Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1901 · PDF PAGE 107

The Mother’s Tragedy

…measurable love More beautiful shall touch the chaos cold Of earth that is grown old. Then, shameful sisterhood of earth’s disdain, Your lips shall speak your hearts, and understand; Your lovers shall assuage the amorous pain With spiritual lips more keen and bland, And ye shall take God’s hand.

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1901 · PDF PAGE 33

The Mother’s Tragedy

…an you tell me why I loved you as a child, and why I dare Now take your head between my hands and kiss Your forehead with these shameful lips of mine, These harlot lips, and kiss you unashamed ? ULRIC. Strange are these words, and this emotion strange! CORA. Strange is the truth, and deadly as an asp. ULRIC. Wear me no more with this anxiety. CORA. How can I speak? For this will ruin us. ULRIC. Unspoken, I demand thy heart of thee. CORA. My heart is broken. This will murder thine. ULRIC. Kill, but not torture! Let me know the truth.

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1901 · PDF PAGE 95

The Mother’s Tragedy

…tellar beams Glow renascent, now I hold her Breast to breast, and shining shoulder Laid to shoulder, in the bliss Of the uncreated kiss. Lips to lips beget for daughters Little kisses of the breeze ; Limbs entwined with limbs, the waters Of incredible blue seas; Eyes that understand, the slaughters Of a thousand ecstasies Re-embodied, as they wrought us Garlands of strange sorceries; New desires and mystic passion Infinite, of starry fashion; The mysterious desire Of the subtle formless fire. Vainly may the Tyanzean Throw his misconceiving eye …

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1901 · PDF PAGE 91

The Mother’s Tragedy

… swamp- adder— I hate you! beast of Hell! I have snapped Love’s manacle! O Murderess of the hateful eyes! O and you fix them on me, your lips curse now—'tis fitter! Snarl on! eat out your heart with the poison that is its blood. Speak! and her lips move now with blasphemies cruel and bitter. Slow the words creep forth as a sleepy and deadly flood. They glitter, those Satanic eyes! ‘“‘Beast! I gave you my soul and my body to all your lust!

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1901 · PDF PAGE 125

The Mother’s Tragedy

EPILOGUE lil 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.

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1901 · PDF PAGE 45

The Mother’s Tragedy

…stoop, My faithful priest, and worship at my feet. AMENHATEP. I am most miserable. But truth must leap In this tremendous moment from my lips, Its long-shut barrier. For I pity thee With my old heart’s whole pity. Thou art young, And beautiful, and proud, and dear to me, Whom I have served thy life through. Now that love Demands a deadlier service—to speak truth. Thou art not Horus, but a man as I. CHORUS. Thou art not Horus, buta man. Thy life Is not of the immortals, but, as ours, Stands at the summons of the hooded death. PACHAD. Speak! I ha…

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1901 · PDF PAGE 86

The Mother’s Tragedy

… her ; I dare not stay. I will go down and mingle with the throng, Find some debasing dulling sacrifice, Some shameless harlot with thin lips grown grey In desperate desire, and so with song And wine fling hellward. Yes, she does not rise— O if she opened once her eyes!

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1901 · PDF PAGE 85

The Mother’s Tragedy

…esired, And sealed my own for ever by this keen Death that crowns her Death’s queen. Death’s and not mine: I was a fool to kiss Her dead lips—aye, her living lips for that ! I cannot bid her rise and live again. I would not. Nay, I know not; for is this My triumph or my ruin, satiate Of death, insatiate alway of pain ? What have I done? In vain, in vain!

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1901 · PDF PAGE 98

The Mother’s Tragedy

…l gives me to possess. Her hair is fastened with a dagger thin; A dead man’s heart is woven with each tress. I murdered Christ before my lips could win Sidonia the Sorceress.

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1901 · PDF PAGE 110

The Mother’s Tragedy

… REAPER How by the part man learns to love the whole, How each man’s mistress calls herself a wife. I tired not of the tigress limbs and lips— Only, my soul was weary of itself, Being so impotent, who only sips The dewdrops from the flower-cup of an elf, Not comprehending the mysterious sea Of black swift waters that can drink it up, Not trusting life to its own ecstasy, Not mixing poison with the loving-cup. I, maker of mad rhymes, the reaper she! We lingered but a day upon the lawn. O Thou, the other Reaper! come to me! Thy dark embraces have…

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1901 · PDF PAGE 116

The Mother’s Tragedy

…ieth— Hast thou no knowledge what the carcass saith ? I watched all night by my dead lover’s bed. I saw the spirit; heard the motionless Lips part in uttering a supreme caress: “T care not nor for life nor death;” they said, ‘““Only for love.” ‘What difference?” said I, ‘“‘ Dead or alive, I love thee utterly.”

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1901 · PDF PAGE 84

The Mother’s Tragedy

…eze That passed, like silken tapestries that feel The silkier cheeks of maidens as they cleave Tender to patient lovers, for the ease Of lips fulfilled of harmony. |

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1901 · PDF PAGE 13

The Mother’s Tragedy

… soul of grace Abideth not her face Without vague longing, infinite desire, Stronger because suppressed, Unto the wide black breast, The lips incarnate of blood, flesh, and fire, So to slip down between Thighs vast and epicene, Morose and lean, To that unnameable morass, the ultimate mire. Wherefore behoves the Soul that leaps divine, Even beholding, darkly in a mirror, The face of God, to sink before His Shrine. Weeping: O Beauty, Majesty, and Terror, Wisdom and Mind and Soul, Crown simplex, Mighty Whole,

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1901 · PDF PAGE 108

The Mother’s Tragedy

THE REAPER N middle music of Apollo’s corn She stood, the reaper, challenging a kiss; The lips of her were fresher than the morn, The perfume of her skin was ambergris; The sun had kissed her body into brown; Ripe breasts thrown forward to the summer breeze ; Warm tints of red lead fancy to the crown, Her coils of chestnut, in abundant ease, That bound the stately head. What joy of youth Lifted her nostril to respire the wind ? What pride of being? What triumphal truth Acclaimed her queen to her imperial mind ? I watched, a leopard, stealthy in…

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1901 · PDF PAGE 105

The Mother’s Tragedy

THE LESBIAN HELL gt Their sighs attract the unsubstantial shapes Of other women, and their kisses burn Cold on the lips whose purple blood escapes, A thin chill stream ; they feel not nor discern, Nor love's low laugh return. They kiss the spiritual dead, they pass Like mists uprisen from the frosty moon, Like shadows fleeting in a seer’s glass, Beckoning, yearning, amorous of the noon When earth dreams on in swoon. They are so sick for sorrow, that my eyes Are moist because their passion was so fair, So pure and comely that no sacrifice Seems …

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1901 · PDF PAGE 20

The Mother’s Tragedy

…rs of ill. Soft, moveless, as a tigress glides, Strange laughing devilry abides Its hour to poison. How they gloat, The fiends, upon her lips and throat! They touch her heart, they speer her eyes, They linger on the lovely prize! O dead she thought them! It is written: ‘‘ Eve’s heel is by the serpent bitten, His head she bruises.” No indeed! Not woman, but the woman’s seed! Hark! in the cloak of “ Love of Truth” They whisper “ Memory of Youth”; And, mindful of the deadliest sin, Hint: ‘“ Sinful woman, look within!” CORA. Ah me! if she could loo…

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1901 · PDF PAGE 122

The Mother’s Tragedy

…aint incense-puff to shrineward dies. No care, no pain, no craving to remember, One leap toward the knees and destinies, Where shine Her lips like flames, Her breasts like amber, Like moons Her eyes. For my heart turns—ah still!—in Sorrow’s traces, Where sad chill footprints pash the sodden leaves ; Where ranged around me are the cold, grey faces; Fallen on the stubble are the rotten sheaves; The vicious ghosts abound; and Chronos’ paces No soul deceives.

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1901 · PDF PAGE 90

The Mother’s Tragedy

…n excesses Long restrained, it cried, “ Behold! I am the Lord!” O Madonna of the Golden Eyes! Yes, we sat with modest eyes and murmuring lips Downcast at the table, while the husband drank his wine. So thy sly, slow hand stretched furtively; there slips Deadly in his throat the poison draught divine! O Madonna of the Golden Eyes! Then we left his carcase with the stealthy tread Reverent, in presence of the silent place; Then you burned, afire, caught up the ghastly head, Looked like Hell right into it, and spat upon the face! O Madonna of the G…

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1901 · PDF PAGE 49

The Mother’s Tragedy

…’s eyes blazed out. So all Silently went, and left her naked there, Crowned, sceptred, and exultant, till a chant Rolled from her moving lips; and great fear fell Upon us, and the flame leapt, and we fled, Worshipping. But the mood passed, and we see A lecherous woman whose magician power

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