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…dess, maiden, and wife ! Is the marriage bed in vain ? Shall my heart and soul and life shrink back to themselves again ? Be thou my one desire, my soul in day as in night ! My mind the Home of the Higher ! My heart the centre of Light !
…pleasures and pains for hire ? Who can awake such a mortal fire In the veins of a man, that deathly days Have robbed of the masteries of desire ? Who can give garlands of fadeless bays Unto the sorrow and pain we praise ? Yea, we must praise, though the deadly shade Fall on the morrow, though fires of hell Harrow our vitals ; a miracle Springs at thy kisses, for thou hast made Anguish and sorrow desirable ; Torment of hell as the leaves that fade Quickly forgotten, despised, decayed. They are decayed, but thou springest again, Mother of mystery…
…ul. Then the Noble Truth of Sorrow quickens Every heart, and, seeking out its causes, Still the one task of the wise, their wisdom Finds desire, and, seeking out its medicine, Finds cessation of desire, and, seeking How so fierce a feat may be accomplished, Finds at first in Truth a right foundation, Builds the walls of Rightful Life upon it, Four-square, Word and Act and Aspiration Folded mystically across each other, Crowns that palace of enduring marble With sky-piercing pinnacles of Will-power Rightly carven, rightly pointed ; strengthens […
32 THE CANNIBALS I might behold thine eyes as red as fire A tigress maddened with supreme desire ; White arms that clasp me ; fervent breast that glides An eager snake, about my breast and sides ; Teeth keen to bite, red tongue that never tires, And lips ensaguine with unfed desires, A very beast of prey ; hot hands caress, And violent breath that surfeits not excess. But raise no head ! I know thee, breast and thigh, Lips, hair, and eyes, and mouth : I will not die But thou come with me o’er the gate of death. So, bloody and body furious with …
…all his anger tame Fire that glows fiercer for the brand of shame Thrust in it ; so, we who are all fire, One dull red flare of devilish desire, The God of Israel shall not quench with tears, Nor blood of martyrs drawn from myriad spheres, Nor watery blood of Christ ; that blood shall boil With all the fury of our hellish toil ; His veins shall dry with heat ; his bones shall bleach Cold and detested, picked of dogs, on each Dry separate dunghill of burnt Golgotha. But we will wrest from heaven a little star, The Star of Bethlehem, a lying ligh…
…t draws nigher ; Dark lowers a single star ; Mars, like the fire ! Fiercer our lips engage ; Limbs, eyes, ears gather rage ; Sharp grows desire. Hear thy short bitter cries ? Pity thine agonies ? Loose, though love tire ? Nay, neither hear nor spare ; Frenzy shall mock at prayer ; Torture’s red torch shall flare Till thou expire. IV Stars stud a cloudless sky ; Moon silvers blue ; Breeze is content to die ; Lightly falls dew.
22 ODE TO SAPPHO As we lie and behold All the wonders untold That the joys of desire In their secrets enfold, As the pillars of fire On the ocean of old ! O Lesbian maiden ! The delight of thy lips Is the voice of the Spring That the nightingales sing Over Winter’s eclipse, While my fingers enring The white limbs of thy sleep And my lips suck the lips Of the house of my dream, And press daintily deep, Till the joys are supreme That thine amorous mouth On the home of thy love Would exhaust the fierce drouth Of the rivers thereof, Till thy white …
…n cannot tame ! Worship to thee ! Glory to thee ! Venus Callipyge, mother of me. Fruitless foam of a sterile sea, Wanton waves of a vain desire, Maddening billows flecked with fire, Storms that lash on the brine, and flee, Dead delights, insatiate ire Broke like a flower to the birth of thee, Venus Callipyge, mother of me ! 35
… That way is not to tread Through fire or earth or spirit, air or sea. That secret is not gathered of the dead. On way sets free. Not to desire shall lead to not to be. There is no hope within, none overhead, None by the chance of fate’s august decree. It is a path where tears are ever shed. There is no joy—is that a path for me ? Yea ! though I track the ways of utmost dread, One way sets free.
…e Where I may wander by the water still, And see the faint few stars immaculate Watch their own beauty in its depth, and chill Their own desire within its icy stream. Let me move on with vacant eyes, as one Lost in the labyrinth of some ill dream, Move and move on, and never see the sun Lap all the mist with orange and red gold, Throw some lank windmill into iron shade, And stir the chill canal with manifold Lays of clear morning ; never grow afraid When he dips down beyond the far flat land, Know never more the day and night apart, Know not wh…
…hou, who art Light, and above them, Who art fire and above them as fire, Shall thy sightless eyes not love them Who are all of thine own desire ? Immaculate daughters of passion, Shalt thou as they pass be past ? And thy people bewail thee, Thalassian, Lost, lost at the last ? III Nay, ere ye pass your people pass, As snow on summer hills, As dew upon the grass, As one that love fulfils, If he in folly wills Love a lass. Yet on this night of smiles and tears A maiden is the theme. The universe appears An idle summer dream Lost in the grey supre…
…? And the fool’s and the wise man’s anguish Are burnt in the bitter shrine. The god is far as the stars, and the wine and fire Salt with desire. Desunt cetera.
…d so fallen from the heights above Immeasurable, the influence unseen Of music and of spiritual fire, That the soul sleeps, forgotten of desire, Only remembering its God-like birth Reflected in the deity of earth, Becometh even as God. The pensive period Of night and day beats like a waving fan No more, no more : the years, Reft of their joys and fears, Pass like pale faces, leave the life of man Untroubled of their destines, Leave him forgotten of life and time, immortal, calm and wise. Only the ceaseless surf on coral towers, The changeless c…
… drain its sweetest poison. Scarce a sigh Beats the dead hours out ; scarce a melody Of measured pulses quickened with the blood Of that desire which pours its deadly flood Through soul and shaken body ; scarce a thought, But sense through spirit most divinely wrought To perfect feeling ; only through the lips Electric ardour kindles, flashes, slips Through all the circle to her lips again, And thence, unwavering, flies to mine, to drain All pleasure in one draught. No whispered sigh ; No change of breast ; love’s posture perfectly Once gained,…
… but no deed. Such a sense is up and within me, A tongue as of mystical fire ! Love, beauty, and holiness win me To the end of the great desire, Where I cease from the thirst and the labour, As the land that no ploughman tills Lest the robber his neighbour unloosen the sabre From holds in the hills. From love of my life and its burden Set free in the silence remote, Grows a sorrow divine for my guerdon, A peace in my struggling note. Compassion for earth far extended Beneath me, the swords and the rods, My spirit hath bended, bowed me and blend…
…is dung, this carrion, To this infection doubly dire, Star of my eyes that are, and still my nature’s sun, You, O my angel ! You, my own desire ! Yes ! such will you be, queen, in graces that surpass, Once the last sacraments are said ; When you depart beneath wide-spreading blooms and grass To rot amid the bones of many dead. Then, O my beauty ! tell the worms, who will devour With kisses all of you to dust ; That I have kept the form and the essential power Divine of my distorted lust.
… forgotten (as a star Forgets its nebulous virginity) Are set in all the sky and earth and sea. Shining with solar fire, The single-eyed desire Of scent and sound and sight and sense perfuses The still and lambent light Of the essential night ; And all the heart of me is fain, and muses, As if for ever doomed to dream Or pass in peace Lethean adown the grey Lethean stream.
…ed with incomparable grace Even in the shape of splendour as she passed. The king’s thought turned at last To that forgotten story : and desire Filled all his heart with aureate fire Whose texture was a woman’s hair : so fine Bloomed the fair flower of pleasure : Not the wild solar treasure Of gleaming light, but the moon’s shadowy pearl, The love of a young girl Before she knows that love : so mused the king ; “ I am not weary of the soul of spring” He said, “ none happier in this causeless chain Of life that bears no fruit of pain, No seed of…
…om the home of their auburn hair Down to the feet that we find so fair ; Where the red sword has a secret thrust, Pain, and delight, and desire they share. Verily pain ! and thy daughters trust Thou canst bid roses spring out of dust. Mingle, ye children of such a queen, Mingle, and meet, and sow never a seed ! Mingle, and tingle, and kiss, and bleed With the blood of the life of the Lampsacene, With the teeth that know never a pitiful deed But fret and foam over with kisses obscene— Mingle and weep for what years have been. Never a son nor a d…
88 VENUS 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…