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…urly, luxuriant. He is clean-shaved, and wears an eye- glass with a tortoiseshell rim. TODD has a face of keen pallor ; he is dressed in black, with a flowing black cape, black motor-cap. He gives the impression of great age combined with great activity.
147 THE JEW OF FEZ THERE was a Jewtradition says Who loathed the colour of his fez. Black gives an air of gloom, he said : I should look beautiful in red ! He told the Mullah of his plight The good man answered : Very right ! Islam is free to all mankind : You only need to be resigned. The Jew agreed ; he learnt to pray Five several times each mortal day. Instead of Abraham, the Mullah Called him Habib Husain Abdullah. But (what indeed is hardly strange) His views on Art began to change. This reds a shrieking tone, I swear ! O …
72 THE SWIMMER FATHER of light ! Through the black seas I swim To thine arising Disk. Seven waves suppress Mine head beneath their arcane bitterness ; Nor on their curling summits shines one dim Foam-flake made lustrous by the light of him To whom I strive. O blank, black wilderness Of iron water ! O this stormy stress Of strength that strains toward thine auroral rim ! Caught up on the wild crest, thine orb I glimpse ; Thrust in the trough, the salt wave chokes and blinds. Shrill shrieks the wind, the voice of myriad imps ; And mine own mocker…
60 ATHOR AND ASAR ON the black night, beneath the winter moon, I clothed me in the limbs of Clodia, Swooning my soul out into her red throat, So that the glimmer of our skins, the tune Of our ripe rhythm, seeded the hideous play Of death-worms crawling on a corpse, afloat With life that takes its thirst Only from things accurst. Closer than Clodias clasp, Death had me down To his black heart, and fed upon my breath, So that we seemed a stillnesswhiter than The stars, more silent than the stars, a crown Of stars ! For in the icy kiss of death …
…pe thy dear sobs shall resound, A drummer rattling out the Charge ! For am I not a discord-note In Gods great anthemthanks to thee Black Irony with greedy throat That shaketh me, devoureth me Through my soft voice this harpy screams ! My blood, this viper-venom base ! I, the black mirror by whose gleams Megaera watches her own face.
168 IN MANU DOMINÆ (A BLACK MASS) THE pale girl with the glittering eyes Leans forward ; all her youths despair Stares from the fleshless face that lies Mid the faint flax of her hair Fallen on her foolish broideries : She is too deathly fair. She staresshe staresshe reads this thought, What black joy her harsh cough affirms. Life leersa jesting Juggernaut ! Death beckons, beckons to the worms. And the smile upon his face is fraught With all its ghastly terms. Out of the glimmer and incense-reek Two clamorous colour-cries emerge. The frig…
TELEPATHY 69 Our eyes were sunk in black eclipse To rise in glittering trances : Our belly-muscles tight as whips By dint of Arab dances ! Yea ; all our love is glittering steel Sharpened on tortures aching wheel. My Dorothy ! my Dorothy ! Our mouths were wried and bleeding. Loves eucharistic mystery ! Their suckling lips were feeding At the black breasts of ecstasy, Of ecstasy exceeding ! Yea ; at the paps of Isis we Drained starry milk of ecstasy. O thou close-fitted to my soul, Close-fitted to my skin, Moving as one delicious whole Without…
…can understand me. None Of these dull drunkards could divine In nightmares this that I have done To make a winding-sheet of wine ! This black invulnerable vice Engines of iron ! towers of stone ! For winters blight or summers spice True love, true love hath never known True love with black inchauntments filled, Its hellish rout of shrieks and groans, Its phials of poison death-distilled, Its rattling chains and skeletons ! Here am I, free, alonealone ! I shall be drunk, dead drunk, to-night. Then I shall slip to the cold stone Without re…
…in, my breast Find it surpassing hard to choose the best ; Butif I must !then let my song declare The sweet, shy rosebud in your crisp black hair !
THE WIZARD WAY 25 By the hangmans hands is thrust Through the wet and writhing dust, Never black and never dried Hearts blood of a suicide. He had plucked the hazel rod From the rude and goatish god, Even as the curved moons waning ray Stolen from the King of Day. He had learnt the elvish sign ; Given the Token of the Nine : Once to rave, and once to revel, Once to bow before the devil, Once to swing the thurible, Once to kiss the goat of hell, Once to dance the aspen spring, Once to croak, and once to sing, Once to oil the savoury thighs Of…
… chaste corpse therein, but a soft-smiling whore. XIV Then I returned into myself, and took All in my arms, Gods universe : Crushed its black juice out, while His anger shook His dumbness pregnant with a curse. I made me ink, and in a little book I wrote one word That God himself, the adder of Thought, had never heard. XV It detonated. Nature, God, mankind Like sulphur, nitre, charcoal, once Blended, in one annihilation blind Were rent into a myriad of suns. Yea ! all the mighty fabric of a Mind Stood in the abyss, Belching a Law for That more…
…d honey-coloured doves : Yet one thing mortal serves to name another As mortal as itself. Why must our deathless loves Be stained by the black-hearted mother That called things by dead names ? The sunny elf Language shall play with the ethereal flames But never dare approach The central and volcanic fire, The inmost Force, nor, like a glittering army Send forth its scouts to encroach Upon our citadel desire. Ay ! though these flaming sentences Eat like strong acid in my vitals, char me, Blast me like lightning, smash me like black seas Towering…
…he East Didst thou flame forth, O Son of Man, The chainless champion of the Beast ! A warrior comet, thy plumes fan The shuddering airs black wildernesses To fiends insatiate caresses. Thou camest crowned and helmed and armed, Sworded, a mighty man of war : Swayed all the stars, aghast, alarmed As at the Thunderbolt of Thor ! The very aethyr rocked and shook At thine indomitable look ! [Here must we utterly restrict Our theological remarks. One whom not Heaven could contradict Says : Now, Sir, if you please, no larks ! Hence for third stanza …
… with Thine angels singing by : I go to hell, with her last kiss Yet tingling in my memory. Nay, start not from Thy throne ! I go At Thy black damning to the deep. Thou canst not follow me ! I know This thing I had, and this I keep. God ! I have loved. I love ! I love, And shall love through Thine ageless hell. Thou hast the kingdom of the Above, And I, her memory. Fare Thee well ! To Thine I Amsupreme exclaim, The total of all that may be said ! I answer from the abyss of flame : Dorothy ! and her mouth was red.
…to the tryst In his gown of amethyst. Earlier yet his soul had come To the Hill of Martyrdom, Where the charred and crooked stake Like a black envenomed snake
…ying to find fault) Said I should like to know, pardie ! Of all the beauties that compose The enchantment of her darling breath, The black seductions and the rose Wherewith her body glittereth, Which is the sweetest ? O my soul ! Thus didst thou answer the Accurst : In her, since alls divine control, There cannot be or last or first. Since all transports me, how shall I Aught of one thing affirm aright ? She dazzles like the morning sky And soothes my spirit like the night. Too exquisite the music is That all her lovely shape aff…
… can take ; endures The simple truth of me that this is yours Is not the music mingled with the form When all the heavens break in blind black storm ? Are we not veiled as Gods, and cruel as they, Smiting our brilliance on the shuddering clay ? Silence and darkness cover us, confirm Our splendour to its unappointed term : For all the mean homunculi that dance Around us shudder at our brilliance. These puppets perish in the good grand glare, Our sworded sunlight in the boundless air ! These bats need cloisters ; these tame birds a cage ; How sho…
…t hieroglyph Of the dragon and the lamb Shall thou and I engrave here On Times inscandescable cliff ? V Look ! in the polished granite, Black as thy cartouche is with sins, I read the searing sentence That blasts the eyes that scan it : HOOR and SET be TWINS. A fico for repentance ! VI Ay ! O Son of my mother That snarled and clawed in her womb As now we rave in our rapture, I know thee, I love thee, brother ! Incestuous males that consume The light and the life that we capture. VII Starve thou the soul of the world, Brother, as I the body …
…l not weep. The torch of song is smitten Into dry stray leaves elsehow doomed for sure To damp decay, Victorian manure, Miasmal squelch, black slough to mire the Sun, The stink and belch and snivel of Tennyson ! Hail and farewell, my brother ! I am he To plant in hell thy sunkissed sea-lily Thou has lived ! As I live, stars in midnights deep. Thou hast died. All die ; why boggle at the leap ? Serene and splendid blazed thy fire, nights sun : Thy task is ended, brother, thy work done. Drone on thy shore, no pæan stir thy surge ! A period to li…
… idleness and peace-with-pleasure ! Strong limbs that toss aside their tented veil Brew acrid draughts of madness, darkly male, Like two black witch-women that turn And stir some ghastly philtre in their urn. Thine armscould strangle a young Hercules ! Rival and beat the pythons strength-in-ease ; Made to crushobstinately sure To print him in thine heart, thy paramour ! On shining shoulder and soft rounded throat Thy posed head swaysstrange grace of melilote ! With a triumphant air and mild Thou passest on thy way, majestic child !