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Page 1 of 11910 · PDF PAGE 131
78 THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY. Of one’s soul the grisly ape ! Get ye forth to Aggereth Riding in her golden car Yoked to ox and ass that prance In their evil Hinnom-dance ! I am writhing with my death Born of the infernal Star. ALEXANDER Nay, our lady, we are come To thy worship — high and holy ; From our heaven-wide halidom To the manger dark and lowly We have brought taraxacum, Mandrake, amrit, myrrh and moly ; Many a royal gift of gree From the land of Danae, From the coral-breeding sea, From the steppes of Tartary ! GOVINDA I have brought a treasu…
1910 · PDF PAGE 140
…ws, Beyond the swiftest river, Was moved thereto by a strange goad — Stranger, my lords, than all your wisdom knows ! For in the city of gold and jade Beyond where my vassal Tartars shiver I have a dagger gold-inlaid Sharp as an arrow from the heavenly quiver ; Its hilt of clustered fires, a crusted jewel Fashioned in the likeness of a demon-king Most exquisitely cruel : — Daily I try my luck By the Oracle of the Bleeding Duck. GOVINDA Look ! what a horrid horde of toads Hops from the Syrian wench ! Toads, issuing from the maid, hop off croakin…
1910 · PDF PAGE 143
90 THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY. CHAU I wager thirty loads of merchandise Most precious — sandalwood and gold and spice And jewels, and divine medicaments, And goat-hair broideries, and silken tents — And thirty diamonds of the purest water, It is a daughter ! ALEXANDER I take it — and yours too, my lord. Maybe You both are wrong. GOVINDA True, this much mystery Veils the whole matter — it were hard to say. CHAU Shang Ti ! how fierce a bray The amorous ass gives. MIRIAM Heave, o heave, my sides ! Stretch ! Split ! This pang decides
1910 · PDF PAGE 97
…u and I are partners of This, the sacrament of love. By the violate babe’s blue eyes, By his sucked-out arteries, By the blood-bedabbled gold, By the body void and cold, Make me partner of thy power Over this obscurest hour !
1910 · PDF PAGE 98
THE RED STAR. 45 IST SATYR O the rich red blood that swims on Over all the malachite ! 2ND SATYR Ah ! the banquet gold and crimson Like the sun afeast at night ! ALEXANDER Out of the fume of the blood arise Two lithe nymphs with amethyst eyes, Sparkling with the wanton pleasure That their small and laughing scarlet Mouths betrayed, as overmeasure Bubbled out the dancing harlot Music of them, snaky slim, Panther-smooth and light of limb Wreathed with wealth of mystic berry, As they leap, divinely drunken On the very blood that gat them, Insolent…
1910 · PDF PAGE 141
…l you of the Oracle. I took (So that it might be an exhaustive trial) A snow-white bird with purple tail-feathers Wherein pale flames of gold mingled and shook. Here, too, my wisest ministers Gathered to solve the riddle of the Star. But so the balky brute Crushed in this gnarled fist Maintained the unequal war That at the dagger-sweep Strongly she leapt — I missed !
1910 · PDF PAGE 44
… I come. But ere the pregnant gloom Lighten at last, I ask myself for whom I take the pen, since English throbs and glows Forth from its gold, like streams from sunny snows. And if I write for England, who will read ? As if, when moons of Ramazan recede, Some fatuous angel-porter should deposit His perfect wine within the privy closet ! “ What do they know, who only England know ? ” Only what England paints its face to show. Love mummied and relabelled “ chaste affection, ” And lust excused as “ natural selection.” Caligula upbraids the cruel c…
1910 · PDF PAGE 158
THE BLUE DWARF. I05 ISSA Undone me quite, Nagged me with sordid greediness all night, Greed for my gold, my person — all I have. Saith not the prophet : “ Cruel as the grave ” ? That grinning mask, that musk-rat, hath enriched Her rags by every inch of me that itched ; And for one itch hath planted me another, The “ friend that sticketh closer than a brother ”. Ten groans of mine for every grin of hers ! What saith the prophet ? — “ Whited sepulchres ! ” JOHN Nay, Lord, the phrase unique is all thine own. ISSA Then write it down, an nothing les…
1910 · PDF PAGE 104
THE RED STAR. 51 Of lust and ugliness and gold, The rank goats of the whorish mire. So falls their flame to that decayed Glow of wet rot in the wintry wood. Ay ! from this star disaster-rayed A very wormwood draught is brewed : The light of life shall shrink dismayed At the dawn of prostitute and prude ; And the pagan glory fade From the brows of womanhood. IST SATYR But the boy shall thrust the maid From the sunlight to the shade. He shall make her passion good. 2ND SATYR Nay ! for all the world-decay Rots from sapphirine to grey. All the lepr…
1910 · PDF PAGE 106
…r thy stridency Like nereids playing on the wind-struck sea That heaves herself with sensuous swaying ! I have seen a wild girl woven in gold Stained with blue and scarlet — playing Before me — she transported me With the writhings of her painted hips And her belly jerking up to my lips, Into an azure abyss of sea,
1910 · PDF PAGE 116
…ters that unutterable word ; Thy body like the bright sun in his strength ; And all thy virgin length Armed with the sword and balances, Gold as the ultimate galaxies — Thou art evanished. Surely the Presence of the Lord wast thou
1910 · PDF PAGE 136
…3 Bray deafens us — now cling To the lewd stark dripping thing Thou has caressed and gilt From the point to the gross hilt With the babe-gold of thy bright skin, Wolfing it in As the dragon swallows up the moon ! CHAU See, she will swoon. This is magnificent. I would not lose the event — Ho ! boy, bring wine ! Black wine in jars of jade Cooled all these months in hoarded snow ! Black wine with purple starlight in its bosom, Oily and sweet as the soul of a brown maid Brought from the forenoon’s archipelago, Her brows bound bright with many a sca…
1910 · PDF PAGE 132
… hoarded store From the islands of the West Gathered far with blood and tears For three score and seven years. All this wealth of virgin gold This thy babe shall helt and hold. He shall buy the souls of priests ; Forge men chains, and make them beasts ; Give the carrion soldier meat, And corrupt the judgment-seat. With it he shall seethe the snake Of his faith in fire-hot blood ; Hurt the humble, strew the stake With the faggots ; gild the rood That for many a year shall brand With its blight full many a land. CHAU I have brought him frankincen…
1910 · PDF PAGE 177
…! Poet, painter, sculptor, sage Prostituted to their age ; Or starved or tortured, should they hold To the clear sunlight and the age of gold, — Scarce a tithe of all I see, Yet — thou dost not pity me ? ALEXANDER Thou art near death : thy corpse light dawns on us. See ! the tenebrous glare and venomous And all it shews. Enough ! I leave thee, man, To hide me in the secret place of Pan Beneath the fallen groves Arcadian. He fades away, as if the new light, making the filth visible, made him invisible. ISSA I am nailed here too fast : — I strain…
1910 · PDF PAGE 191
…dard shall be plant Free, equal, passionate, pagan, dominant, Mystic, indomitable, self-controlled, The red rose glowing on its cross of gold... Yea ! I will wait throughout the centuries Of the universal man-disease Until the morn of his titanic birth... The Saviour of the Earth !
1910 · PDF PAGE 123
…ng wakes Into a world of rapture. I am I At last — the little fool that wondered why ! I am abreast of God’s whole tide of thought. Like gold into fine linen, I am wrought Into the royal vesture of the globe. I am the Empress of the City of Sin, Wrapped in its purple robe Stained with mine own maid’s blood. Yea ! for all glorious within Am I, most like the daughter of a king, Voluptuously languishing Like a great queen afloat upon the flood In gilded barge
1910 · PDF PAGE 107
…te Shrills up from the black Nothing’s throat Like an enchanted harp that playeth Melodies, melodies magniloquent of death. Yea ! o thou golden wan strange-smiling one, Thou art not only cold. Thine ivory came from fierce bull-elephants That trampled Persians in their battle-rage ; Thy gold was found by men most grave and sage Among the sands of a strange river. How my breast pants ! How my sides quiver ! Surely the breath of God is bubbling in These veins, their blood that held its calm discourse Lit with electric force By Him for whom I have …
1910 · PDF PAGE 88
I THE RED STAR SCENE. — A grove of ilex in Arcadia. The terrace is of white mar- ble. In the centre an image of the god Pan in Ivory and Gold. The pedestal is of lapis-lazuli, the space around of malachite. It is strewn with red roses. Before the image of the god stands a naked man, in whose hand is a sharp sword heavy and curved. Its blade is of blue steel, its hilt encrusted with rubies. The man is come to his full strength ; he is very dark with deep-set glittering eyes of green flecked with fire. His beard is short, square, curly, and black…