, beyond thought, supreme in deathless pang : Nor shall a sound tnvade that hall of crime, Only the champing of the insatiate fang Of the undying worm our love, fast wed Unto — no ha…
1909 · PDF PAGE 40
… from the high treasure, The inexhaustible treasure of delight The gods have poured us, pouring overmeasure Because we love with all our life and might. Believe me, it is better than ali prayers To show the gods our love surpasses theirs !
1909 · PDF PAGE 76
…kissed and never tired, Into the love well-loved and not forlorn, The love beyond all that ever was desired ? Ay. all the cloudy must of life is strained To clearer liquor that our souls attained.
1909 · PDF PAGE 17
…not there still ply your nameless harrow, Mingle a cup from those our common pains To intoxicate us with an extreme pleasure Keener than life’s, more dolorous than death’s Till these infernal blisses pass the measure Of heaven’s imagined by the tremulous breaths Ot silly saints and silly sinners, swaying From scraps of blasphemy to scraps of praying?
1909 · PDF PAGE 31
…golden bliss of all those other lands Where he was happy. So the blizzard frets Its sterile death across my soul, and chills All hope of life even from the rare sad seeds It blows from sunnier vales and happier hills, Though at the best they be but worthless weeds. I stand — I scan the infinite horizon Of hopeless hope — yet I must travel on.
1909 · PDF PAGE 59
… Since all things, even one thing, are absurd ; Whose heart burns out in one volcanic throb, — And no thing is the utmost ecstasy. Whose life is eaten up of nothingness. This is his truth, and yours, that seem to be Mere beauteous bodies gripped in epicene And sterile passion, all unchastity Kisses induct the soft and solemn tune That Israfel shail blow on Doomisday— Your silky eyes are blue as that pale moon (For ere it dies it sickens into grey) In being chaste, all chaste in our obscene That witches see, whose eager violence And sexless mout…
1909 · PDF PAGE 15
…acrifice At our own consecrated shrine of vice. Il Over the desert ocean of distress Wereach pale eager hands that quiver and bleed With life of these our hearts that surge and stress In agony of the meditated deed. For in the little coppice by the gate Wherein I drew you shy and sly, and kissed Yourlips, your hushed “TI love you” smooth and straight Sweeping to wrap us in the glittering mist Of hell that holds us — even there I heard The lacerating laugh of fate ring out, The dog-faced god pronounce the mantic word, And saw the avengers gather…
1909 · PDF PAGE 24
…o bring her naked body shining, shining With flowers of heaven or flames of Phlegethon Into his hermit cell, her love entwining Into his life with spells that murmur on Black words! For one thing be you sure the same My wine is as the music of your name! Marden. Believe me, mystic maiden 0’ mine, That title shall assure the throne of heaven To you — the more so that your love divine That maidenhood to me hath freely given? Nor have I touched the ark with hands unholy, Nor with unsaintly kisses soiled the shrine: Nepenthe, amaranth, vervain, myr…
1909 · PDF PAGE 36
… it is, my maiden, we have had Of Tears that he may mingle yours and mine, Already more than our fair share of pleasure. Water therewith Life’s unresponsive sod, The good god Dionysus ivy-clad And raise therefrom some sickly growth of vine Hath poured us out a draught of brimming measure. Whose grape shall yield a bitter draught of woe Let us then rather give the lustiest praise Fit for the assuaging of a deadlier thirst Our throats can sound than pray for further favour; Than Attis knew or Abelard: even so Even though our sorrow, eating up our…
1909 · PDF PAGE 16
…— Bah! To you and me Such loathing, such despair are little things. We are afloat on the flood-tide of lust — A lust more spiritual than life, that stings Till death and hell dissolve i’ the aftergust. So? But the Gods avert their faces, bend Their holy brows, and see — no-happy end.
1909 · PDF PAGE 44
…, How very easy Thou must make a living ! We would be like Thee! if we had the power We would fill all folk with supernal blisses, Breed life's sweet briar to the tull June flower And on their praises feed our proper kisses. For as you said '’ However kind the gods are, We could be kinder yet I think the odds are ”.