THE WORKS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY Vol. III, part 1 of 3 ASCII VERSION November 6, 1993 e.v. key entry by Bill Heidrick, T.G. of O.T.O. January 27, 1994 e.v. proofed and conformed to the "Essay Competition Copy" edition of 1907 e.v. by Bill Heidrick T.G. of O.T.O. Descriptions of portraits retained, even though they are not in this edition. (The winner of the competition was J.F.C.Fuller's "The Star in the West") File 1 of 3. Copyright (c) O.T.O. O.T.O. P.O.Box 430 Fairfax, CA 94978 USA (415) 454-5176 ---- Messages only. This work was originally published in two parallel columns. Where such columns are found in the original, they have been rendered as a single text with "A" or "B" added to the page number at the end of each column: A = end page left column. B = end page right column. On many pages a prefatory paragraph or a concluding group of sentences is full across the page. These instances are noted in curly brackets. 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Copies may be made for other individuals at reasonable cost of copying and mailing only, no additional charges may be added. Not for "share-ware" distribution or inclusion in any commercial enterprise. ************************************************************************ THE WORKS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY VOLUME III ESSAY COMPETITION COPY THE WORKS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY "{variation: WITH PORTRAITS}" VOLUME III FOYERS SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF RELIGIOUS TRUTH 1907 ["All rights reserved"] {ILLUSTRATION ON PAGE FACING AND JUST BEFORE TITLE: in the delux edition: This is a photo of Crowley from the waist up, seated and bent slightly toward the camera. He is young, 20s, and wears a sheep or goat skin full sleeve coat with the fleece turned inside. This coat is open in front and looks like an undecorated Afgan mountain garment. He holds a pipe to left side of mouth in left hand, signet or cabacon ring on second finger left. The pipe looks like a sharply double-curved briar. Hair tousled and eyes still working on the "Crowley stare". Caption below in script: "Photo by Aimis Portrait, 5th Av. New York, 1906.} CONTENTS OF VOLUME III THE STAR AND THE GARTER -- PAGE ARGUMENT . . . . . . . . 1 THE STAR AND THE GARTER . . . . . 2 I. . . . . . . . . 2 II. . . . . . . . . 2 III. . . . . . . . . 2 IV. . . . . . . . . 2 V. . . . . . . . . 3 VI. . . . . . . . . 3 VII. . . . . . . . . 3 VIII. . . . . . . . . 4 IX. . . . . . . . . 4 X. . . . . . . . . 5 XI. . . . . . . . . 6 XII. . . . . . . . . 6 XIII. . . . . . . . . 6 XIV. . . . . . . . . 7 XV. . . . . . . . . 7 XVI. . . . . . . . . 8 XVII. . . . . . . . . 8 XVIII. . . . . . . . . 8 XIX. . . . . . . . . 9 XX. . . . . . . . . 9 XXI. . . . . . . . . 10 XXII. . . . . . . . . 10 XXIII. . . . . . . . . 11 XXIV. . . . . . . . . 11 XXV. . . . . . . . . 12 XXVI. . . . . . . . . 12 XXVII. . . . . . . . . 13 XXVIII. . . . . . . . . 13 XXIX. . . . . . . . . 13 XXX. . . . . . . . . 14 XXXI. . . . . . . . . 14 XXXII. . . . . . . . . 15 {vA} THE STAR AND THE GARTER -- "Continued" PAGE XXXIII. . . . . . . . . 15 APPENDIX . . . . . . . . 17 WHY JESUS WEPT -- PERSONS STUDIED . . . . . . . 20 DEDICATIO MINIMA . . . . . . . 20 DEDICATIO MINOR . . . . . . . 20 DEDICATIO MAJOR . . . . . . . 20 DEDICATIO MAXIMA . . . . . . . 21 DEDICATIO EXTRAORDINARIA . . . . . 21 WHY JESUS WEPT . . . . . . . 21 SCENE I. . . . . . . . 22 " II. . . . . . . . 24 " III. . . . . . . . 25 " IV. . . . . . . . 26 " V. . . . . . . . 27 " VI. . . . . . . . 28 " VII. . . . . . . . 36 " VIII. . . . . . . . 37 " IX. . . . . . . . 38 " X. . . . . . . . 39 " XI. . . . . . . . 41 " XII. . . . . . . . 44 " XIII. . . . . . . . 46 " XIV. . . . . . . . 47 ROSA MUNDI, AND OTHER LOVE-SONGS -- I. ROSA MUNDI . . . . . . 51 II. THE NIGHTMARE . . . . . 56 III. THE KISS . . . . . . 58 IV. ANNE . . . . . . . 58 V. BRUNNHILDE . . . . . . 58 VI. DORA . . . . . . . 59 {vB} PAGE ROSA MUNDI -- "Continued" VII. FATIMA . . . . . . . 59 VIII. FLAVIA . . . . . . . 60 IX. KATIE CARR . . . . . . 60 X. NORA . . . . . . . 61 XI. MARY . . . . . . . 61 XII. XANTIPPE . . . . . . 62 XIII. EILEEN . . . . . . . 62 XIV. . . . . . . . . 62 XV. . . . . . . . . 63 XVI. . . . . . . . . 63 XVII. . . . . . . . . 64 XVIII. FRENDSHIP {SIC} . . . . . 64 XIX. . . . . . . . . 64 XX. . . . . . . . . 64 XXI. . . . . . . . . 65 XXII. . . . . . . . . 65 XXIII. PROTOPLASM . . . . . . 65 XXIV. . . . . . . . . 66 XXV. . . . . . . . . 66 XXVI. . . . . . . . . 67 XXVII. . . . . . . . . 67 XXVIII. . . . . . . . . 67 THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR -- SCENE I. . . . . . . . 68 " II. . . . . . . . 69 " III. . . . . . . . 72 GARGOYLES -- TO L. BENTROVATA . . . . . . 84 IMAGES OF LIFE -- PROLOGUE -- VIA VITAE . . . . . 84 THE WHITE CAT. . . . . . . 86 ALI AND HASSAN . . . . . . 86 AL MALIK . . . . . . . 86 SONG . . . . . . . . 87 ANICCA . . . . . . . . 87 TARSHITERING . . . . . . . 87 A FRAGMENT . . . . . . . 88 THE STUMBLING-BLOCK. . . . . . 89 WOODCRAFT . . . . . . . 89 A NUGGET FROM A MINE . . . . . 90 {viA} PAGE GARGOYLES -- "Continued" AU CAVEAU DES INNOCENTS . . . . . 90 ROSA INFERNI . . . . . . . 91 DIOGENES . . . . . . . 93 SAID . . . . . . . . 94 EPILOGUE -- PRAYER . . . . . . 95 IMAGES OF DEATH -- PROLOGUE -- PATCHOULI . . . . . 96 KALI . . . . . . . . 97 THE JILT . . . . . . . 99 THE EYES OF PHARAOH. . . . . . 100 BANZAI! . . . . . . . 101 LE JOUR DES MORTIS . . . . . . 1O2 AVE MORS . . . . . . . 102 THE MORIBUND . . . . . . . 103 THE BEAUTY AND THE BHIKKHU . . . . 104 IMMORTALITY . . . . . . . 105 EPILOGUE -- THE KING-GHOST . . . . . 107 RODIN IN RIME -- A STUDY IN SPITE . . . . . . 109 FRONTISPIECE -- RODIN. . . . . . 110 VARIOUS MEASURES -- THE TOWER OF TOIL . . . . . . 111 LA BELLE HEAULMIERE. . . . . . 112 FEMME ACCROUPIE . . . . . . 112 CARYATIDE . . . . . . . 112 JEUNE MERE . . . . . . . 113 L'AMOUR QUI PASSE . . . . . . 113 TETE DE FEMME (MUSEE DU LUXEMBOURG) . . . 113 LA CASQUE D'OR . . . . . . 114 LES BOURGEOIS DE CALAIS . . . . . 114 REVEIL D'ADONIS . . . . . . 114 LA MAIN DE DIEU . . . . . . 115 DESESPOIR . . . . . . . 115 EPERVIER ET COLOMBE. . . . . . 115 RESURRECTION . . . . . . . 116 L'ETERNEL PRINTEMPS. . . . . . 116 ACROBATES . . . . . . . 116 L'AGE D'AIRAIN . . . . . . 117 FAUNESSE . . . . . . . 117 {viB} PAGE RODIN IN RIME -- "Continued" SONNETS AND QUATORZAINS -- MADAME RODIN . . . . . . . 118 LE PENSEUR . . . . . . . 118 LA PENSEE . . . . . . . 118 LE BAISER . . . . . . . 118 BOUCHES D'ENFER . . . . . . 119 LA GUERRE . . . . . . . 119 W. E. HENLEY . . . . . . . 119 SYRINX AND PAN . . . . . . 119 ICARE . . . . . . . . 120 LA FORTUNE . . . . . . . 120 PAOLO ET FRANCESCA . . . . . . 120 LES DEUX GENIES . . . . . . 120 LA CRUCHE CASSEE . . . . . . 121 LA TENTATION DE SAINT-ANTOINE . . . . 121 EVE . . . . . . . . 121 FEMMES DAMNEES . . . . . . 121 NABUCHADNOSOR. . . . . . . 122 MORT D'ADONIS. . . . . . . 122 BALZAC . . . . . . . . 122 LE CYCLOPS SURPREND ACIS ET GALATHEE . . . 122 OCTAVE MIRBEAU . . . . . . 123 {viiA} PAGE RODIN IN RIME -- "Continued" SOCRATE. . . . . . . . 123 COLOPHON -- AN INCIDENT . . . . . 123 ORPHEUS -- WARNING . . . . . . . . 126 EXORDIUM . . . . . . . . 127 LIBER PRIMUS VEL CARMINUM . . . . . 129 LIBER SECUNDUS VEL AMORIS . . . . . 158 LIBER TERTIUS VEL LABORIS . . . . . 174 LIBER QUARTUS VEL MORTIS . . . . . 203 EPILOGUE AND DEDICATION -- EPILOGUE AND DEDICATION OF VOLUMES I., II., III. . . . . . 219 ELEUSIS. . . . . . . . 219 APPENDIX A -- BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE . . . . . . 233 APPENDIX B -- INDEX OF FIRST LINES . . . . . . 240 {viiB} {full page across} THE STAR AND THE GARTER 1904 [The simplicity of this exquisite poem renders all explanations superfluous.] GR:Alpha-Gamma-Nu-Omega-Sigma-Tau-Omega Theta-Epsilon-Omega<<1>>{columns resume} <<1. "I.e.," Eros. The quotation is from Acts xvii. 23, "To the Unknown God.">> ARGUMENT. THE poet, seated with his lady, perceives (i.) that he is in some disgrace, arguing the same (ii.) from a difference in the quality of the subsisting silence. Seeking a cause, he observes (iii.) a lady's garter in one corner of the room. His annoyance is changed (iv.) to joy at the prospect of an argument, and of a better understanding. He will (v.) be frank; no poet truly cares what may happen to him. He sketches (vi.) his argument; but letting fall the word "love" is rapt away into a lyrical transport (vii. and viii.). Further, bidding her (ix.) to fly with him, he points out the value of courage, and its rarity among the bourgeoisie. He calls upon her to awake her own courage, and (x.) bids her embark. His appeal fails, since (xi.) the garter still demands explanation. He then shows (xii.) that mental states are not independent of their physical basis, and casts doubt (xiii.) upon Immortality and Freewill. He asks her (xiv.) to accommodate herself to the facts instead of wasting life upon an Ideal, and to remember that all his acts truly subserve his love for her. He reinforces this (xv.) by a distinction of the important and the unimportant, assures her of his deep passion, and appeals to her. He will (xvi.) show her the picture of the owner of the garter, and gives her (xvii.) the first hint that he does not consider her a rival, any more {1A} than dinner is a rival. As (xviii.) she cannot grasp that idea, he states it plainly and describes (xix.) the lady whose forgetfulness has caused the whole trouble. The spell broken, as it were, he describes (xx., xxi.) two other mistresses, a model and an acrobat, and then again flings at her (xxii.) the frank question: Are these rivals in "Love?" He argues that the resemblances are superficial. For (xxiii.) there is no taint of passion in his Love for his Lady. But she (xxiv.) sees that as a fault in her, and offers her person. He refuses it, fearing to destroy Love, and proves (xxv.) that sexual intimacy is no truer than virginal intimacy. He recalls (xxvi.) the hour when their love stood confessed and (xxvii.) that in which the first promptings of passion were caught and smothered in a higher ecstasy. He complains (xxviii.) that he should have needed to voice all this He urges (xxix.) that the necessary duties of sex should be performed elsewhere. But, should those duties become unnecessary, let them voyage to solitude and peace. Or (xxx.) no! it is well to have the ever-present contrast; let us, however, not despise other folk, but pity them, and for this pity's sake, retire (xxxi.) to meditate, and by this means to achieve the power of redeeming them. He formulates Lyrically (xxxii.) this conclusion; and sums up the whole (xxxiii.), insisting finally on the value of the incident as a stepping-stone to the ultimate. {1B} THE STAR AND THE GARTER. I. WHAT sadness closes in between Your eyes and mine to-day, my Queen? In dewfall of our glance hath come A chill like sunset's in hot lands Mid iris and chrysanthemum. Well do I know the shaken sands Within the surf, the beaten bar Of coral, the white nenuphar Of moonrise stealing o'er the bay. So here's the darkness, and the day Sinks, and a chill clusters, and I Wrap close the cloak: then is it so To-day, you rose-gleam on the snow, My own true lover? Ardently I dare not look: I never looked So: that you know. But insight keen We (laugh and) call not "love." Now crooked The light swerves somehow. Do you mean -- What? There is coldness and regret Set like the stinging winter spray Blown blind back from a waterfall On Cumbrian moors at Christmas. Wet The cold cheek numbs itself. A way Is here to make -- an end of all? What sadness closes in between Your eyes and mine to-day, my Queen? II. YOU are silent. That we always were. The racing lustres of your hair Spelt out its sunny message, though The room was dusk: a rosy glow Shed from an antique lamp to fall On the deep crimson of the wall, And over all the ancient grace Of shawls, and ivory, and gems<<1>> To cast its glamour, till your face The eye might fall upon and rest, {2A} The temperate flower, the tropic stems. You were silent, and I too. Caressed The secret flames that curled around Our subtle intercourse. Profound, Unmoved, delighting utterly, So sat, so sit, my love and I. But not to-day. Your silence stirs No answering rapture: you are proud, And love itself checks and deters The thought to say itself aloud. Oh! heart of amber and fine gold Silverly darting lunar rays! Oh! river of sweet passion rolled Adown invisible waterways! Speak! Did I wound you then unguessed? What is the sorrow unexpressed That shadows those ecstatic lids? A word in season subtly rids The heart of thoughts unseasonable. You are silent. Do they speak in hell? <<1. The description is of Crowley's rooms in the Quartier Montparnasse.>> III. IS it your glance that told me? Nay! It know you would not look that way. Seeing, you strove to see not. Fool! I have ruined all in one rash deed. Learnt I not in discretion's school The little care that lovers need? For see -- I bite my lip to blood; A stifled word of anguish hisses: -- O the black word that dams thought's flood! O the bad lip that looked for kisses! O the poor fool that prates of love! Is it a garter, or a glove? IV. A FOOL indeed! For why complain, Now the last five-barred gate is ope, Held by a little boy? I hope The hour is handy to explain The final secret. Have I any? Yes! the small boy shall have a penny! {2B} Now you are angry? Be content! Not fee the assistant accident That shows our quarry -- love -- at bay? My silver-throated queen, away! Huntress of heaven, by my side, As moon by meteor, rushing, ride! Among the stars, ride on! ride on! (Then, maybe, bid the boy begone!) V. I AM a boy in this. Alas! Look round on all the world of men! The boys are oft of genus "ass." Think yourself lucky, lady, then, If I at least am boy. You laugh? Not you! Is this love's epitaph, God's worm erect on Herod's throne? "Ah, if I only had not known!" All wrong, beloved! Truth be ours, The one white flower (of all the flowers) You ever cared for! Ignorance May set its puppets up to dance; We know who pulls the strings. No sage; A man unwashed, the bearded brute! His wife, the mother-prostitute! Behind the marionetted stage See the true Punch-and-Judy show, Turn copper so to silver! Know, And who can help forgiving? So Said some French thinker.<<1>> Here's a drench Of verse unquestionably French To follow! so, while youth is youth, And time is time, and I am I, Too busy with my work to lie, Or love lie's prize -- or work's, forsooth! -- Too strong to care which way may go The ensuing history of woe, Though I were jaw, and you were tooth; So, more concerned with seeking sense Than worried over consequence, I'll speak, and you shall hear, the truth. {3A} <<1. "Comprendre, c'est pardonner." MME. DE STAEL.>> VI. TRUTH, like old Gaul, is split in three.<<1>> A lesson in anatomy, A sketch of sociology, A tale of love to end. But see! What stirs the electric flame of eyes? One word -- that word. Be destiny's Inviolate fiat rolled athwart The clouds and cobwebs of our speech, And image, integrate of thought, This ebony anthem, each to each: -- To lie, invulnerable, alone, Valkyrie and hero, in the zone, Shielded by lightnings of our wit, Guarded by fires of intellect Far on the mountain-top, elect Of all the hills divinely lit By rays of moonrise! O the moon! O the interminable tune Of whispered kisses! Love exults, Intolerant of all else than he, And ecstasy invades, insults, Outshines the waves of harmony, Lapped in the sun of day; the tides Of wonder flow, the shore subsides; And over all the horizon Glows the last glimmer of the sun. Ah! when the moon arises, she Shall look on nothing but the sea. <<1. "Gallia est divisa in tres partes." -- "Caesar de Bello Gallico, i, 1." >> VII. O LOVE! and were I with thee ever! Come with me over the round earth, O'er lake and fountain, sea and river! Girdle the world with angel girth Of angel voyage! Shall we roam In teeming jungles poisonous? Or make ourselves an eyrie-home Where the black ice roars ravenous In glittering avalanche? Or else Hide in some corrie on the fells Of heather and bracken, or delight In grottos built of stalactite? {3B} Or be our lonely haunt the sand Of the Sahara: let us go Where some oasis, subtly planned For love, invites the afterglow! There let us live alone, except Some bearded horseman, pennoned, ride Over the waste of ochre, swept By wind in waves, and sit beside Our tent a little, bring us news Of the great world we have lost for -- this! What fool exclaims -- "to lose!"? To lose? Ah! earth and heaven for one small kiss! But he shall sing beside our fire The epic of the world's desire; How Freedom fares, how Art yet revels Sane in the dance of dogs and devils. His thunder voice shall climb and crash, Scourge liars with tongue's lightning lash, Through rank of smitten tyrants drive, Till bosoms heave, and eyes outflash, And it is good to be alive. He shall ride off at dawn, and we Shall look upon our life again; You old, and all your beauty be Broken, and mine a broken brain. Yet we shall know; delighting still In the sole laughter death derides In vain; the indomitable will, Still burning in the spirit, guides Our hearts to truth; we see, we know How foolish were the things he said, And answer in the afterglow How good it is that we are dead. Will you not come? Or, where the surf Beats on the coral, and the palm Sways slowly in the eternal calm Of spring, I know a mound of turf Good for our love to lie on; good For breezes, and for sun and shade; To hear the murmur of the flood; To taste the kava subtly made To rouse to Bacchic ecstasy, Since Dionysus silently Faded from Greece, now only smiles Amid the soft Hawaian isles; Good, above all the good, to keep Our bodies when we sleep the sleep. {4A} VIII. MAKE me a roseleaf with your mouth, And I will waft it through the air To some far garden of the South, The herald of our happening there! Fragrant, caressing, steals the breeze; Curls into kisses on your lips: -- I know interminable seas, Winged ardour of the stately ships, Space of incalculable blue And years enwreathed in one close crown, And glimmering laughters echoing you From reverend shades of bard's renown: -- Nature alive and glad to hymn Your beauty, my delight: her God Weary, his old eyes sad and dim In his intolerable abode. All things that are, unknown and known, Bending in homage to your eyes; We wander wondering, lift alone The world's grey load of agonies. Make me a roseleaf with your mouth, That all the savour steal afar Unto the sad awaiting South, Where sits enthroned the answering Star. IX. WILL you not come: the unequal fever Of Paris hold our lives for ever? Were it not better to exceed The avenging thought, the unmeaning deed, Make one strong act at least? How small, How idiot our lives! These folk That think they live -- which dares at all To act? The suicide that broke His chain, and lies so waxen pale In the Morgue to-day? Did he then fail? Ay, he was beaten. But to live, Slink on through what the world can give, {4B} That is a hound's life too. For me, The suicide stands grand and free Beside these others. Was it fear Drove him to stand upon the bank? The Paris lights shone far and drear; The mist was down; the night was dank; The Seine ran easily underneath; The air was chill: he knew the Seine By pain would put an end to pain, And jumped, -- and struggled against death, I doubt not. Ye courageous men That scorn to flee the world, ye slaves Of commerce, ye that ply the pen, That dig, and fill, and loathe your graves! Ye counter-jumpers, clergy, Jews, All Paris, smug and good, that use To point the index scorn, deride The courage of that suicide -- I ask you not to quit us quite, But -- will you take a bath to-night? Money might make you. Well: but he, What was his wage, what was his fee? Fear fiercer than a mortal fear. Be silent, cowards, leave him here Dead in the Morgue, so waxen pale! He failed: shall ye not also fail? "Ah! love! the strings are little;" "The cords are over strong;" "The chain of life is brittle;" "And keen the sword of song." Will you not seize in one firm grip Now, as I hold you, lip to lip, The serpent of Event, hold hard Its slipping coils, its writhe retard, And snap its spine? Delicate hands You have: the work is difficult; Effort that holds and understands May do it: shall our foes exult, The daughters of Philistia laugh, The girls of Askalon rejoice, Writing for us this epitaph: "They chose, and were not worth the choice"? You are so pure: I am a man. I will assume the courage tried Of yonder luckless suicide, Any you -- awaken, if you can, The courage of the courtezan! {5A} X. TO sea! To sea! The ship is trim; The breezes bend the sails. They chant the necromantic hymn, Arouse Arabian tales. To sea! Before us leap the waves; The wild white combers follow. Invoke, ye melancholy slaves, The morning of Apollo! There's phosphorescence in the wake, And starlight o'er the prow. One comet, like an angry snake, Lifts up its hooded brow. The black grows grey toward the East: A hint of silver glows. Gods gather to the mystic feast On interlunar snows. The moon is up full-orbed: she glides Striking a snaky ray Across the black resounding tides, The sepulchre of day. The moon is up: upon the prow We stand and watch the moon. A star is lustred on your brow; Your lips begin a tune, A long, low tune of love that swells Little by little, and lights The overarching miracles Of love's desire, and Night's. It swells, it rolls to triumph-song Through luminous black skies; Thrills into silence sharp and strong, Assumes its peace, and dies. There is the night: it covers close The lilies folded fair of all your beauty, and the rose Half hidden in your hair. {5B} There is the night: unseen I stand And look to seaward still: We would not look upon the land Again, had I my will. The ship is trim: to sea! to sea! Take life in either hand, Crush out its wine for you and me, And drink, and understand! XI. I AM a pretty advocate! My speech has served me ill. Perchance Silence had served: you now look straight On that clear evidence of France, The embroidered garter yonder. Wait! I had some confidence in fate Ere I spoke thus. For while I spoke The old smile, surely helpless, broke On your tired lips: the old light woke In your deep eyes: but silence falls Blank, blank: the species that appals, Not our old silence. I devise A motto for your miseries: "There an embroidered garter lies, And here words -- they lie too?" I see Your intuition of the truth Is still in its -- most charming -- youth. You need that physiology! XII.<<1>> <<1. In view of the strange uproar which this harmless section created, one person supposing it to testify Crowley's ignorance, another that it was a correct physiological description of the action of the erector penis muscle (!!!), it should be explained that the speaker wishes to explain that consciousness is a function of the brain, and that, talking to an ignorant girl, he allows himself to talk what is in detail extravagant nonsense.>> I LOVE you. That seems simple? No! Hear what the physiologist Says on the subject. "To and fro" "The motor axis of the brain" {6A} "Hits on the cerebellum hard," "Makes the medulla itch: the bard" "Twitches his spinal cord again," "Excites Rolando's fissure, and" "Impinges on the Pineal gland." "Then Hippocampus major strikes" "The nerves, and we may say 'He likes,'" "But if the umbilical cord" "Cut the cerebrum like a sword," "And afferent ganglia, sensory bones," "Shake in the caecum: then one groans" "'He likes Miss What's your Name.' And if" "The appendix vermiformis biff" "The pericardium, pleura shoves" "The femur -- we may say: 'He loves.'" Here is the mechanism strange (But perfectly correct) to change My normal calm -- seraphic dew! Into an ardent love for you. XIII. IS there a soul behind the mask? What master drives these slaves to task Thus willing? Physiology Wipes the red scalpel, scorns reply. My argument to please you swerves, Becomes a mere defence of nerves. Why they are thus, why so they act, We know not, but accept the fact. How this for my peccation serves? Marry, how? Topically! Pact I bind with blood to show you use For this impertinence -- and add A proverb fit to make you mad About the gander and the goose,<<1>> Till you reposte with all your force A miserable pun on sauce. The battle when you will! This truce I take in vantage, hold my course. I see mechanic causes reach Back through eternity, inform The stellar drift, the solar storm, The protoplasmic shiver, each {6B} Little or great, determinate In law for Fate, the Ultimate. If this be meaningless, much more Vacant your speech and sophic skill (My feminine and fair Escobar!<<2>>) To prove mere circumstance is no bar Against the freedom of the will. However this may be, we are Here and not otherwhere, star to star! Hence then act thou! Restrain the "Damn!" Evoked by "I am that I am." Perpend! (Hark back to Hamlet!) If You stand thus poised upon the cliff Freewill -- I await that will; (One) laughter; (Two) the old kiss; (Three) silence after. No? Then vacate the laboratory! Psychology must crown the event, And sociology content, Ethics suffice, the simple story! (Oh! that a woman ever went Through course of science full and whole, Without the loss of beauty's scent, And grace, and subtlety of soul. Ah God! this Law maketh hearts ache, "Who eateth shall not have his cake.") <<1. What is sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.>> <<2. A mediaeval logician.>> XIV. ACCEPT me as I am! I give All you can take. If you dislike Some fragments of the life I live, They are not yours: I scorn to strike One sword-swift pang against your peace. See! I'm a mountaineer. Release That spirit from your bonds: or come With me upon the mountains, cease This dull round, this addition sum Of follies we call France: indeed Cipher! And if at times I need The golden dawn upon the Alps, The gorgers of Himalayan rock, The grey and ancient hills, the scalps Of hoary hills, the rattling shock Of avalanche adown the hills -- Why, what but you, your image, fills {7A} My heart in these? I want you there. For whom but you do I ply pen, Talk with unmentionable men Of proofs and types -- dull things! -- for whom But you am I the lover? Bloom, O flower, immortal flower, love, love! Linger about me and above, Thou perfumed haze of incense-mist! The air hath circled me and kissed Here in this room, on mountains far, Yonder to seaward, toward yon star, With your own kisses. Yes! I see The roseate embroidery Yonder -- I know: it seems to give The lie to me in throat and teeth. That is the surface: underneath I live in you: in you I live. XV. WILL you not learn to separate The essential from the accidental, Love from desire, caprice from fate, The inmost from the merely mental? Our star, the sun, gives life and light: Let that decay, the aeons drown Sense in stagnation; death and night Smite the fallen fragments of the crown Of spring: but serves the garter so? What wandering meteor is this Across the archipelago Luminous of our starry bliss? Let that be lost: the smile disputes The forehead's temple with the frown, When gravitation's arrow shoots, And stockings happen to slip down. You are my heart: the central fire Whereby my being burns and moves, The mainspring of my life's desire, The essential engine that approves The will to live: and these frail friends, The women I shall draw you, fail Of more importance to earth's ends Than to my life a finger-nail. 'Twere pain, no doubt, were torn away One, a minute distemperature. {7B} I spend a fraction of the day Plying the art of manicure. But always beats the heart: the more I polish, tint, or carve, I ask Strength from the heart's too generous store To bend my fingers to the task. Cease: I am broken: nought remains. The brain's electric waves are still; No blood beats eager in the veins; The mind sinks deathward, and the will. It is no figure of boy's speech, Lover's enthusiasm, rhyme Magniloquent of bard, to reach Truth through the husk of space and time: No truth is more devout than this: "In you I live: I live in you." Had Latmos not known Artemis, Where were the faint lights of that dew Of Keats? O maiden moon of mine, Imperial crescent, rise and shine! XVI. I WAS a fool to hide it. Here Phantoms arise and disappear, Obedient to the master's wand. The incense curls like a pale frond Of some grey garden glory about This room; I take my sceptre out, My royal crown; invoke, evoke These phantoms in the glimmering smoke; And you shall see -- and take no hurt -- The very limb yon garter girt. XVII. I AM a man. Consider first What we may learn, if but we will, From that small lecture I rehearsed With very Huxley's strength and skill And clarity. What do I mean, Admitting manhood? This: to-day I fed on oysters, ris-de-veau, Beefsteak and grapes. Will you repay My meal with anger, rosy grow {8B} With shame because instead of you I went to feed chez Lavenue?<<1>> The habit anthropophagous, Nice as it is, is not for us. I love you: will you share my life, Become my mistress or my wife? Agreed: but can your kisses feed me? Is it for dinner that you need me? But think: it is for you I eat. Even as the object that I see, The brain 'tis pictured in; the beat Of nerves that mean the picture are Not like it, but dissimilar. How can a nervous current be Like that Velasquez? So I find Dinner a function of the mind, Not like you, but essential to (Even it) my honest love of you. Consider then yon broidered toy In the same aspect! Steals no joy Glittering beneath the sad pale face? <<1. A famous restaurateur in the Place de Rennes.>> XVIII. STILL grave, my budding Arahat? I see the crux of my disgrace Lies in the mad idea that -- that! -- Is not dissimilar, usurps The very function I have given Blissful beyond the bliss of heaven -- Aha! there is a bird that chirps Another song. Here's paint and brush And canvas. I will paint anon The limb yon garter once was on; Sketch you a nude -- my soul -- and nude The very human attitude We all assume -- or else are posers. Such winners are the surest losers. I paint her picture, recognise -- Dare you? one glimmer of her eyes Like yours, one shimmer of her skin Like that your flesh is hidden in, One laugh upon her lips enough Like yours for me to recollect, {8B} Remind, recall, hint? Never! Stuff! You are, as aye, alone, elect. Shall we then dive in Paris sewers? Ay! but not find you there, nor yet Your likeness. Did you than forget You are my love? Arise and shine! It was your blasphemy, not mine. XIX. A FAINT sweet smell of ether haunts Yet the remembrance. Hear the wizard His lone and melancholy chaunts Roared in the rain-storm and the blizzard! The ancient and devoted dizzard! Appear, thou dream of loveliness! She wore a rose and amber dress, With broidery of old gold. Her hair Was long and starry, gilded red. Her face was laughter, shapen fair By the sweet things she thought and said. Her whiteness rustled as she walked. Her hair sang tunes across the air. She sighed, laughed, whispered, never talked. She smiled, and loves devout and rare Flickered about the room. She stayed Still in the dusk: her body sang Out full and clear "O love me!" Rang The silver couplets undismayed, Bright, bold, convincing. In her eyes Glittered enamelled sorceries. She was a piece of jewel work Sold by a Christian to a Turk. She had fed on air that day: the flowers About her curled, ambrosial bowers Of some divine perfume: the soul Of ether made her wise; control Of strong distilled delight. She showered Wit and soft laughter and desire About her breasts in bliss embowered, And subtle and devouring fire Leapt in live sparks about her limbs. Her spirit shields me, and bedims My sight: she needs me: I need her. She is mine: she calls me: sob and stir Strange pulses of old passionate Imperial ecstasies of fate. {9A} Destiny; manhood; fear; delight; Desire; accomplishment; ere night Dipped her pail plumes to greet the sun She was not; all is past and done. A dream? I wake from blissful sleep, But is it real? Well, I keep An accidental souvenir Whence thus to chronicle small beer;<<1>> There is the garter. Launched our boat, The stately pinnace once afloat, You shall hear all; we will not land On this or that mediate strand, Until the voyage be done, and we Pass from the river to the sea, And find some isle's secluded nook More sacred than we first forsook. <<1. See "Othello," II, i.>> XX. YES, there are other phases, dear! Here is a pocket-book, and here Lies a wee letter. Floral thyrse?<<1>> Divine-tipped narthex of the pine,<<2>> Or morphia's deceitful wine? The French is ill, the spelling worse! -- But this is horrible! This, me? The upholder of propriety, Who actually proposed to form A club to shield us from the swarm Of common people of no class Who throng the Quartier Montparnasse! I wear a collar:<<3>> loudly shout That folk are pigs that go without, -- And here you find me up a tree To make my concierge blush for me! A girl "uncombed, so badly dressed, So rudely mannered -- and the rest; Not at all proper. Fie! away! What would your lady mother say?" I tell you, I was put to it To wake a wonder of my wit {9B} Winged, to avail me from the scorn Of my own concierge. Adorn The facts I might; you know them not; But that were just the one black blot On this love's lesson: still, to excuse Myself to you, who could not choose But make some weak apology Before the concierge's eye! True, you are far too high to accuse -- Perhaps would rather not be told? You "shall" hear. Does a miner lose If through the quartz he gets to gold? Yes: Nina was a thing of nought, A little laughing lewd gamine, Idle and vicious, void of thought, Easy, impertinent, unclean -- Utterly charming! Yes, my queen! She had a generous baby soul, Prattled of love. Should I control, Repress perhaps the best instinct The child had ever had? I winked At foolish neighbours, did not shrink. Such cafe Turc I made her drink As she had never had before; Set her where you are sitting; chatted; Found where the fires of laughter lurk; Played with her hair, tangled and matted; Fell over strict nice conduct's brink, Gave all she would, and something more. She was an honest little thing, Gave of her best, asked no response. What more could Heaven's immortal king Censed with innumerous orisons? So, by that grace, I recognised A something somewhere to be prized Somewhat. What portress studies song? My worthy concierge was wrong. <<1 & 2. The thyrsus and narthex were carried by the Maenads, the maiden devotees of Bacchus.>> <<3. The poet libels himself; he rarely did so.>> XXI. THEN let not memory shrink abashed, Once started on this giddy whirl! Hath not a lightning image flashed Of my divine boot-button girl? She is a dainty acrobat, Tailor-made from tip to toe; {10A} A tiniest coquettish hat, A laughing face alight, aglow With all the fun of life. She comes Often at morning, laughs aloud At the poor femm' de menage; hums Some dancing tune, invades my cloud Of idle dreams, sits poised upon The couch, and with a gay embrace Cries out "Hullo, my baby!" Shone Such nature in a holier face? We are a happy pair at least: Coffee and rolls are worth a feast, And laughing as she came she goes! The dainty little tuberose! She has a lithe white body, slim And limber, fairy-like, a snake Hissing some Babylonian hymn Tangled in the Assyrian brake. She stole upon me as I slept: Who wonders I am nympholept? Her face is round and hard and small And pretty -- hence the name I gave her Of the boot-button girl. Appal These words? Ah, would your spirit save her? She's right just as she is: so wise You look through hardly-opened eyes One would believe you could do better. Ma foi! And is your God your debtor? So, my true love, I paint you three Portraits of women that love me. XXII. THESE portraits, darling, are they yours? And yet there sticks the vital fact That these, as you, are women. Lures The devil of the inexact With subtle leasing? Nay! O nay! I'll catch him with a cord, drawn out By a bent fish-hook through his snout, Give to my maiden for a play. You, them, and dinner and -- what else? -- However unlike, coincide In composition verified Of final protoplasmic cells. {10B} Shall this avail to stagger thought, Confuse the reason, bring to nought The rosebud, in reflecting: Hem! What beauty hath the flower and stem? Carbon we know, and nitrogen, And oxygen -- are these a rose? But this thought everybody knows, That this should be the same for men They know not. Death may decompose, Reduce to primal hyle perchance -- I shall not do it in advance! So let the accidental fact That these are women, fall away To black oblivion: be the pact Concluded firm enough to-day, Not thus to err. So you are not In essence or in function one With these, the unpardonable blot On knighthood's shield, the sombre spot Seen on the photosphere of sun. XXIII. "NAY! that were nothing," say you now, Poor baby of the weary brow, Struggling with metaphysic lore? "But these, being women, gave you more: You spoke of love!" Indeed I did, And you must counter me unbid, Forgetting how we must define This floral love of yours and mine. That love and this are as diverse As Shelley's poems and my verse. And now the bright laugh comes in spite Of all the cruel will can do. "I take," you say, "a keen delight In Shelley, but as much in you." There, you are foolish. And you know The thing I meant to say. O love! What little lightnings serve to show Glimpses of all your heart! Above All, and beneath all, lies there deep, Canopied over with young sleep, Bowered in the lake of nenuphars, Watched by the countless store of stars, The abiding love you bear me. Hear How perfect love casts flying fear {11A} Forth from its chambers! Those and this Are utterly apart. The bliss Of this small quarrel far exceeds That dervish rapture, dancer deeds Strained for egregious emphasis. These touch you not! You sit alone Passionless upon passion's throne, And there is love. Look not below, Lest aught disturb the silver flow Of harmonies of love! Awake! Awake for love's own solar sake! Diverse devotion we divide From the one overflowing tide. Despise this fact! So lone and far Lies the poor garter, that I gaze Thither; it casts no vivid rays. But hither? I behold the star! XXIV. NOW your grave eyes are filled with tears; Your hands are trembling in my own; The slow voice falls upon my ears, An undulating monotone. Your lips are gathered up to mine: Your bosom heaves with fearful breath; Your scent is keen as floral wine, Inviting me, and love, to death. You, whom I kept, a sacred shrine, Will fling the portals to the day; Where shone the moon the sun shall shine, Silver in scarlet melt away. There is a yet a pang: they give me this Who can; and you who could have failed? Is it too late to extend the kiss? Too late the goddess be unveiled? O but the generous flower that gives Her kisses to to violent sun, Yet none the less in ardour lives An hour, and then her day is done. Back from my lips, back from my breast! I hold you as I always will, You unprofaned and uncaressed, Silent, majestical, and still. Back! for I love you. Even yet Do you not see my deepest fire Burn through the veils and coverings set By fatuous phantoms of desire? {11B} Back! O I love you evermore. But, be our bed the bridal sky! I love you, love you. Hither, shore Of far unstained eternity! There we will rest. Beware! Beware! For I am young, and you are fair. Nay! I am old in this, you know! Ah! heat of God! I love you so! XXV. O WHAT pale thoughts like gum exude From smitten stem of tropic tree! I talk of veils, who love the nude! Witness the masterpieces three Of Rodin that make possible Life in prosaic Paris, stand About the room, its chorus swell From the irritating to the grand. Shall we, who love the naked form, The inmost truth, to ourselves fail, Take shelter from love's lightning-storm Behind some humbug's hoary veil? Ah! were it so, love, could the flame Of fast electric fervour flash, Smite us through husk of form and name, Leave of the dross a little ash, One button of pure fused gold Identical -- O floral hour! That were the bliss no eyes behold, But Christ's delighted bridal dower Assuming into God the Church. But -- oh! these nudes of Rodin! I Drag one more linnet from its perch That sang to us, and sang a lie. Did Rodin strip the clothes, and find A naked truth fast underneath? Never! Where lurks the soul and mind? What is the body but a sheath? Did he ply forceps, scalpel, saw, Tear all the grace of form apart, Intent to catch some final law Behind the engine of the heart? He tried not; whoso has, has failed. So, did I pry beneath the robe, Till stubborn will availed, nor quailed, Intimate with naked probe? {12A} I know the husks<<1>> to strip; name, form, Sensation, then perception, stress Of nature thither; last, the swarm Of honey-bees called consciousness. These change and shape a myriad shapes. Diverse are these, not one at all, What gain I if my scalpel scrapes, Turning before some final wall Of soul? Not so, nothing is there. The qualities are all: for this I stop as I have stopped; intrude No science, for I love the fair; No wedlock, for I love the kiss; No scalpel, for I love the nude. And we await the deep event. Whate'er it be, in solitude; Silent, with ecstasy bedewed; Content, as Rodin is content. <<1. The Buddhist "Skandhas." See "Science and Buddhism," vol. ii. p. 244.>> XXVI. I WILL not, and you will not. Stay! Do you recall that night of June When from the insufferable day Edged out the dead volcanic moon Solemn into midnight? You Shown your inviolate violet eyes Into my eyes less sad, and drew Back from the slender witcheries Of word and song: and silence knew What splendour in the silence lies, The soul drawn back into itself. It was the deep environing Wood that then shielded us: the elf And fairy in an emerald ring, And hamadryad of the trees, And naiad of the sleepy lake, That watched us on the mossy leas Look on each other's face, and take The secret of the universe to sleep with us: you knew, and I, The purport of the eternal curse, The ill design of destiny. You know, and I, O living head Of love! the things that were not said. {12B} XXVII. DO you recall? Could I forget? How once the full moon shone above, Over the houses, and we let Loose rein upon the steeds of love? How kisses fled to kisses, rain Of fiery dew upon the soul Kindled, till ecstasy was pain; Desire, delight: and swift control Leapt from the lightning, as the cloud Disparted, rended, from us twain, And we were one: the aerial shroud Closed on us, shall not lift again For aught we do: O glamour grown Inseparable and alone! And then we knew as now the tune Our lives were set to, and sang back Across the sky toward the moon Into the cloud's dissolving wrack, Vanished for ever. And we found Coprolite less than chrysolite, Flowers fairer than their food, the ground; We knew our destiny, saw how Man's fate is written on his brow, And how our love throughout was hewn And masked and moulded by the moon. XXVIII. AND who is then the moon? Bend close, And clothe me in a silken kiss, And I will whisper to my rose The secret name of Artemis. Words were not needed then: to-day Must I begin what never I thought To do: mould flowers in common clay? Mud casket of mere words is nought, When by love's miracle we guess What either always thinketh. Yes? XXIX. SO, love, not thus for you and me! And if I am man, no more, expect I shall remain so, till, maybe, The anatomist, old Time, dissect {13A} Me, nerve from flesh, and bone from bone, And raise me spiritual, changed In all but love for you, my own; The little matter rearranged, The little mind refigured. This Alone I hope or think to keep: -- The love I bear you, and the kiss Too soft to call the breath of sleep. And, if you are woman, even there I do decline: we stand above. I ask not, and will take no share With you in what mankind call love. We know each other: you and I Have nought to do with lesser things. With them -- 'tis chance or destiny: With us, we should but burn our wings. We love, and keep ourselves apart: Mouth unto mouth, heart unto heart, Thus ever, never otherwise. The soul is out of me, and swings In desperate and strange surmise About the inmost heart of things. This is all strange: but is not life, Death, all, most strange, not to be told, Not to be understood by strife Of brain, nor bought for gleaming gold, Nor known by aught but love? And love Far from resolving soul to sense, Stands isolated and above Immaculate, alone, intense, Concentrate on itself. But should The lesser leave me, as it might; The lesser never touch you; would Your will be one with my delight? Leave all the thoughts and miseries! Invade the glowing fields of sun! Cross bleak inhospitable seas, Until this hour be past and done, And we in some congenial clime Are then reborn, where danger's nought To mock the old Parisian time When fear was still the child of thought! So we could love, and love, and fate Never clang brutal on the gong, And lunch, man-eating tiger, wait Crouched in the jungles of my song; {12B} My gaze be steadfast on the star And never to the garter glide, And I on rapture's nenuphar Sit Buddha-like above the tide. XXX. O BLUEBELL of the inmost wood, Before whose beauty I abase My head, and bind my burning blood, And hide within the moss my face, I would not so -- or not for that Would so: the gods knew well to save The mountain summit from the flat, Youth's laughter from its earlier grave. It is a better love, exists Only because of these below it: Mountains loom grander in the mists: The lover's foolish to the poet. I know. Far better strive and earn The rest you give me than remain Ever upon the heights that burn Sunward, and quite forget the pain. Beauteous and bodiless we are; Rapture is our inheritance; You shine, an everlasting star, I, the rough nebula: but whence, Whither, we know not. But we know That if our joy were always so We might not know it. Strange indeed This earth where all is paradox, Pushed to the truth: what lies succeed When every truth essential mocks Its truth in figure of a phrase? How should I care for this, and tire Body by will to sing thy praise, Who take this lute, throw down the lyre As I have done to-day, to win No guerdon differing from the toil, Were that accomplished: pain and sin Are needed for the counterfoil Of joy and love; if only so All men had these in keen excess Those were forgotten: indigo Is amber's shadow, but -- confess For all men but ourselves the tint {14A} Of all the earth is dull and black! Only some glints of love bestow The knowledge of what meteor wrack Trails pestilence across the sky. But we are other -- you and I! So shall we live in deep content, Unchanging bliss, despise them still Groping on isle and continent Wreathed in the mesh of woe and ill? Ah! Zeus! we will not: be the law Of uttermost compassion ours! Our snows it shall not come to thaw, Nor burn the roses from our bowers. XXXI. AY! There's a law! For this recede, Hide with me in the deepest caves Of some volcanic island; bleed Our hearts out by the ambient waves Of Coromandel; live alone, Hermits of love and pity, far Where tumbled banks of ice are thrown, Watched by yon solitary star, Sirius; there to work together In sorrow and in joy but one, In black inhospitable weather, Or fronting the Numidian sun, Equally minded; till the hour Strike of release, and we obtain The passionless and holy power, Making us masters over pain, And lords of peace: the rays of light We fling to the awakening globe; The cavern of the eremite Shall glow with inmost fire, a robe Of diamond energy, shall flash Even to the confines of wide space; Comets their tails in fury lash To look on our irradiate face. And we will heal them. Dragon men And serpent women, worm and clod, Shall rise and look upon us then, And know us to be very God, Finding a saviour in the sight Of power attaining unto peace, And meditation's virgin might Pregnant with twins -- love and release. {14B} Are you not ready? Let us leave This little Paris to its fate! Our friends a little while may grieve, And then forget: but we, elate, Live in a larger air: awake, Compassion in the Halls of Truth! Disdain love for love's very sake! Take all our beauty, strength, and youth, And melt them in the crucible To that quintessence at whose gleam Gold shudders and grows dull; expel The final dross by intimate steam Of glowing truth, our lunar light! Are you not ready? Who would stay? Arise, O Queen, O Queen of Night! Arise, and leave the little day! XXXII. LADY, awake the dread abyss Of knowledge in impassioned eyes! Fathom the gulfs of awful bliss With the poised plummet of a kiss! Love hath the arcanum of the wise; Love is the elixir, love the stone; The rosy tincture shall arise Out of its shadowy cadences. Love is the Work, and love alone Rewards the ingenious alchemist. Chaste fervours chastely overthrown Awake the infinite monotone. So, Lady, if thy lips I kissed; So, lady, if in eyes of steel I read the steady secret, wist Of no gray ghosts moulded of mist; I did not bid my purpose kneel, Nor thine retire: I probe the scar Of self, the goddess keen and real Supreme within the naked wheel Of sun and moon and star and star, And find her but the ambient coil, Imagination's avatar, A Buddha on his nenuphar {15A} Elaborate of Indian toil; A mockery of a self; outrun Its days and dreams, its strength and spoil, As runs the conquering counterfoil. Thou art not; thou the moon and sun, Thou the sole star in trackless night, The unguessed spaces one by one That mask their Sphinx, the horizon: Thou, these; and one above them, light, Light of the inmost heaven and hell: -- Art changed and fallen and lost to sight, Who wast as waters of delight. And I, who am not, know thee well Who art not: then the chain divides From love-enlightened limbs, and swell The choral cries unutterable. Out of the salt, out of the tides, The sea, whose drink is death by thirst! The triumph anthem overrides The ocean's lamentable sides, And we are done with life; accurst Who linger; lost who find; but we Follow the gold wake of the first Who found in losing; who reversed The dictates of eternity. Lo! in steep meditation hearsed, Coffined in knowledge, fast we flee Unto the island from the sea. XXXIII. THE note of the silence is changed; the quarrel is over That rather endeared than estranged: lover to lover Flows in the infinite river of knowledge and peace: Not a ripple or eddy or quiver: the monitors cease That were eager to warn, to awaken: a sleep is opposed, And the leaves of the rose wind-shaken are curled and closed, {15B} Gone down in the glare of the sun; and the twilight perfumes Steal soft in the wake of the One that abides in the glooms. Walking he is, and slowly; thoughtful he seems, Pure and happy and holy; as one would who dreams In the day-time of deep delights no kin to the day, But a flower new-born of the night's in Hecate's way. Love is his name, and he bears the ill quiver no more. He has aged as we all, and despairs; but the lady who bore Him, Eros, to ruin the ages, has softened at heart; He is tamed by the art of the sages, the magical art. No longer he burns and blisters, consumes and corrodes; He hath Muses nine for sisters; the holy abodes Of the maiden are open to him, for his wrath is grown still; His eyes with weeping are dim; he hath changed his will. We know him; and Venus sinks, a star in the West; A star in the even, that thinks it shall fall into rest. Let it be so, then! Arise, O moon of the lyrical spears! Huntress, O Artemis wise, be upon him who hears! I have heard thy clear voice in the moon; I have borne it afar; I have tuned it to many a tune; thou hast showed me a star, And the star thou hast showed me I follow through uttermost night. {16Atop} I have shaken my spear at Apollo; his ruinous might I have mocked, I have mastered. All hail to the Star of Delight That is tender and fervid and frail, and avails me aright! Hail to thee, symbol of love, assurance and promise of peace! Stand fast in the skies above, till the skies are abolished and cease! And for me, may I never forget how things came well as they are! It was long I had wandered yet ere my eyes found out the star. Be silent, love, and abide; the wanton strings must go To the vain tumultuous tide of the spirit's overflow. I sing and sing to the world; then silence soon Be about us clasped and furled in the light of the moon. Forget not, never forget the terrible song I have sung; How the eager fingers fret the lute, and loose the tongue Tinkles delicate things, faint thoughts of a futile past -- We are past on eagle wings, and the silence is here at last. The last low wail of the lyre, be it soft with a tear For the children of earth and fire that have brought us here. Give praise, O masterful maid, to Nina, and all as they die! The moon makes blackest of shade; the star's in the swarthiest sky. Be silent, O radiant martyr! Let the world fade slowly afar! But -- had it not been for the Garter, I might never have seen the Star. {16Btop, full page resumes below} GR:Omicron-Nu Omicron-Upsilon Alpha-Gamma-Nu-Omicron-Omega-Nu Epsilon-Upsilon-Sigma-Epsilon-Beta-Epsilon-Iota-Sigma Tau-Omicron-Upsilon-Tau-Omicron-Nu Epsilon-Gamma-Omega Rho-Omicron-Delta-Omicron-Nu<<1>> Kappa-Alpha-Tau-Alpha-Gamma-Gamma-Epsilon-Lambda-Lambda-Omega Sigma-Omicron-Iota <<1. The quotation is altered from Acts xvii. 23. "Whom therefore ("i.e." because of the poem) thou dost ignorantly worship, him do I Rose declare unto thee." Rose was the name of the poet's wife.>> {16} APPENDIX A MADEMOISELLE LE MODELE -- DITE JONES ("To serve as Prelude to a possible Part II.") [The humour of this curious poem is partly personal, and Crowley wished to omit if for this reason. But some of the criticism is so apt, and the satire so acute, that we were unwilling to let it drop.] {columns resume} IN order to avoid the misunderstanding, which I have reason to believe exists,<> I append this simple personal explanation: let it serve, more-over, as the "hors d'oeuvre" to a new feast. For it is not manifest that who wrote so much when all was mystery, should write yet more now all is clear? It is perhaps due to you, the bedrock of my mountains of idealism, that I attained the magical force to make all those dreams come true: for that, then, this. Further, should Nietzsche play you false, and supply no key to this Joseph confection; a kid glove and an ortolan are alike to him -- and, if this be a haggis, much more is this the case! -- you may apply to the only educated man in your neighbourhood, as you applied before in the matter of the Bruce Papyrus (I do not refer to Bruce Papyrus which all who run may read -- all honour to the scribe!), and he will take pleasure in explaining it to you line by line, and letter by letter, if that will serve. Possess yourself in patience, that is to say, and, should I return from the wilds into which my restless destiny so continually drives me, you may hope for a second part which shall excel the former as realism always must excel idealism. I have no hope for your brain, and, I am sorry to add, as little for your hear; but there must be a sound spot in you somewhere [could you not be "natural?" -- But no, no!], and that spot may yet be touched and healed by the Homocea<> of irritable, if never yet by the Lanoline<> of amoroso-emasculatory, verse. With this, then, farewell! I. There is an eye through which the Kabbalist Beholds the Goat. There is an eye that I have often kissed. (That hath a throat.) {17A} There is an eye that Arab sages say Weeps never enough. There is an eye whose glances make the day The day of Love. There is an eye that is above all eyes, That is no eye. (Stood proud Anatta on the Bridge of Sighs And thundered "Why?") Which eyes are mine, which thine, poor ape, discover And even yet thou hast not lost thy lover. II. Khephra, thou Beetle-headed God! Who travellest in thy strength above The Heaven of Nu, with splendour shod Of Thoth, and girt about with Love! O Sun at midnight! in thy Bark The cynocephali proclaim Thy effulgent deity, and mark The adorations of thy name In seemly stations one by one, As thou encirclest blinder poles Than Khem or Ammon showed the sun In one-eyed sight of secret goals. So I adore, and sing: for I This magic monocle avow, Distorted from Divinity And wrought in subtler fashion now. An invocation shrined and sealed Be this! The many hear me not, Though I be vocal, thou revealed. I scorn the eye, uphold the -- what Gods call the lotus poppy-hued, Brave wound of weeping Isis! -- eye Of Demiourgos, understood Of none, O Lilly, ladily Laden with lays of Buddhist bard, Maiden with ways and bays of mirth, And music -- is the saying hard? Shall "Cryptic Coptic" block the birth Of holy ecstasy? Forbid, Ye Gods, forbid! Posed block, you fail Of bulging heart by drooping lid. Can you not serve as finger-nail? {17B} Ay! God of scissors! barber God! My earlier mystery did you learn? Unshoe the aching pseudopod! Mysterious donkey, chew or churn Your human-kindness-milk to butter! I gave you gratis God's advice (Since God's responsible) to -- mutter In gutter, pay your tithe to vice Since virtue kicks you down its stairs. So thus I clothed it in strange word To catch you thinking unawares. Think? do you think? Then, thinks a bird. Read your Descartes! Nietzsche demurred? To you, who give yourself such airs, This riddle cannot offer snares! "Love's mass is holier than wine and wafer. Thou couldst not beetle be: then, be cock-chafer!" Hence my address, this swoodier Swood To Khephra, hence the ambiguous speech, The alluring analogue, the good, The loftiest heaven Art hopes to reach, The highest goal of man as man; The sly Paraprosdokian. You could not love! You could not serve The scouring of Love's scullery! You, GR:iota-sigma-omicron-sigma theta-epsilon-omicron-iota-sigma-iota-nu? Ha, you swerve Back to that subtler meaning! Few Can guess that miracle of reserve, That sacrament of mathematics, That threescore glee, that three times three, That added scream of hydrostatics! Not I, for one! Be assured, to fail With me no arriere-pensee lends. Fall once the penny, head or tail, I care not -- all the less my friends! Faultlessly faulty! Regular In ice or fire, 'tis nullness counts. So, spring of those Parnassian founts, A thousand garters heralded Thy flawless solitary star: A million garters shall bestead The poet's turn, when, lone and far, All are dismissed: Some man, low brute, Cry "Shame, O star that would not shoot, And yet went out!" But I, my dear, (Good-bye!) get neither shriek nor groan: Kiss, curse, cat's hiss, I shall not hear, My dear, for I shall be alone. III. What change of language! Ah, my dear, The reason is not far to seek. You know of old how oft I veer From French to Send, from Jap to Greek. Teste der titre polyglot Del Berashith, GR:kappa-alpha-lambda-omicron-sigma kitab! I trust you take me, do you not? But change of thought -- ay! there's the barb To stick and quiver in your heart! Well, little lady, what of art? {18A} IV. All things are branded change. My thought Long ran in one delicious groove. Now newly sits the appointed court To try another case, to prove Another crime. Last week the law Dealt with the garter's gross offence. You were the Judge, enthroned on awe: I wove that eloquent defence, Unwove that Rhadamanthine frown Which I had made myself, my star; For I was counsel for the crown, And I the prisoner at the bar. Did you not see -- the sight is sad! -- How tiny was the part you played, How little use the poet had Even in Maytime for a maid? Why! all's a whirl; but I, be sure, Am axle, if at all I be; So you, if yet your light endure, Are model, and no more, to me. So well you sit, though, you shall earn Beyond your hourly increment A knowledge. Are you fit to learn, Or will you rather be content With muddled mighty talk of Teutons Evolving from the tangled Skein, Neitzsche's research compared to Newton's In some one's enervated brain. (Did I say -- brain?) I'll talk, and you Listen or not, as best beseems Your lily languor. Irish stew Shall float like dewdrops in your dreams. So shall my new Apocalypse Appear to you, my model! Once You saw a languor on my lips, A dawn of many molten suns, And laughed in springtide of delight; But now eclipse inveils your mood Of me: descends artistic night; I see a sun called solitude. So models kiss, and understand So far: the picture moves them not. By label they approve the grand; By critic's candour rave o'er rot. But, let me hoist you Thornycroft, And cry "Behold this Rodin!" bring Some Poynter, lift the thing aloft, Announce a Morice, see you fling Your soul on knees in fervid praise: -- If so -- Off, Lilith! runs the phrase. Now, is no barb upon the dart? Now, little lady, What of art? V. Moreover (just a word) this chance I fling you over space -- for luck! This Scotland yet may catch your France, My crow grow germane to your cluck. {18B} See art: see truth as I who see, (Am wellnigh fallen in the fight!) Then the last lie, duality, May break before the victor sight. Then, and then only, That. Sweet hours Of trivial passion deep as death, Ye are past: I face the solemn powers Of sex and soul, of brain and breath. For you I lift the veil: discover The actual, for I was your lover. What should such word imply? I showed Late, in the earlier dithyrab. But -- in yon stone there lurks a toad! -- The Quarter bleats no palinode; Goat it may be, no woolly lamb. Arithmetic assuage your wrath Should Cambridge wit write quarter "fourth"! What said the unctuous slime of art, Scrapings of beauty's palette, pimps Of serious studios, stews or mart Of filth, not vice? Those painter shrimps! What did they gloat upon, delight To think of better folk than they? Hear then their oracle of might, The sortes of a Balaam bray. Through muddy glasses Delphi squints; Cowards lack words and glut on hints. VI. Sibyl says nothing -- she's a Sphinx! I wonder, though, what Sibyl thinks. She argues "he would have her grow So fell a Trixy -- point device! -- His Dante to her Beatrice Should seem -- let music's language show: -- Andante move to Allegro, Alas for pianissimo!" And, in return, suspects I don One glory more than Solomon: "Rocks cannot satisfy the coney; Lingerie's always worth the money." In fine, flop, German, from thy throne! Leave Greek and Papuan alone! What foreign tongues be worth our own? Is Armour jointed unawares? Is Canning King, as Carlyle swears? This is indeed Cumaean lore -- Ah well, 'tis pity! -- say no more! {19A} There's one and twenty for your score, Ah, how your divination slewed awry, Ye purrient guttersnipes of prudery! We know as much, my girl! We laughed, And still can laugh at Barbercraft Plied thus askew. Then leave them so! Evoke the ancient afterglow Rose on our sacramental snow Of silent love, of mountain grace. Remember the old tenderness Even in these bitter words that press Their ardent breast, their iron face, Out to expression. Ay! remember The ancient phantom fire of flowers, The druid altars of December, The Virgin priestess, the dread hours Of solemn love. Then quail before The deadly import of my word! Forget your silly self, and store Its vital horror, stabbed and spurred To fearful pace and torture wild Deep in your true heart's core, my child! For though I strip you bare, and run My red-hot iron through your flesh, There is a citadel than none May touch -- not God! The rotten rest Evacuate; be seated there. Let there be music, and Rome burn! Then you may climb to be aware How well you serve my idle turn, Yet to yourself avail. There too Lies a last doubtful chance for you. Behold who dare! (Ay, you are fain!) Purblind with passion? Sight in vain. Stupid with sense of self? Division. Picture, not model? Then you win. I painted soul, who saw your skin: -- Be soul! That saves you. If you fail, Why, then, you fail! Enough of this -- (Read not again Macbeth amiss!) Give me one customary kiss -- An end of it! I rend the veil. The flag falls for the Stakes of Song. Run, filly, for the odds are long!<<1>> <<1. [This "possible Part II." is still "in nubibus" unless we are to suppose from the Greek Dedications (pp. 1 and 16) that "Rosa Mundi" is to be taken as such.]>> {19B} {full page} WHY JESUS WEPT A STUDY OF SOCIETY AND OF THE GRACE OF GOD 1905 {columns resume} "PERSONS STUDIED." THE MARQUIS OF GLENSTRAE, K.G. TYSON, "a farmer." SIR PERCIVAL DE PERCIVALE, "Bart., K.C.B." SIR PERCY DE PERCIVALE, "his son." JOHN CARRUTHERS, "his friend and steward of his house," GREUMOCH, "A Highland gillie." ARNOLD, . RITSON, . "household servants." SIR HERPES ZOSTER, M.D., "A celebrated physician." SIR GRABSON JOBBS, Q.C., "Solicitor-General." MR. G. K. CHESTERTON. LORD RONALD GOWER, "as Chorus." A Horny-Handed Brother (Plymouth). A conscientious Chemist. A theatre-Goer. Large but unseen body of retainers. MAUD, MARCHIONESS OF GLENSTRAE. ANGELA, LADY BAIRD. HORTENSE, "her maid." MOLLY TYSON, "daughter of Tyson." Aged (Plymouth) Sisters, &c., &c. "The action of the play occupies three years." "DEDICATIO MINIMA." "My dear Christ," "A person, purporting to be a friend and disciple of yours, and calling himself John, reports you to have wept. His testimony is now considered by the best authorities to be of a very doubtful order. But if you" did "weep, this (vide infra) is why. Of if not, surely it would have made you weep, had it met your eye. Excuse the rhyme!" "You ask me (on dit) to believe you. I shall" {20A} "be willing to do so -- merely as a gentleman -- till you betray the trust; but at present nobody worthy of serious consideration can give me any clear notion of what you actually assert. I labour under no such disadvantages. So have no diffidence in asking you to believe me." "Yours affectionately," "ALEISTER CROWLEY." "DEDICATIO MINOR." "My dear Lady S----" "I quite agree with your expressed opinion that no true gentleman would (with or without reason) compare" any "portion of your ladyship's anatomy to a piece of wet chamois leather; the best I can do to repair his rudeness is to acknowledge the notable part your ladyship played in the conception of this masterpiece by the insertion of as much of your name as my lawyers will permit me." "I am your ladyship's most humble and obedient servant," "ALEISTER CROWLEY." "DEDICATIO MAJOR." "My Friends," "To you, Eastern of the Easterns, who have respectively given up all to find Truth; you, Jinawaravansa,"<<"A Siamese prince who became a Buddhist monk.>>" who esteemed the Yellow Robe" {20B} "more than your Princedom; you, Achiha,"<> "by sticking manfully to your Work in the World, yet no more allowing it to touch your Purpose than waters may wet the lotus leaf (to take the oldest and best simile of your oldest and best poets), must I dedicate this strange drama; for, like you, I would abandon all; like you, I see clearly what is of value; or, if not, at lest what is worthless; already something! Thus do I wish you and myself the three great boons Sila, Samadhi, and Salam." "DEDICATIO MAXIMA." "To my unborn child," "Who may learn by the study of this drama to choose the evil and avoid the good --" i.e. "as judged by Western, or 'Christian' standards." "DEDICATIO EXTRAORDINARIA." "Dear Mr. Chesterton," "Alone among the puerile apologists of your detestable religion you hold a reasonably mystic head above the tides of criticism. You are the last champion of God; with you I choose to measure myself. Others I can despise; you are a force to be reckoned with, as Browning your intellectual father was before you." "Whether we are indeed friends or enemies it is perhaps hard to say: it has sometimes seemed to me that human freedom and happiness are our common goal, but that you found your muddied oafs in Gods, ministers, passive resisters, and all the religious team -- the "Brixton Bahinchuts," we might call them; while I, at once a higher mystic and a colder sceptic, found my Messiah in Charles Watts, and the Devil and all his angels. While "HB:Nun-Chet-Shin" and "HB:Mem-Shin-Yod-Chet" alike add to 358, indeed, it is no odds: did you once see this" {21A} "you were not far off from the Heart of the Qabalah." "The occasion of this letter is the insertion of a scene equivalent to an "appreciation of the Brixton Chapel" in my masterpiece "Why Jesus Wept." You asked me for it;"<<"Vide" vol. ii. p. 203, "supra.">> "I promised it;"<<"I promise Mr. Chesterton | A grand ap-pre-c-a-ti-on | Of Brixton on Ascension Day." -- "The Sword of Song.">> "and I hope you will like it. Can I do more than make your Brixton my deus ex machina? You see, when I wrote "The Soul of Osiris," Europe was my utmost in travel. To-day, what country of the globe has not shuddered with the joy of my presence? The virgin snows of Chogo Ri, the gloomy jungles of Burma, filled with savage buffaloes and murderous Chins; the peace of Waikiki, the breeding hopeful putrefaction of America, the lonely volcanoes of Mexico, the everlasting furnace sands of Egypt -- all these have known me. Travel thou thus far, thou also! Somewhat shall thou learn! But otherwise; gird on thine armour for thy Christ, O champion of the dying faith in man dead!" "Arm! arm, and out; for the young warrior of anew religion is upon thee; and his number is the number of a man." Aleph-Lamed-Heh-Yod-Samekh-Tet-Heh-Resh-Heh-Koph-Resh-Ayin-Vau-Lamed-Heh-Yod WHY JESUS WEPT. In vain I sit by Kandy Lake. The broad verandah slides to mist. No tropic rapture strikes awake The grim soul's candour to insist The pen reluctant. Beauty's task Is but to praise the peace of earth; If Horror's contrast that should ask, Off from this Paradise of mirth! Let Kandy Lake, the white soul, mirror The generalised concept, limn clear England, a memory clean of error, A royal reason to be here. Therefore no reminiscence stirs My heart of when I lived in Kandy. Europe's the focus now! that blurs The picture of my Buddhist dandy, {21B} Allan, who broke his wand of flame, Discharged his faithful poltergeist, Gave up attempts to say The Name,<<1>> Ananda Maitriya became, By yellow robes allured, enticed; Leaving me all alone to shame The cunning missionary game; And, by bad critics topped and sliced, Put the ky-bosh on<<2>> Jesus Christ. <<1. The great task of Western occultism is to "pronounce the name" of Jehovah; if this be correctly done, the universe ("i.e." of sense) is annihilated, and the true universe, of spirit, is made present to the consciousness.>> <<2. To stop or silence; to spoil the plans of.>> I sing a tale of modern life (Suited for reading to my wife) Of how Sir Percy Percivale Grew from a boy into a man; Well ware of every metric plan A bard may dream, a rhymester scrawl, Avoiding with deliberate "Damn!" (Ut supra) In Memoriam;<<1>> For such suggestion would suffice To turn you blood to smoke or ice, Dismissing with a hearty curse Eunuch psychology, pimp verse. Moreover, lest my metre move From year to year in one dull groove, Invention, hear me! Strange device Hatch from this egg a cocatrice Of novel style, that you who read The Sword of Song -- (your poor, poor head!) Shall stand amazed (at the new note) Flung faultless from this trembling throat) That Crowley, ever versatile And lord of many a new bad style Should still in's gun have one more cartridge, And who Ixtaccihuatl's<<2>> smart ridge Achieved should still be full of mettle To go up Popocatapetl.<<3>> <<1. The four lines above are in the metre of Tennyson's poem "In Memoriam." Its lack of manliness prompts Crowley's satire.>> <<2 & 3. Mountains in Mexico climbed by Crowley in 1901.>> As song then chills or aches or burns, The metre shall slew round by turns. {22A} The gross and bestial demand prose. (Glance at the page, lass, stop your nose, And turn to where short lines proclaim That purity has won the game!) But stow your prudery, wives and mothers, You know as much muck as -- those others! Your modest homes are dull; you need me! Don't let your husbands know; but -- read me! SCENE I. "The Poet inducts his matter." I draw no picture of the Fates (Recitativo -- rhyming 8s) Presiding over birth and so on. I leave the Gods alone, and go on. Sir Percival de Percivale Sat in his vast baronial hall (All unsuspicious of the weird; "One day a person with a beard Shall write of thee, and write a lot Too like the late Sir Walter Scott.")<<1>> Sir Percivale de Percivale (Begin again!) was over all The pangs of death foreseen; his eye Sought the high rafter vacantly. A week, and he would see no more! His lady long had gone -- O Lor'! I hear "St. Agnes' Eve"<<2>> suggest To this 8's better a far best; Spenserian solemnitie Fits this part of my minstrelsie. <<1. Many of Scott's narrative poems are in the same metre as this passage.>> <<2. By John Keats, written in Spenserian stanzas. What follows is in part a parody of this style.>> Now is the breath of winter in the hall. The logs die out -- the knight would be alone! The brave Sir Percival de Percivale Sits like an image hewen out of stone. Ay! he must die. The doctors all are gone, {22B} And he must follow to the dusk abode, The solemn place inscrutable, unknown, Meeting no mortal on that crowded road; All swift in the one course, ions to the kathode.<<1>> <<1. When an electric current is passed through water, and many other fluids, a decomposition is effected, the component atoms finding their way to one or the other pole of the battery. These atoms are called "ions" and the poles "anode" and "kathode.">> Sir Percival de Percivale was brave. There doth he sit and little cheer doth get. He doth not moan or laugh aloud or rave! The dogs of hell are not upon him yet. He was the bravest soul man ever met In court or camp or solitude -- then why Stands his pale forehead in an icy sweat? He mutters in his beard this rune awry: "There lives no soul undrugged that feareth not to die." Lo! were it otherwise, mere banishment, I deem he had feared more! He had an heir. This was a boy of strength with ardour blent, High hope embowered in a body fair. Him had he watched with eager eye, aware Of misery occult in youth, awake At the first touch of the diviner air Of manhood, that could bane and blessing make, The Lord of Life and Death, the secret of the Snake. The snake of Egypt hath a body twin; It hath bright wings wherewith it well can fly; It is of virtue and of bitter sin; It beareth strength and beauty in its eye; Beneath its tongue are hate and Misery; Love in its coils is hidden, and its nature Is double everyway; dost wonder why The poet worships every scaled feature, And holds him lordliest yet of every kingly creature?<<1>> <<1. See note "supra" to "Dedicatio Major.">> Sir Percival nor moved nor spoke; awhile There is black silence in the ancient hall. Then cometh subtly with well-trained smile The courteous eld, the aged seneschal. {23A} On bended knee "Sir Percy!" he doth call To the young boy, and voweth service true. Whereat he started, spurning at the thrall; But then the orphan truth he inward knew, And on the iron ground his sobbing body threw. It was a weary while before they raised him Boy as he was, none dare disturb his grief. And for his grief was strong, they loved and praised him For son's devotion to their dear dead chief. Long, long he wept, nor brought with tears relief. He knew the loss, the old head wise and grey Well to assoil him of his spirit's grief, The twilight dangers of a boy's dim way, His dragons to confront, his minotaurs to slay. Yet, when he knew himself the baronet, He took good order for the house, and bore Him as beseemed the master; none may fret All are as well bestowed as aye before. His father's eighty was with him fourscore. His father's old advisers well he groups Into a closer company; their lore He ardently acquires -- he loops no loops,<<1>> But -- Bacon<<2>> grapples them to's soul, with steely hoops! <<1. A reference to "looping the loop," an acrobatic feat popular at the time. Hence, to go a wild and dangerous, as well as an indirect, course.>> <<2. A sarcastic reference to the inane theory that the plays of Shakespeare were written by Bacon. The misquotation is from "Hamlet" -- "Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.">> You, lass, may see here for this Boy's companions Virtue and Peace of Mind, Prudence, Respect, Throwing new roots down like a clump of banyans,<<1>> Of Early Training Well the just Effect! {23B} I would applaud thee, camel gracious-necked! Confirm thee in thy reading of my task, Were it not foreign to the fact. Select Another favour! -- this too much to ask. The boy's exemplar deeds were but an iron mask. <<1. The banyan tree puts forth branches which droop to the earth and take root. A single tree may thus spread over many acres.>> ("Ay! for deception!" Mrs. Sally G--d, The gawk and dowdy with the long grey teeth, Jumps to conclusion, instant, out of hand: "There is some nasty secret underneath!" None nastier than thy name! This verse, its sheath, Thou poisonous bitch, is rotten. Fact, atone!) Such magic liquors in his veins there seethe As, would he master, need strong order known In life's routine, ere he may dare to be alone. So there alone he was, and like a comet, Leaps on the utmost ridges of the hills. Then, like a dog returning to his vomit, Broods in the hall on all creation's ills! An idle volume with mere bosh he fills; He dreams and dozes, toils and flies afar, Apace -- the body by a thousand wills Of fire corss-twisted, bruised, is thrust, a spar, Wreckage of some wild sea, to seas without a star. Listen, O lady, listen, reverend Abbot, Lord of the Monastery, Fort Augustus!<<1>> Hear an awakening spirit's a. b, ab! but Let not thy mediaeval logic thrust us Into contempt; nor, lady, can we trust us Wholly to thy most pardonable failing, Sentiment; one will rot, the other rust us. Let us just listen to the spirit ailing: -- 'Tis like a God in bliss, or like a damned soul wailing!<<2>> {24A} <<1. This monastery is chosen because of its unpleasant proximity to Crowley's home.>> <<2. (A word to bid you notice with what mastery Of technique that last stanza there was written. I risk a poet's license on one cast, Ery! (Pet name for thee, Eros!) The lines are smitten Into due harmony double-rhymed, well-knitten. Wherefore, to show I can repeat the effort, This verse inserted like a playful kitten To usher in the youth's c. d. e. f., ert Or inert as may be; it can't the lucky deaf hurt.) -- A. C.>> SCENE II.<<1>> <<1. These three soliloquies (Scenes II., III., and VI.) perhaps represent the self-torture of the poet's own youth, much of which he spent in the Lake district.>> SIR PERCY PERCIVALE ("on a mountain summit"). No higher? No higher? All hell is my portion. My mouth is as fire; My thought an abortion. This is the summit? Attained is the height. Down like a plummet To blackness and night Hope goes. Not here, Not here is Desire, The ease from fear, The ice from fire. Not here -- O God! I would I were dead Under the sod! My brain is as lead. My thoughts are as smoke. My heart is a fire; I know not what fuel Is feeding its fury! In vain I invoke The Lord of Desire! He is evil and cruel. The spells of Jewry Are poured in his ear In vain: he may hear not. O would I were dumb! For the pestilent fever That bites my blood Forces like fear These babblings: I near not The secret, nor come To my purpose for ever. {24B} A turbulent flood Whispers and yells, Alight in my breast. God! for the spells That unseal men -- a rest! No higher? I have climbed This pinnacled steep. It mocks me, this heaven Of thine, Adonai! Rather be limed In the dusk, in the deep, Seven times seven Thy hells, O Jehovah! I tune the great Name To a million vowels: -- It escapes me, the flame! But deep in my bowels Growls the deep lust, The bitter distrust, The icy fear, The cruel thought! O! I am here -- And here is nought. I must rave on. I hate the sun. Anon! Anon! Let us both begone, Thou fiend that pourest One by one These evil words In my ear, in my heart! Here on the summit The air is too thin. Wild as the winds Let me ride! Let me start Over the plains; For here my brain's Numb, it is dumb, it Is torn by this passion. Down! Eagle-fashion Drive to the level! Teeth! you may gnash on! My body's anguish It help to my soul. Hail to the revel! The dance of the devil, The rhythms that languish, The rhymes that roll! {25A} Down like the swine Of the gross Gadarene In a maddening march From the snow to the rock, From the rock to the pine, From the pine to the larch, From the tree to the green! ["He leaps down, then pauses." O Devil! to mock With echo the roar Of a young boy's spirit! And yet (as before) I know I inherit The wit of the mage, The blood of the king, The age of the sage! Ah! all these sting Through me -- this rage Is the strength of my blood, The heat of my body, The birth of my wit. To hell with the flood Of words! Were I God, he Had made me as fit For all things as now, But added a brow Cool -- O how cool! Fool! Fool! Fool! ["With a terrible laugh he springs out of sight down the crags." SCENE III. SIR PERCY PERCIVALE ("in the Hall"). O the gloom of these distasteful tomes! The horror of the secrets here discovered! Wake, ye salamandrines;<<1>> sleep, ye gnomes! Were those the sylphs that round me hovered On the mountain, and destroyed my peace? O the misery of this world; the fear And folly that is unattained desire! I would be master: I, the lord of Greece: {25B} I the bright Deva<<2>> of the golden sphere; I the swift spirit of the primal fire: -- All these I am, not will be. O blind ape! All these are shapeless; thou art but a shape, A blind, bad-blooded bat! Ugh! Ugh! The snake Wriggling to death amid his burning brake Is wiser, holier, lordlier. Open, page Of the old Rabbi!<<3>> tell me of the mage; Of him who would; of him who dared and did; Of him who reared and failed; of him who fell; One peering lightwards through a coffin-lid, One aching heavenwards -- and achieving hell! O let me do and die as they! The wand, The lamp, the sword, come eager to my hand; -- Or, if I wander now upon the moor, An old red-hatted witch will come, for sure, And teach me how the dragon deeds are done Or truck my spirit to the Evil One; Or else, -- I wot not what. I am drunk with will, Will toward some destiny most high, most holy! Some of those glories sung with awful skill By the loud brabble of the monster Crowley, That poet of the muck-heap! Oh, enough! The wind is harsh and vital on the hills. Forth let me fare! I am other than the stuff His dreams are made of! Aye! I shall endure!<<4>> I am destined Lord of many magic wills. Another Rosencreutz another order Founds -- to a better end than his, be sure! Away! away, my lad! and o'er the border I shall get myself a buxom bride, And ride -- ride -- ride! ["He rises." Ride to the blacksmith at Gretna Green,<<5>> Kiss a fair lady and find her a queen! O a Queen, for certain! It is I that ride, Ride in my youth and pride. {26A} With a long sword girt to my waist, And a strawberry mare sweet-paced, And a long night with no moon, no star! I will plunder the traveller from afar; -- Aye! and find him an ancient sage, Learn all his wisdom, marry his daughter, Become a king and a mage, Lord of Fire, Earth, Air, and Water! Ho! my horse, lads! Away! To the moor! Ho! there's a fox i' the hole, that's sure. ["Flings swaggering out of the room." <<1. The spirits of fire, air, water, and earth were respectively named salamanders (fem.-drines), sylphs, undines, and gnomes.>> <<2. The Indian generic term for any good spirit.>> <<3. Rabbi Schimeon, who first wrote down the Zohar, the most sacred book of the Qabalah.>> <<4. WEH NOTE: Crowley gives an insight into the use of different names and persona. Here he speaks as Perdurabo, an alter-ego, denouncing qualities of his normal self.>> <<5. WEH NOTE: Crowley, or Perdurabo rather, alludes to his marriage with Rose Kelly. This was an anvil marriage by the local black-smith of a Scottish town -- a binding form of common-law marriage in Scotland at the time.>> SCENE IV. ANGELA, LADY BAIRD ("regarding herself in a mirror)." I thank you, M. Davenport!<<1>> This smile Is worth a husband. Here, one touch of pink Completes a perfect picture -- Are these eyes Dark eno' to look love or sin, and large (O Atropine!<<2>>) to beam forth innocence! Innocence, a grim jest for sixty years! Nay, sixty-three; I lie not to myself; Else one sins lying; this is virtue mixed, A bubbling draught that soon lies still and flat; While my great lust runs deep and dark, nor changes For all that time can do. What of this boy? I knew his father; the man feared me well For all his open laugher; would he were Alive! I dream one torture writhed about His heart he'll miss in hell. I hated him. This boy of his I saw but yesterday Ride barehead by me like a madman would, Is strong and well-set -- aye! desirable. I would be better of his virgin lips: -- ["She puts her lips against the mirror" {26B} (Nay, you are cold! Like a dead man, perhaps!) I would get gladness of the royal force Of armed insistence against my restraint. What is worth while, though, to a woman found Fragrant and fearful to a host of men Even yet? they throng me, hunt me! Why should I Do this unutterable wickedness? Because that Moina Marjoribanks grins and boasts She will achieve him? Angela, not so! For its own sweet, most damnable sake, say yes! Look to those cheeks, redress the red-gold hair, Awake the giant wit, the master sin That is, for an apple's sake, Lord of us all: These shall despoil her; these shall ruin him. Yes, I shall clutch him to these sagging breasts Stained, bruised, -- enough! -- and take his life in mine -- Ugh! pleasure of Hell! Sir Percy Percivale,<<3>> Here is a strumpet. Ha! have you a sword? Enough. I am dressed. I am lovely, have communed With my dark heart: I see my way to it: -- Oh joy! joy! joy! -- Hortense, these candles out! ["The maid blows out the mirror candles." I will go down. Prepare my scented paper, My rosy wax against my coming here -- When, girl? I' th' morn, i' th' morn! When else? I'd write. ["She goes out, with a set smile on her face, yet a gleam of real laughter beneath it." {27A} <<1. A famous dentist in Paris.>> <<2. The alkaloid of belladonna. It dilates the pupil, and is abused to this end by many foolish women.>> <<3. Sir Percivale, in "Morte d' Arthur," being enamoured of a lady, caused a bed to be prepared. But laying his sword therein -- and in that sword was a reed cross and the sign of the crucifix -- she was discovered to be the devil. See Malory, xiv. 9.>> SCENE V. "To" CARRUTHERS, "in the Office of" SIR PERCY'S "Ancestral Hall, enter" GREUMOCH. GREUMOCH. Ay, sir. The laddie's in the thick o't! Weel! She'll be off tae th' muir, a'm thinking, sin' the dee. CARRUTHERS. He goes to solitude? GREUMOCH. Weel, weel, sir, na! She wadna say the laddie wad gang yon. CARRUTHERS ("smiling"). He is ever alone? GREUMOCH. Oo ay, sir, by his lanes. CARRUTHERS. Go now, and tell me ever of his doings. ["Exit" GREUMOCH. The hour is nigh, but when that hour may strike None, not the wisest, may foretell. I fear A moment's mischief may destroy these years Of grave solicitude, their work. This boy Thinks his grey father dead. These words ("tapping a letter") shall speak Even from the tomb. These words shall be obeyed By force of ancient habit: these give me Supreme authority to exercise By stealth, not overt till the hour be come Should madness seat herself upon the lad, And he turn serpent on his friends. But no! There is too strong a discipline of sense, Too cool a brain, too self-controlled a heart: -- Well, we shall see. ["Turns to his books." {27B} SCENE VI. SIR PERCY PERCIVALE ("on Wastwater"). God, I have rowed! My hands are one blister; By arms are one ache; But my brain is a fire, As erst on the fell, In the hall; let me dive To the under-abode, Where the sweet-voiced sister Of the Screes<<1>> shall forsake Her home for desire Of me! Say the spell! Down then! to drive -- ["He dives. The waters close over him. He rises" Misery ever! I dived, and the best Could dive no deeper. Did I touch bottom? Never, O never! I stand confessed A footler, a creeper. These spells -- 'Od rot 'em! -- Are vain as the world, As all of the stars. This mystery's nought. But for cold! The lake Is hot as the curled Flames at the bars Of Hell; it is wrought Of fire: what shall slake This terrible thirst, This Torment accurst? ["He looks into the water." Yet, in my face As I gaze on the water Is something calmer. What if the king Of the Screes should see me, Give me for grace His beautiful daughter, Voluptuous charmer? {28A} A golden ring Should bring her to me; No marriage dreamy; Identity, love! ["He looks up," Stay! In the wood By the waterway, stands A delicate fairy! [MOLLY TYSON "is discovered." I'll steal from above, Watch her. How good! How sweet of her hands! How dainty and airy! How perfect, how kind! How bright in her thoughts! How subtle, refined, The least light of her mind! Let me approach! O fear! O sorrow! I fear to encroach. Scree-king, I borrow Thy frown, thy pride, Thy magical targe. To her side I glide, To the mystical marge Of this lake enchaunted. O waters elf-haunted, Bear me toward her, A cruel marauder, A robber of light! O beauty! O bright! How shall I sing thee? Nay! do not fly me! My bird, why wing thee? Be kind! O be nigh me! She speaks not. I'll follow! ["Leaps from boat and wades in to shore," The world is my bower. By height and by hollow I'll seek thee, O flower! I'll not turn back! ["He pursues her." I'll go on for ever. The strength of a giant Is in my limbs -- ["He reels." My body is slack; My muscles sever; {28B} My limbs are pliant; My eyesight swims. Come to me! Come to me! Thee have I sought! Thou that wast dumb to me, Come -- I am nought! ["Striving ever to follow her, he faints and falls. The girl stops." <<1. The mountain which bounds Wastwater on the south.>> MOLLY. Dear me! The young gentleman's ill too. What a nice boy it is! I must go and help him. Why did he call to me? ("Goes back.") I was afraid -- Yes, but I must go. Something calls me. Is anything the matter, sir? ("He does not answer. She lifts his head to her lap.") How pale he is! Poor boy! Shall I run to the Hall and get help, I wonder? ("Puts him gently down and half rises. His eyes open.)" SIR PERCY. Oh! I am but a coward. I am not ill, I was awake. I let you hold me. Forgive me! MOLLY. Forgive you, sir? I am a poor girl of the dale. SIR PERCY. Your voice is like an empress -- no, a nightingale. You do not speak like a daleswoman. MOLLY. I was at school, sir, at -- SIR PERCY. O but I love you! There is none above you, Not God! I renounce Thee, O maker! Dissolve, Ye hopes of delusion! Mage, I will trounce thee! {29A} Sage, to confusion! Problems to solve? Here is my life! My secret is told -- What is your name, O fairest of women? Bosom of gold! Faultless your fame! An aeon were shame Your beauty to hymn in! Will you be mine, Mine and mine only! Beauty divine, How I was lonely! How I was mad! Say, are you glad, Glad of me, happy here, Here in my arms? I kiss you, I kiss you! Say, is it bliss, you Spirit of holiness? Holy I hold you! Swift as a rapier Stabbed me your charms, Broken with lowliness, Smitten with rapture: -- All is so mixed; All is a whirl; -- (Let me recapture This lock; 'tis unfixed.) Ay, little girl, Bury my head In the scent of your hair! Would I were dead In your arms ever fair, Buried and folded For aye on your breast: -- That were delight, Eternity moulded In form of your kiss! That were the rest I have sought for, the bliss I have ached to obtain: -- Ah! it was pain! MOLLY. Ay! sir, but can you love me? Me, poor girl! {29B} SIR PERCY. Love you? Ah, Christ! I love you so! Say you love me, love me! Say so! Again! Again! Aloud! I must hear, or I shall die. MOLLY. I love you. Oh, you hurt me, you do indeed. SIR PERCY. I love you, love you. Yes, you love me! Love! Christ! Yes, oh! I love you so, dear heart. MOLLY. Dear love, I love you. SIR PERCY. Ah, love, love, how I love you. This is the world! Love! Love! I love you so, my darling. Oh my white golden heart of glory! MOLLY. I love you, love you so. SIR PERCY. Ah, God! I love you! I shall faint with love. I love you so. [ANGELA, LADY BAIRD, "is discovered behind the trees. She suffers the torments of hell." ANGELA ("While the duet continues"). Ah! if there were a devil to buy souls, Of if I had not sold mine! Quick bargain, God! Hell catch the jade! Blister her fat red cheeks! Rot her snub nose! Poison devour her guts! Wither her fresh clean face with old grey scabs, And venomous ulcers gnaw the baby breasts! Vermin upon her! Infamous drab! Gr! Gr! I would I had her home to torture her. I would dig out those amorous eyes with gimlets. {30A} Break those young teeth and smash that gaby grin! I am utterly wretched! Ah, there is aye hope left! -- For see, they part! SIR PERCY. Ah, love, at moonrise! MOLLY. At my door! SIR PERCY. Hell belch Its monsters one by one to stop the way! I would be there. ANGELA. Christ! he shall not be there! MOLLY. Farewell! SIR PERCY. O fairest, fare thee well! MOLLY. Farewell! [ANGELA "draws nearer, yet remains concealed." SIR PERCY. O but the moon is laggard! MOLLY. Hard it is! SIR PERCY. Time matters not. I am so drunk with love. MOLLY. One kiss, one kiss! SIR PERCY. A million! Ay, slack moon, Dull moon, haste, haste! MOLLY. Kiss me again, again! {30B} ANGELA. Would I had the kissing of her with vitriol! SIR PERCY. Your kisses are like young rain. ANGELA. The slobbery kisses of virginity. He shall soon know these calculated, keen, Intense, important kisses, -- mine! Hell's worm! MOLLY. Yes, do not leave me. Let us away now! No, I must tell them, fetch my -- SIR PERCY. No! No! No! Nothing is necessary unto love, Not even light. In chaos love were well. I love you, love you so, my love, my love. MOLLY. How I love you! Oh, kiss me again! SIR PERCY. Yet you were best to go. This bites like Hell's worst agony. ANGELA. Amen! MOLLY. God be with you! SIR PERCY. Till we meet again. MOLLY. At moonrise. SIR PERCY. At your door. ANGELA. At moonset he shall crawl away from mine. The dog! I hate him! So much the more sure {31A} To have him. Damn them! Are they cock and hen To make this cackling over their affairs? Muck! Muck! SIR PERCY. I love you so, dear heart, dear love. MOLLY. Oh yes, I love you! Percy! SIR PERCY. Molly! Molly! MOLLY. Dear boy, how I love you! SIR PERCY. And I you, sweetheart. MOLLY. Good-bye, then! SIR PERCY. Good-bye! Good-bye! At moonrise. MOLLY. At my door. ANGELA. Better write it down, and then you won't forget. SIR PERCY. One kiss for good-bye. MOLLY. Good-bye. ["Slowly retires, looking over her shoulder. They run back to meet each other, and embrace anew for some minutes. Eventually" SIR PERCY PERCIVALE "tears himself away," MOLLY "disappears, and" SIR PERCY "goes sorrowfully back to his boat, which he now manoeuvres to the landing stage." {31B} ANGELA. Now let him find it! This will puzzle him. When Limburger replaces Patchouli, Why -- moonrise! [SIR PERCY, "radiant, reaches the landing stage, moors his boat and mounts. He sees a pink note on the wharf." SIR PERCY. Ah! she has dropped this! A cruel fool am I; I took an honied kiss; I revelled in true bliss; Yet never thought to try A keepsake to obtain To wear my heart upon. Now God is great and gracious; Here's medicine for my pain. She has left it; she has gone! How sweet the air and spacious! I am happy -- let me see! I guess some verse inspired By all her soul desired, Purity, love, well-being -- ay! and me! ["He opens the note, and reads: --" "To love you, Love, is all my happiness; To kill you with my kisses; to devour Your whole ripe beauty in the perfect hour That mingles us in one supreme caress --"<<1>> Why, here is love articulate, vital! I thought that only poets, not lovers, could so speak. And that poets, poor devils, speaking, could never know. "So Percy to his Angela's distress -- " Then it is not my Molly that writes this -- who is this Percy? -- not me, at all events, for there is no Angela that loves me. ("A sound of sobbing in the trees.") Whom have we here? ("Advances.") 'Fore God, the most beautiful woman in the world, except my Molly! And her scent! O she is like some intimate tropical plant, luring and deadly! {32A} -- I am afraid. ("He discovers" ANGELA.) Madam, can I aid you? <<1. See above, "The Temple of the Holy Ghost," vol. i. p. 181.>> ANGELA. Leave me! Leave me! I am the wretchedest girl on the wide earth. SIR PERCY. The comeliest, mademoiselle. ("Aside.") O see this is a woman of the world. To her with speeches fit for such then. ANGELA. I have seen all. Pity me! Your flattery is a sword in my heart! SIR PERCY. Seen? ANGELA. Your love -- you call it so! SIR PERCY. Have you, then -- ANGELA. I saw all. Ah me! Poor Angela! SIR PERCY. Angela is your name? ANGELA. My name. SIR PERCY. A lovely name. No doubt your disposition runs parallel. ANGELA. Meets never? You are no courtier, sir! SIR PERCY. Do not say "sir!" {33B} ANGELA. What shall I say! Oh leave me! I am ashamed. SIR PERCY ("very pale"). Is this your writing? ANGELA. Oh shame! shame! shame! Tell me you have not read it, Sir Percy! SIR PERCY. Some I did read -- How know you my name? ANGELA. I read it in my heart. O but I am ashamed to speak to you! Or would be were not that name as a brand to blot out all feeling from me for evermore. SIR PERCY ("aside"). How she speaks! It is indeed an angel singing. ("Aloud.") Indeed, I read too far. ANGELA. Pity me! SIR PERCY. Dear lady, the joy to know, and so perfectly to express such love is enough. ANGELA. You mock me! That girl -- do you in truth love her? She is most beautiful. SIR PERCY. O she is my love, my dove, my star, my -- Ah! -- I hurt you! ("Aside.") O beast! What is this doubt? ANGELA ("very close to him"). I hear another anthem in those eyes. By God, lad, you are wonderful! SIR PERCY. What would you say? {33A} ANGELA. What would I not do? Listen, I am Angela, Lady Baird. I am rich. That wealth now for the first time yields me some pleasure. The moon rises late, after ten o'clock: you shall come with me. We are -- neighbours, are we not? You shall come to my castle, I say; there I will prepare all for you and your young bride: my chaplain shall marry you at midnight; my name and power shall shield you from all mischance. SIR PERCY. I am my own master. ANGELA. You think so? They have kept if from you, but you have a guardian: ask him if you may marry a mere country lass -- and you now not yet seventeen. SIR PERCY. And you -- how old are you? ANGELA. That is a rude, rude boy! SIR PERCY. Oh, I am so sorry, I forgot. ANGELA. I will tell you, though. I am all but twenty-two! SIR PERCY. That is young yet. ANGELA. Ah, in your eyes I see sadness -- I breathe; I hope. Think deeply in yourself, if you love this girl! I am older than you, to be sure; but not so much. May be you would find my love a better thing than you think! {33B} Do I perspire now? Do my cheeks run down nasty wet tears? Is my love a monotonous harping on one word? Love, Percy -- dare I call you Percy? SIR PERCY. If I may call you Angela. ANGELA. Love, Percy ("she lays one hand on his shoulder and looks deeply in his eyes"), is wit, and laughter, and wisdom; all of love, and in it; but love without these is a mawkish, moonish distemper of folly -- and will pass. I shall not pass, my love! -- Ah! you feel my breath upon your face! SIR PERCY. Yes -- do not! ANGELA. I shall do so -- you dare not move away from me! I have you? No! Ah, Percy, Percy, will you break a heart that only beats for you? SIR PERCY. You woo so well that I think you must have loved before. ANGELA. Ay! but not like this. If I have loved it was but to study love, to learn his arts; to make myself the queen I am, that I might have strength to win you -- never before has my heart been touched. Now my arts fail me. I am a poor and simple girl; and my eyes are aching with the sight of you, and my lips are mad to kiss you! SIR PERCY. Your breath is like a mist of rose-dawn about me. ANGELA ("aside"). O true apothecary! Thy drugs are<<1>> expensive, but well worth the money. {34A} ("Aloud") Nay! but I will go. You have shamed me enough. go! Go! <<1. Here and repeatedly below she quotes or alters a well-known passage in Shakespeare.>> SIR PERCY. Nay! I know better of a sudden. It is you that I love! ["He would kiss her. She draws away." ANGELA. False, fickle wretch! SIR PERCY. I will! I will! ANGELA. No! No! SIR PERCY. Yes, I was a fool, an ass, a brute. A village girl! ANGELA. Blood will have blood, they say. SIR PERCY. You are my equal, Angela! You shall be mine, mine, mine! ANGELA. If I will not? SIR PERCY. You will. You have written more than this. ANGELA. If I must -- SIR PERCY. You must. ANGELA. Ah love! ("She yields herself up to him. A long pause.") Learn my first lesson; at these great moments of life, silence is the best. ("Aside.") There is a more important one. Had that silly gowk but the wit to lead him -- "a fin" -- where were I now? Not a drain on his stores, but a -- Professor Spooner,<<1>> {34B} in your next lecture warn the girls to go slow; it is dangerous as well as cruel to leave a lover standing. <<1. A well-known Oxford Professor, who enjoys the reputation of having invented the blunder of the class "half-warmed fish" for "half-formed wish.">> SIR PERCY. Oh I have learnt that lesson and a thousand others. ANGELA. You must go now. The moon -- SIR PERCY. This love is not of the moon. To-morrow -- ANGELA. "And to-morrow and to-morrow." Speak not that idle word! SIR PERCY. What of this chaplain? ANGELA. What of your guardian? SIR PERCY. Curses of hell! ANGELA. Hush! hush! sweet words must come from such sweet lips. SIR PERCY. What shall I do? ANGELA. You leave your fate already in my hands? Nay, but once married, you'll be master then! SIR PERCY. Shame, sweetheart! ANGELA. You have the strength of mind to defy convention: we dine together: we -- O love, how dare you look such looks as these? -- {35A} At moonset ride you back, and none the wiser. This always: for did we marry, the law would have its word to say. SIR PERCY. But this you speak of, is it not sin? ("She looks at him.") And what if it were? ANGELA. My carriage waits -- yonder. SIR PERCY. Ah come, come, come! ANGELA. Dare I? SIR PERCY. Dare all things! I will this delight; it shall be. And in five years we can marry, or my guardian will consent before. ANGELA. Come! ("They go off slowly, closely entwined, kissing and whispering.") SIR PERCY. You are faint with passion, love. You walk heavily. ANGELA. Ay, love, it is to feel your strength support me! ("Aside.") Will the doctors never catch up with the coiffeurs? GHREUMOCH ("coming forward, as he sees them go)." The de'il an' a! The de'il an' a! Yon grimly auld beetch! Meester Caroothers, Gude guide thee the nicht! Y'ere auld bones shall auche sair wi' sorrow! Weel, weel, it's an ill warld after a'! Greumoch wad be slow wi' sic ill news, an' she wull maun haste. Weel, weel! ["Exit hastily." {35B} SCENE VII. MOLLY, "outside" TYSON'S "Cottage. Moonrise." MOLLY TYSON. O there is edged the waning moon Out of the hollow of Sty Head Pass!<<1>> Gable<<2>> is grander for the gloom. Lingmell<<3>> is silver! Ah, the bloom Of the rose of night; oh, dulcet tune Of the dew falling on the grass! <<1, 2 & 3. A pass, and mountains, in the Lake district.>> I am the veritable Queen Of Night: my king is hither bound. A moment and he comes -- oh, breast! Heave if thou wilt! -- such stir is rest. He comes, ah! steals to me unseen. The trees are high, the shades profound. Together over moor and lake! Together over scaur and fell! For ever let us travel so; To stop so sweet a flight were woe. Even to stop for love's own sake; Save my love did it -- Then? well! well! Better to rest together, hard Hidden in a corner of the ghyll, Some cavern frosted over close, Some gully vivid with the rose Of love! The frost our years retard! The rose -- perfume our wonder-will! But while I sing the moon is up. False moon! False moon! So fast to ride. He is not here! Sure, he is dead! O moon, reveal that holiest head! There is much sorrow in love's cup: Pleasure goes ever iron-eyed. Who are these fierce and eager forms That face across the untrodden moor, The dark-browned horsemen lashing, crying, Urging their weary steeds? Half-dying The beasts bend bitter to the storm's Assult: they hunt? A man, be sure! {36A} These figures touch my soul with fear. What of my love? These caitiffs chase him, May be. Who rides? I'll catch his bridle, Plough with his heifer, learn his riddle. ["Enter" CARRUTHERS, "riding madly, crying 'Sir Percy! Sir Percy!'" You, sir, what makes your honour here! Sir Percy? Who then dares to face him? CARRUTHERS. Let go my bridle, girl, I save a life. MOLLY. You hunt Sir Percy Percivale! CARRUTHERS. To save him. MOLLY. God save all honest men from knaves like you! Stay, though, you are his friend? CARRUTHERS. His guardian. MOLLY. And I his promised wife. CARRUTHERS. Mad girl, be off! MOLLY. Ay, strike me, coward! CARRUTHERS ("after thinking a moment"). Then, come here, behind me! Quick, if you love him! MOLLY. I will see him safe. What is this danger? CARRUTHERS. Danger of your sort. ["She mounts." OLD TYSON "comes out into the open." TYSON. Eh, less, wheer off noo? {36B} MOLLY. Father! Father! CARRUTHERS. Now. ["Spurs on the horse." TYSON. What, ye'll abdooct my darter? CARRUTHERS. Ha! Ha! Ha! ["Gallops off." SCENE VIII. "Dawn. Outside Castle Baird. To" CARRUTHERS, GREUMOCH, MOLLY, "and retainers on horseback enter" LADY BAIRD "and" SIR PERCY PERCIVALE "on the battlements." CARRUTHERS. Be a man, Greumoch boy, be a man! GREUMOCH. Sir, did she'll no be thinking ye were greeting yersel', mon, she'll could find it in her heert to whang ye, whateffer. ANGELA. You are early hunting, gentlemen. Come in! My steward shall serve somewhat. ["Sees" MOLLY. Ha! Ha! Ha! You bring a lady, then, Carruthers! CARRUTHERS. Madam! Give me that boy! ANGELA. You fool, you are too late! This is a man. {37A} CARRUTHERS. I warn you, Lady Baird. The laws calls this abduction. ANGELA. Pish! the law! Go, my dear ("whispers") husband -- ah! how proud you look! Come when you will! CARRUTHERS. Sir Percy Percivale, I stand here in your dear dead father's name. ANGELA. You stand here, Percy, for yourself -- and me. CARRUTHERS. Come down; I am your guardian. Know this! Without me you do nought, say nought, spend nought. Obey me! SIR PERCY. Silence, sir, I am your master. Whatever powers my father may have given To you, there's one that I inherit from him; Namely, to tame the insolent. ["Turns to" ANGELA. Dear wife! I go, as a tooth torn from a jaw. Expect I quell this folly in a little while And come again -- to Paris, said you, sweet? CARRUTHERS. Leave your mad chatter with that ghastly hag! You fool, the woman is sixty if an hour. SIR PERCY. My answer to my promised bride is this. ["He kisses her." So, sir! To you, this to remember by. ["He shoots Carruthers in the leg." {37B} MOLLY. Oh, Percy, Percy, am I not your love? SIR PERCY. I am sorry, heartily, Miss Tyson. MOLLY. O! SIR PERCY. I did indeed speak foolishly. ANGELA ("aside"). Your purse! SIR PERCY ("aside"). O that were devilish -- she's a good girl! ANGELA. I hate her. SIR PERCY. Buy yourself a pretty hat! Forget my pretty speeches! ["Flings his purse down." CARRUTHERS. O Lord Christ! In one short day -- he was a gentleman! Sir Percival! Would God I were dead too! If he had lived -- thank God he died! Sir Percy, Lend me you pistol; here's a heart to hit! [SIR PERCY "descends, after taking farewell of" ANGELA, "and appears again on horseback among his men." SIR PERCY. Arnold and Ritson, tend the wounded man! To breakfast, gentlemen! ["Looks up." Farewell! ANGELA ("waves her handkerchief and throws a kiss"). Farewell! ["Exeunt." {38A} ANGELA. Ah, were such nights thy gift, dear Christ, all maids Were well thy servants. This is past all speaking! The utmost triumph of a life well spiced With victory -- this beats all. Hortense! Hortense! Bring me the brand -- pour a double dram! Here's luck -- ah, Satan, give me fifty such! ["Drinks off the brandy." And now to bed again -- to sleep, I am tired. ["She goes in." "While the scene is being shifted, enter" GOWER "as Chorus." The figure of the Marquis of Glenstrae Demands the kind attention of the spot Of consciousness that readers shift away In awe of such a high exalted pot, In England's upper Witenagemot A figure bright enough to make the sun dun, Yet common -- to conceive him asketh not Imagination's waistcoat buttons undone! Any old gentleman in any club in London. SCENE IX. "Enter the" MARQUIS OF GLENSTRAAE, "Outside" TYSON'S "Cottage." GLENSTRAE. Here, then, lives the pretty piece of goods Angela wrote me of. (MOLLY "appears at doorway".) Ah! my pretty lass, can you give a poor old man a glass of milk? MOLLY. Yes, sir, I will fetch you one. Pray you, set you down awhile. ["He sits down. She goes." GLENSTRAE. Ugh! Ugh! This rheumatism at me again. I wish I had left the business to Arthur. -- But there, there, one never knows. (MOLLY "comes in with the milk".) There, there! what have you been crying for? {38B} MOLLY. O sir! GLENSTRAE. I am the Marquis of Glenstrae, my pretty wench. If my name and fortune can serve you -- there, there! I never could bear to see a pretty lass cry. MOLLY. O my lord! I am the most unhappy girl in the world. GLENSTRAE. Tell me about it -- there, there, don't cry! MOLLY. 'Twas but yestreen s'ennight. GLENSTRAE. A green wound is easiest cured. MOLLY. My lord, yestreen s'ennight I was wooed and won, and ere the moonrise he deserted me. GLENSTRAE. Dear, dear! That's bad, bad, bad. There, there, no doubt we shall be able to do something. MOLLY. My father thinks it is worse -- oh, far worse! I am to go away into service -- oh! oh! GLENSTRAE. And so you shall, my dear, so you shall. Come and live with my wife as her companion, and we will try and find your lover for you. No doubt the arts of this -- er -- designing female will soon lose their power -- there, there, no thanks, I beg! I never could bear to see a pretty wench cry -- there, there! MOLLY. O sir, my lord, how can I thank you? {39A} GLENSTRAE. Come in, my dear, and let us see your father about it. . . . Can you spare an old man a kiss? MOLLY. O my lord? GLENSTRAE ("kissing her"). There, there! Where is your father? ["They go in." SCENE X. "Paris. Night." SIR PERCY "and" ANGELA in bed, the latter asleep." SIR PERCY. O Rose of dawn! O star of evening! O glory of the soul of light! Let my bright spirit speed on urgent wing! Let me be silent, and my silence sing Throughout the idle, the luxurious night! How soft she breathes! How tender Her eyes beam down on me! How slender Her pale, her golden body lies! Even asleep the dark long lashes move, And the eyes see. She dreams of me, of love, Of all these bridal ecstasies That have been ours this month, this month of joy. I am a foolish boy; Did not the golden starred Ambassador Come like a father to me and implore I would look straight on truth? "This is no love-sick youth!" He cried, "she is nigh sixty years of age; Her lovers are a mangled multitude; You are one duckling of an infinite brood This vixen hath up-gobbled!" Am I mage? Ay, for I grant the aged diplomat His truth -- the truth for him! To me she is The rosy incarnation of a kiss, The royal rapture of a young delight, The mazy music of virginity, Sun of the day, moon of the night, All, all to me! Angela, angel! Thou hast made me man, {39B} And poet over-man! To thee, To thee I owe transfiguration, peace, The wide dominion of the wan Abyss of air. I can look out and see Beyond the stars, black seas Wherein no star may swim, Thence, far beyond the vast revolving spheres Dark, idle, grim, Full of black joys and shadowy unspoken fears, Wherein I am master. There is no place for tears. Cold adamant disaster Is lord there, and I overlord. So flits-out, like a sword Flashed through a duellist's live heart, My thought; in all the abodes of sense, The shrines of love and art, The adytum of omnipotence, I am supreme, through thee, sweet Angela! For all the beauties of the universe, The glories hidden in the flower's cup, All, all that wakes the soul to worship, verse, Ripe verse, all wines, all dreams that the soft God lifts up: All these are eidola, Mere phantom will 'o the wisps, thy love the real! There is no more ideal For me; romance hath shot its bolt; The badger Jesus skulketh in his holt, Whence let no dog dare draw him; let him skulk! All is an empty broken hulk Floating on waters of derision, Save for the sole true vision, Angela, star in chaos! Breathe, breathe deep! Dear heart of gold, beat slowly in soft sleep! Her lover watches over Angela. Angela! O thou wondrous woman, Thou chaste pale goddess blooded to the human, Artemis rosy like Hippolyta!<<1>> Ay, my lord, were it true, your liar's lore, (Oh blasphemy!) were my young love an whore, {40A} An hag of sixty; I were greater so. He who doth know And fears and hates, Is not as he who cares not, but creates A royal crown from an old bonnet string, A maiden from a strumpet: that is to be like God, Who from all chaos, from the husks of matter, Crusts shed off putrefaction, shakes a wing And flies; bids flowers spring from the dull black sod, Is not the scientist to shatter Beauty by dint of microscope, But wakes a wider hope And turns all to the beautiful; so I. Angela, wake! The midnight hour is nigh: -- Let us renew the vows of love! appease These amorous longings with grave ecstasies, The holy act of uttermost communion, The sacrament of life! Awake, awake! There is a secret in our subtle union That masters the grey snake. Ay! let him lurk! The Tree of Knowledge we Have fed our fill of; this is Eden still. Awake, O Love! and let me drink my fill Of thee -- and thou of me! [ANGELA "wakes." <<1. Possibly the Hippolyta in "Midsummer Night's Dream.">> ANGELA. Ah, Percy, bend you over me! Bend deep! Kiss my own eyelids out of tender sleep Into exasperate love! Bend close! Fill me, thy golden rose, With dew of thy dear kisses! SIR PERCY. Ay, again! Love, love, these raptures are like springtide rain Nesting among green leaves. ANGELA. The Lady of Love weaves Fresh nets of gossamer for thee and me. O take not back thy lips, even to sing! {40B} SIR PERCY. Come, rich, come overrolling ecstasy! I am like to die with joy of everything. ANGELA. Die, then, and kiss me dead! SIR PERCY. I die! I die! ANGELA. Thy flower-life is shed Into eternity, A waveless lake. SIR PERCY. Sleep, sleep! ["He sleeps." ANGELA. I am awake -- And being awake I weary somewhat of these jejune platitudes, these rampant ululations of preposterous puberty. These are the very eructations of gingerbread; they are the flatulence of calf-sickness. I thought I had taught the boy more sense. He weakens, and I weary. As you will, my Lady Glenstrae! Hortense! (HORTENSE "enters with a glass of brandy".) Brandy! HORTENSE. Here, milady. ANGELA. Not enough, you she-devil. More! More! ["Exit." ANGELA "falls back to sleep." SCENE XI. "Paris." ANGELA, LORD "and" LADY GLENSTRAE, SIR PERCY DE PERCIVALE. ANGELA. You will not believe what I tell you? These friends will tell you what I mean, and {41B} if I mean it! You had your dismissal this morning. Never dare to address me again! SIR PERCY. What! I have loved you, and you me -- No? -- it cannot be so! and now -- I am ill -- you cast me away! ("Turns his face away".) Forgive me, I am very weak. ANGELA ("goes to him and stands over him"). You shall have truth, you blind little fool. I hate you. From the hour you kissed that village drab, I hated you. I wanted your youth, your strength, your life, your name on my list, your scalp at my girdle. Enough! Do you understand? These friends will teach you. May I never see your pale pasty face again! ["She spits at him and goes." SIR PERCY ("half rises and falls back"). Oh! oh! It is impossible. Lord Marquis, you are a good man. Tell me, it is a hideous dream. GLENSTRAE. No dream, my boy. You are the hundredth she has treated after this fashion. But cheer up now. There! There! Women are all the same. Eh, Maud? LADY GLENSTRAE. Who calls? What do you want? Leave me alone! GLENSTRAE. Ah, nothing! Nothing, my dear. LADY GLENSTRAE. Pull down the blinds. GLENSTRAE. Certainly, certainly, my dear, I will ring. ["Rings." {41B} SIR PERCY. I am sick and sane now. God do so to me and more also if I look at a woman again. What a fool I have been! GLENSTRAE. Ah, my boy, you will keep clear of the old ones, I know. ("Enter a footman.") These blinds down! ("The man obeys.") But a tasty little morsel like your Molly -- your first love. -- Eh, my lad? There; there, don't be angry! SIR PERCY. Pshaw! You disgust me. ["The footman turns to go." GLENSTRAE ("to footman"). Wait! ("To" SIR PERCY.) would you tell "her" so? SIR PERCY. If I deigned speech. GLENSTRAE. Simmons, ask Miss Tyson to step here for a moment. ("Exit servant.") After which I shall leave you for an hour, my boy. I am to do some business -- aha! some rather pleasant business. There! there! ["Enter" MOLLY TYSON. MOLLY. O! Sir Percy! My lord, could you not have told me of this? GLENSTRAE. Now, your condition! MOLLY. Sir Percy, do you, can you love me? You promised to love me for ever. SIR PERCY. Who is this woman? I am weary of these women. {42A} MOLLY. Sir, sir, acknowledge me. You know not what hangs on it -- my honour even! GLENSTRAE. A speech of this breed is not in the bond -- but let it pass. There! there! MOLLY. Sir, I beseech you -- for an hour -- take me away. I am in terrible trouble of body and soul -- danger, misery. SIR PERCY. O, go! to the devil for me! What do I care? I am tired, I tell you. GLENSTRAE. You see, Molly, I told you true. MOLLY ("turns to the" MARCHIONESS "and kneels by her"). O, my lady Marchioness! You are a great lady. Spare me this shame, your lord's shame, your own shame. . . . LADY GLENSTRAE. Take her away. Less light! GLENSTRAE. Ha! Ha! SIR PERCY. I cannot see your humour, Glenstrae -- forgive me so far! And to tell the truth of it, I can do nothing and care to do less. GLENSTRAE. Come, Molly! MOLLY. Must I, must I? Oh, sir, have pity! GLENSTRAE. A bargain's a bargain -- but there! there! -- what are you growling at? A thousand a {42B} year and a flat in Mayfair is better than farmer Tyson's butter and eggs. MOLLY. Must it be now? GLENSTRAE. Much better now. There, there! Wish me good luck, Percy! SIR PERCY. I know nothing of your devil's game. Good luck! GLENSTRAE. Caste, John Burns.<<1>> ["Exeunt" MARQUIS "and" MOLLY. <<1. A demagogue of the period.>> LADY GLENSTRAE. Hist! Percy, hither to me. Is no one looking? SIR PERCY. No, there is no one here. LADY GLENSTRAE. I can cure you. I can make you strong and happy again. O what rapture! SIR PERCY. What is it? LADY GLENSTRAE. Here, let me give you this medicine. A little prick of pain, and then -- pleasure -- Oh! ["She bends caressingly over the arm of" SIR PERCY DE PERCIVALE, "and stabs it with a needle." Get a doctor to give you a prescription like this -- they ask a hundred francs -- oh! it is a shame! Buy a little syringe; and that is Heaven for all your life. -- How do you feel? SIR PERCY. Why, I am well at once. I never felt better in my life. The devil take my trouble {43B} now! I shall go out and conquer the whole world. I shall be the great magician, the Lord of the Stars. I have it in me to write poetry. Yes, that, first. ("Goes to table and takes pen and paper.") In praise of -- what is your medicine called, dear Marchioness? LADY GLENSTRAE. Who calls me? What is it? Leave me alone! SIR PERCY. Tell me, dear Lady -- Maud! LADY GLENSTRAE. Ah! you are the boy. SIR PERCY. Your boy, queen! LADY GLENSTRAE. Oh, yes, my boy. SIR PERCY. What is this medicine called? LADY GLENSTRAE. What medicine? I never take medicine! SIR PERCY. But you gave it me -- with a needle. LADY GLENSTRAE. Oh, that medicine! You like it? SIR PERCY. It is heaven, heaven! It is called -- LADY GLENSTRAE. Morphia. ["They rest." {43B} SCENE XII. TWO YEARS LATER. "Night: The Strand, opposite the Hotel Cecil. A chemist's shop behind. A grey, old, wizen man staggers into the shop." CHEMIST. This prescription has been made up before, sir. THE MAN. Yes, I want it renewed, quickly, quickly. CHEMIST. I am afraid, sir, it is marked "once only." THE MAN. You won't? O if you knew what I suffer! I will pay you double. CHEMIST. I'm afraid not, sir. You may try elsewhere. THE MAN. O God O God! ["Goes out. To him enter on the pavement a bedraggled female." THE WOMAN. Come home, ducky, won't you? THE MAN. O God! O God! I cannot bear it any longer. It is the last I have. ["He fumbles awhile inside his coat." THE WOMAN ("catching hold of him"). Come, stand me a glass of wine, there's a dear. THE MAN. Ah! that is well. Can I use this woman, I wonder? {44A} THE WOMAN. O God! I am punished. Sir Percy here! What is the matter, dear my love? SIR PERCY. Never mind love -- you are? MOLLY. O sir, your Molly, that you broke the heart of. See what has come to me! SIR PERCY. Ah, if you knew. You are the lucky one! I am in grips with a more dread disease Than all your wildest nightmares figure you! ["A carriage rolls by, as from the theatre. It stops owing to a block in the traffic." MOLLY. O sir! I am so sorry for you. SIR PERCY. And a lot of good that does! "Enter, on the pavement, the" MARQUIS OF GLENSTRAE, "in his fur coat. The occupant of the carriage," ANGELA, LADY BAIRD, "recognises him and leans out to greet him." GLENSTRAE. Ah, my dear lady, how do you do this cold weather? ANGELA. Well, very well, thank you -- and you? GLENSTRAE. Well enough -- a little rheumatic, perhaps. H'm! ANGELA. And the dear Marchioness? GLENSTRAE. Oh, very sad -- there -- there! She has had to be, ah! -- er -- under treatment. {44B} ANGELA. Dear, dear, how very sad! Hullo! Look here on this picture and on that! [MOLLY "and" SIR PERCY "are discovered." GLENSTRAE. Oh! Ah! I think I must go on. I have an appointment at the club. SIR PERCY. Yet your lordship walks East. THE MAN. Oh, I am not revengeful. Give me a fiver, my Lord Marquis, and we'll call it square. SIR PERCY. For me, my angel, get this prescription filled. ANGELA. Oh, go to the devil, both of you! Marquis, shall we sup at the Carlton? GLENSTRAE. With pleasure -- ha! a most amusing meeting -- ha! ANGELA. Where have you been this evening? GLENSTRAE. O most dull, indeed! I had to give the Presidential address at St. Martin's Town Hall for the Children's Special Service Mission. ANGELA. You, your Lordship is indeed a true friend to the little ones. A curious coincidence. I am the new president of the Zenana Mission. GLENSTRAE. You! ANGELA. Think of the poor heathen women kept in such terrible seclusion! {45A} GLENSTRAE. Ah! I had not thought your sympathy was genuine; but there, there! There is more real good in human nature than -- ANGELA. Genuine enough! But what a jest is this! GLENSTRAE. A most remarkable coincidence -- a very pleasant reminder. Shall we sup? ANGELA. Yes; a magnum of Pol Roger, '84 -- GLENSTRAE. With a dash of brandy in it -- ANGELA. Will clothe our old loves in a halo of romance again. GLENSTRAE. Ha! Ha! We wear well, eh? There, there! ("Opens the carriage door.") The Carlton. ("Follows and shuts door.") [SIR PERCY "and" MOLLY "part. The effect of his last dose is worn off; clutching his prescription, he goes off with set teeth." MOLLY "goes the other way: to her enter a theatre-goer." MOLLY. Won't you come with me, ducky? THEATRE-GOER. Not to-night. See you some other night. MOLLY. Oh, do come, dearie! THEATRE-GOER. No, I tell you -- try Liverpool Street! ["Curtain." {45B} "What follows is strictly by request in the interest of "healthy optimism." So far my pen has touched with vivid truth The constant story of the eternal struggle Of age and sense with flatulence and youth. Now -- see the venal poet start to juggle! Young ladies, you desire to see a comedy! The poet's master pen shall twist the river Of song into a simple to-and-from eddy. And you shall laugh where once you feared to shiver. So listen to the happy termination Of this apparently so sad relation! 'Twill suit your rosy dreams to admiration! But, be the gatepost witness! it is rot. Still, if I hide my face with due decorum Behind a silken kerchief in the forum, And laugh aloud -- at home -- At the silliness of Rome, You'll forgive me, will you not? SCENE XIII.<<1>> <<1. This scene, with exception of the introduction by Mr. Chesterton, and (of course) Sir Percy and Molly, is an accurate description of the "meeting" at Streatham. The incidents and style are authentic.>> The Meeting-House of the Brethren Gathered Together To The Name Of The Lord Jesus, sub-section Anti-Ravenite of the Exclusive section. They are of course Anti-Stewart, and sound on the Ramsgate Question, while observing an armed neutrality in the matter of Mr. Kelly's action.<> In the midst a table with a loaf and a bottle: also, by their own account, Jesus Christ. Forms, varnished yellow, around it, them, and (I suppose) Him. On one of them is a blackboard with the notice in white paint: {46A} "Those not in fellowship please sit behind this board." Accepting this dread limitation are several miserable, well-dressed children with active minds, who, finding nothing to interest them in the proceedings, are pointing out to each other the obscene passages in the Bible; or, this failing from insufficient acquaintance with the sacred volume, are engaged in the Sisyphean task of getting rid of the form in front by deglutition. There is also an anaemic and pimply youth with a sporadic beardlet and a dirty face -- if it is a face -- who is vastly interested: one would say an habitual reader of the "Daily Mail" watching nobility at lunch. In front of the board, around the table, are several dear old ladies and gentlemen, a beautiful, overdressed, languid woman, some oilily lousy, lop-eared, leprous, lack-brained, utterly loathsome tradespeople who gurgle and grin, and a sprinkling of horny-handed sons of toil, very shiny. Above, with an olive-branch in one hand and a copy of the "Daily News" in the other, floats Mr. G. K. Chesterton in the position Padmasana,<> singing "Beneath the Cross of Jesus" with one voice, and attempting "God save the Queen!" with the other in a fashion calculated to turn any marine, if but he be filled with honourable ambition to excel in the traditional exploits of his corps, green with envy. Behind, and for this reason not previously observed by the vigilant eye of the reader, are Sir Percy Percivale and Molly Tyson. Near the "Lord's Table" a brother is standing and praying; he intersperses his prayer with repeated "you know's," like the Cairene bore in Marryat's novel. 1ST AGED SISTER ("soto voce"). Yes! it's all so blessed and romantic, my dear, thank the Lord! They were both brought to Jesus on one night, Ascension Day, as the poor Pagan<<1>> bodies call it, through the ministration of Mr. Hogwash, {46B} the Baptist minister at Brixton ("Mr. Chesterton executes the cake-walk"), who they say is a good man, and very much blessed of the dear Lord, my dear, in his ministrations, though of course he has not been brought out of sect as yet.<<2>> <<1. By Plymouth Brethren all so-called Christian festivals are (rightly, of course, from a historical standpoint) considered mere aliases of pagan feasts. -- A. C.>> <<2. Godly for "become a Plymouth Brother." -- A. C.>> 2ND AGED SISTER ("sotto voce"). Dear! Dear! Very sad! Perhaps the dear Lord will open his eyes. ["The praying brother sits down suddenly, satisfied with himself." A HORNY-HANDED BROTHER ("who rises grunting, as if the action were painful or unfamiliar"). Matthew Twenth-fourth and Forty-third and he said unto them: Whither of the twins will ye that I deliver unto you, Brabbas, or Djeesas that is cawled Croist? Deer Brotheren ["But let him expound it to himself while we listen to the aged sisters!" 1ST AGED SISTER ("sotto voce"). So now they're come out of sect, a most marvellous example, my dear, of the wonderful workings of the Holy Ghost, don't you think so, my dear? and I hear they're to be received into fellowship next Lord's Day. 2ND AGED SISTER ("do".). The young people are interested in one another,<<1>> are they not? <<1. Godly for "are in love with one another." -- A. C.>> 1ST AGED SISTER ("do."). Yes! it's all very dear and blessed. But hush! how beautifully Mr. Worcester is expounding about Barabbas! {47B} MR. G. K. CHESTERTON ("altogether inaudibly"). This scene is all description and no drama, and ought to satisfy Mr. Bernard Shaw's idea of a dramatic scene. ["The beautiful woman gets up and goes. The poet hastily follows her out." SCENE XIV. TEN MONTHS LATER. SIR PERCY DE PERCIVALE'S "Ancestral Hall." SIR HERPES ZOSTER, M.D. SIR GRABSON JABBS, Q.C. SIR HERPES Z. Yes, indeed, a most fortunate event. The children weigh 46 lbs. between the three of them. All boys! SIR GRABSON J. Good! Good! No chance of heirs failing -- ha! But a word in your ear. This morphia? SIR HERPES Z. Not a sign of relapse, old friend, and never will be now. Sir Percy is as sound a man as lives in England -- I took four other opinions. SIR GRABSON J. None as weighty as your own. SIR HERPES Z. You are polite, very polite. Where is Carruthers? {47B} SIR GRABSON J. He is away to Windsor -- the King ("they beat their foreheads eighty-seven times upon the ground") knights him to-day. SIR HERPES Z. I knew he had the O.M. and the F.Z.S.; but this knightnood? SIR GRABSON J. He has taken up political economy. He will marry a duchess. Greumoch, too, is doing well. After the -- ah -- event we all deplored so, he entered the Benedictines at Fort Augustus; and to-morrow they instal him as Lord Abbot. SIR HERPES Z. What? And he a Highlander? SIR GRABSON J. It seems that was a mere disguise; his true name was Johann Schmidt.<> SIR HERPES Z. So? Why the deception? SIR GRABSON J. A Jesuit, no doubt! But about Lady Percivale now? SIR HERPES Z. Better and better. Old Farmer Tyson, luckily enough, as it turned out, insisted on examination, and no less than twenty-three skilled surgeons -- all men of note! -- declared her to be "virgo intacta." SIR GRABSON J. Eh? What? SIR HERPES Z. You see, Englishmen -- ah! SIR GRABSON J. Er -- ah? {48A} SIR HERPES Z. Ah! SIR GRABSON J. Er -- ah! As Whistler said, "You put out your arm, and you hit three"<<1>> -- eh? <<1. Certain of our little-instructed surgical readers have expressed themselves dissatisfied with the explanation given by Sir G. Jobbs. They argue that it requires to be amplified, since the Marquis of Glenstrae must have had normal habits, otherwise so pure a poet as Crowley would never have introduced him. This is true; but Sir R. Burton has pointed out that the outcry against Greek Art comes chiefly from those who are personally incapable of it. Englishmen and Virgins are then like Alpine guides and mountains; some can't go, and the rest lose the way. Hence Mr. Kensit. "Further Note." -- the silly cavillers now observe that this is no solution of the difficulty, Sir P. Percivale being English. This is absurd: (1) Lady Percivale is just as likely to have remained "virgo intacta" as any other mother. (2) The English law, cognisant of the dilemma set forth above, permits the use of a poker in the relations of man and wife. (3) If God's Grace can break a habit, it can surely rupture a hymen. -- AUTHOR.>> SIR HERPES Z. Probably. At least the anatomical detail is certain. Here is a ph-- SIR GRABSON J. Tush, tush, old friend, I can take your word for it. SIR HERPES Z. You have some good news to announce, I think, as well as I. SIR GRABSON J. Sad for the general commonwealth, but of particular joy in this house. The Marquis of Glenstrae had the misfortune yesterday to fall against a circular saw in motion. SIR HERPES Z. Dear, dear! and how was that? SIR GRABSON J. His lordship was very fond of children, as you may know. It seems he was pursuing {48B} -- it is, I am told, an innocent child's game! -- one of the factory hands; and -- he stumbled. He was sawn slowly into no less than thirty-eight pieces. SIR HERPES Z. But how does this bear on the case? SIR GRABSON J. Dying without issue, he has left all to Sir Percy here; the King ("cheers from large but unseen body of retainers, who have been eavesdropping"), moreover, unwilling that the Marquisate should die out, will bestow it on the same lucky young fellow. SIR HERPES Z. This is marvellous news! SIR GRABSON J. Again, Lady Baird has just perished in awful agony. Having suffered for twenty years from a hideous and incurable disease, she brought matters to a climax last night by falling into a barrel of boiling sulphuric acid. SIR HERPES Z. How so? SIR GRABSON J. It was her bath-night. SIR HERPES Z. An! enamel! But why did it hurt her? SIR GRABSON J. ("Impressively.") It is the finger of God! "The poet concludes." Now I have written four-and-twenty hours Without a decent rest by Kandy Lake. {49A} I invoke the urgent elemental powers To bring all to an end for Buddha's sake. I must bid all ye matrons fond farewell, Knowing your inmost thoughts; that, had ye dared, Ye would be just as far "en route" for hell As Angela, the gentle Lady Baird; And all ye youths, aware that Percy's fall Is something to be envied of ye all; And all ye parsons, seeing that ye pray Your Father for the Luck of Lord Glenstrae. Enough of this! Insistent Fates Bid me return to rhyming 8s. I say what I have seen ill done In honest clean-lived Albion; And if these things the green tree grows, What price the dry, my lords? Who knows? You say that I exaggerate; That "we are not as bad as that." (Excuse the doubtful tag of verse!) "Au contraire," you are vastly worse. I see the virtuous and the vicious, The "sans reproche" and the suspicious, All tarred with the same nasty tar, Because -- I see you as you are. Permit me to reduce the list Of optimist and pessimist By just my name! I am neither, friends. I know a stick has got two ends! Nothing were easier than to show That Lady Baird avoided woe; And Lord Glenstrae, that worthy peer, Saved whisky by supplying beer. For what is good, and makes for peace, What evil, wisdom must increase Well near omniscience before One guesses what it all is for. Still, since "de gustibus not est" -- (My schoolboy readers know the rest!) I much prefer -- that is, mere I -- Solitude to Society. And that is why I sit and spoil So much clean paper with such toil By Kandy Lake in far Ceylon. I have my old pyjamas on: {49B} I shake my soles from Britain's dust: I shall not go there till I must; And when I must -- ah, you suppose Even I must! -- I hold my nose. Farewell, you filthy-minded people! I know a stable from a steeple. Farewell, my decent-minded friends! I know arc lights from candle-ends. {50A} Farewell! A poet begs your aims, Will walk awhile among the palms. An honest love, a loyal kiss, Can show him better worlds than this; Nor will he come again to yours While he knows champak-stars<<1>> from sewers. <<1. The champak, one of the most beautiful of tropical flowers, has a star-shaped blossom.>> {full page below} {50B} ROSA MUNDI AND OTHER LOVE-SONGS 1905 I {columns resume} 1. ROSE of the World! Red glory of the secret heart of Love! Red flame, rose-red, most subtly curled Into its own infinite flower, all flowers above! Its flower in its own perfumed passion, Its faint sweet passion, folded and furled In flower fashion; And my deep spirit taking its pure part Of that voluptuous heart Of hidden happiness! 2. Arise, strong bow of the young child Eros! (While the maddening moonlight, the memoried caress Stolen of the scented rose Stirs me and bids each racing pulse ache, ache!) Bend into an agony of art Whose cry is ever rapture, and whose tears For their own purity's undivided sake Are molten dew, as, on the lotus leaves Sliver-coiled in the Sun Into green girdled spheres Purer than all a maiden's dream enweaves, Lies the unutterable beauty of The Waters. Yea, arise, divinest dove Of the Idalian, on your crimson wings And soft grey plumes, bear me to yon cool shrine Of that most softly-spoken one, Mine Aphrodite! Touch the imperfect strings, Oh thou, immortal, throned above the moon! Inspire a holy tune Lighter and lovelier than flowers and wine Offered in gracious gardens unto Pan By any soul of man! {51A} 3. In vain the solemn stars pour their pale dews Upon my trembling spirit; their caress Leaves me moon-rapt in waves of loveliness All thine, O rose, O wrought of many a muse In Music, O thou strength of ecstasy Incarnate in a woman-form, create Of her own rapture, infinite, ultimate, Not to be seen, not grasped, not even imaginable, But known of one, by virtue of that spell Of thy sweet will toward him: thou, unknown, Untouched, grave mistress of the sunlight throne Of thine own nature; known not even of me, But of some spark of woven eternity Immortal in this bosom. Phosphor paled And in the grey upstarted the dread veiled Rose light of dawn. Sun-shapen shone thy spears Of love forth darting into myriad spheres, Which I the poet called this light, that flower, This knowledge, that illumination, power This and love that, in vain, in vain, until Thy beauty dawned, all beauty to distil Into one drop of utmost dew, one name Choral as floral, one thin, subtle flame Fitted to a shaft of love, to pierce, to endue My trance-rapt spirit with the avenue Of perfect pleasures, radiating far Up and up yet to where thy sacred star Burned in its brilliance: thence the storm was shed A passion of great calm about this head, This head no more a poet's; since the dream Of beauty gathered close into a stream {51B} Of tingling light, and, gathering ever force From thine own love, its unextended source, Became the magic utterance that makes Me, Dissolving self into the starless sea That makes one lake of molten joy, one pond Steady as light and hard as diamond; One drop, one atom of constraint intense, Of elemental passion scorning sense, All the concentred music that is I. O! hear me not! I die; I am borne away in misery of dumb life That would in words flash forth the holiest heaven That to the immortal God of Gods is given, And, tongue-tied, stammers forth -- my wife! 4. I am dumb with rapture of thy loveliness. All metres match and mingle; all words tire; All lights, all sounds, all perfumes, all gold stress Of the honey-palate, all soft strokes expire In abject agony of broken sense To hymn the emotion tense Of somewhat higher -- O! how highest! -- than all Their mystery: fall, O fall, Ye unavailing eagle-flights of song! O wife! these do thee wrong. 5. Thou knowest how I was blind; How for mere minutes thy pure presence Was nought; was ill-defined; A smudge across the mind, Drivelling in its brutal essence, Hog-wallowing in poetry, Incapable of thee. 6. Ah! when the minutes grew to hours, And yet the beast, the fool, saw flowers And loved them, watched the moon rise, took delight In perfumes of the summer night, Caught in the glamour of the sun, Thought all the woe well won. How hours were days, and all the misery Abode, all mine: O thou! didst thou regret? Wast thou asleep as I? Didst thou not love me yet? {52A} For, know! the moon is not the moon until She hath the knowledge to fulfil Her music, till she know herself the moon. So thou, so I! The stone unhewn, Foursquare, the sphere, of human hands immune, Was not yet chosen for the corner-piece And key-stone of the Royal Arch of Sex; Unsolved the ultimate "x"; The virginal breeding breeze Was yet of either unstirred; Unspoken the Great Word. 7. Then on a sudden, we knew. From deep to deep Reverberating, lightning unto lightning Across the sundering brightening Abyss of sorrow's sleep, There shone the sword of love, and stuck, and clove The intolerable veil, The woven chain of mail Prudence self-called, and folly known to who May know. Then, O sweet drop of dew, Thy limpid light rolled over and was lost In mine, and mine in thine. Peace, ye who praise! ye but disturb the shrine! This voice is evil over against the peace Here in the West, the holiest. Shaken and crossed The threads Lachesis wove fell from her hands. The pale divided strands Where taken by thy master-hand, Eros! Her evil thinkings cease, Thy miracles begin. Eros! Eros! -- Be silent! It is sin Thus to invoke the oracles of orde. Their iron gates to unclose. The gross, inhospitable warder Of Love's green garden of spice is well awake. Hell hath enough of Her three-headed hound; But Love's severer bound Knows for His watcher a more feaful shape, A formidable ape {52B} Skilled by black art to mock the Gods profound In their abyss of under ground. Beware! Who hath entered hath no boast to make, And conscious Eden surelier breeds the snake. Be silent! O! for silence' sake! 8. That asks the impossible. Smite! Smite! Profaned adytum of pure light. Smite! but I must sing on. Nay! can the orison Of myriad fools provoke the Crowned-with-Night Hidden beyond sound and sight In the mystery of his own high essence? Lo, Rose of all the gardens of the world, Did thy most sacred presence Not fill the Real, then this voice were whirled Away in the wind of its own folly, thrown Into forgotten places and unknown. So I sing on! Sister and wife, dear wife, Light of my love and lady of my life, Answer if thou canst from the unsullied place, Unveiling for one star-wink thy bright face! Did we leave then, once cognisant, Time for some Fear to implant His poison? Did we hesitate? Leave but one little chance to Fate? For one swift second did we wait? There is no need to answer: God is God, A jealous God and evil; with His rod He smiteth fair and foul, and with His sword Divideth tiniest atoms of intangible time, That men may know he is the Lord. Then, with that sharp division, Did He divide our wit sublime? Our knowledge bring to nought? We had no need of thought. We brought His malice in derision. So thine eternal petals shall enclose Me, O most wonderful lady of delight, Immaculate, indivisible circle of night, Inviolate, invulnerable Rose! {53A} 9. The sound of my own voice carries me on. I am as a ship whose anchors are all gone. Whose rudder is held by Love the indomitable -- Purposeful helmsman! Were his port high Hell, Who should be fool enough to care? Suppose Hell's waters wash the memory of this rose Out of my mind, what misery matters then? Or, if they leave it, all the woes of men Are as pale shadows in the glory of That passionate splendour of Love. 10. Ay! my own voice, my own thoughts. These, then, must be The mutiny of some worm's misery, Some chained despair knotted into my flesh, Some chance companion, some soul damned afresh Since my redemption, that is vocal at all, For I am wrapt away from light and call In the sweet heart of the red rose. My spirit only knows This woman and no more; who would know more? I, I am concentrate In the unshakable state Of constant rapture. Who should pour His ravings in the air for winds to whirl, Far from the central pearl Of all the diadem of the universe? Let God take pen, rehearse Dull nursery tales; then, not before, O rose, Red rose! shall the beloved of thee, Infinite rose! pen puerile poetry That turns in writing to vile prose. 11. Were this the quintessential plume of Keats And Shelley and Swinburne and Verlaine, Could I outsoar them, all their lyric feats, Excel their utterance vain With one convincing rapture, beat them hollow As an ass's skin; wert thou, Apollo, Mere slave to me, not Lord -- thy fieriest flight And stateliest shaft of light {53B} Thyself thyself surpassing: all were dull, And thou, O rose, sole, sacred, wonderful, Single in love and aim, Double in form and name, Triple in energy of radiant flame, Informing all, in all most beautiful, Circle and sphere, perfect in every part, High above hope of Art: Though, be it said! thou art nowhere now, Save in the secret chamber of my heart. Behind the brass of my anonymous brow.<<1>> <<1. This poem was issued under the pseudonym of H. D. Carr.>> 12. Ay! let the coward and slave who writes write on! He is no more harm to Love than the grey snake Who lurks in the dusk brake For the bare-legged village-boy, is to the Sun, The Sire of Life. The Lover and the Wife, Immune, intact, ignore. The people hear; Then, be the people smitten of grey Fear, It is no odds! 13. I have seen the eternal Gods Sit, star-wed, in old Egypt by the Nile; The same calm pose, the inscrutable, wan smile, On every lip alike. Time hath not had his will to strike At them; they abide, they pass through all. Though their most ancient names may fall, They stir not nor are weary of Life, for with them, even as with us, Life is but Love. They know, we know; let, then, the writing go! That, in the very deed, we do not know. 14. It may be in the centuries of our life Since we were man and wife There stirs some incarnation of that love. Some rosebud in the garden of spices blows, Some offshoot from the Rose Of the World, the Rose of all Delight, The Rose of Dew, the Rose of Love and Night, The Rose of Silence, covering as with a vesture The solemn unity of things {54A} Beheld in the mirror of truth, The Rose indifferent to God's gesture, The Rose on moonlight wings That flies to the House of Fire, The Rose of Honey-in-Youth! Ah! No dim mystery of desire Fathoms this gulf! No light invades The mystical musical shades "Of a faith in the future, a dream of the day" "When athwart the dim glades" "Of the forest a ray" "Of sunlight shall flash and the dew die away!" 15. Let there then be obscurity in this! There is an after rapture in the kiss. The fire, flesh, perfume, music, that outpaced All time, fly off; they are subtle: there abides A secret and most maiden taste; Salt, as of the invisible tides Of the molten sea of gold Men may at times behold In the rayless scarab of the sinking sun; And out of that is won Hardly, with labour and pain that are as pleasure, The first flower of the garden the stored treasure That lies at the heart's heart of eternity. This treasure is for thee. 16. O! but shall hope arise in happiness? That may not be. My love is like a golden grape, the veins Peep through the ecstasy Of the essence of ivory and silk, Pearl, moonlight, mother-milk That is her skin; Its swift caress Flits like an angel's kiss in a dream; remains The healing virtue; from all sin, All ill, one touch sets free. My love is like a star -- oh fool! oh fool! Is not thy back yet tender from the rod? Is there no learning in the poet's school? Wilt thou achieve what were too hard for God? I call Him to the battle; ask of me When the hinds calve? What of eternity {54B} When he built chaos? Shall Leviathan Be drawn out with a hook? Enough; I see This I can answer -- or Ernst Haeckel can! Now, God Almighty, rede this mystery! What of the love that is the heart of man? Take stars and airs, and write it down! Fill all the interstices of space With myriad verse -- own Thy disgrace! Diminish Thy renown! Approve my riddle! This Thou canst not do. 17. O living Rose! O dowered with subtle dew Of love, the tiny eternities of time, Caught between flying seconds, are well filled With these futilities of fragrant rhyme: In Love's retort distilled, In sunrays of fierce loathing purified, In moonrays of pure longing tried, And gathered after many moons of labour Into the compass of a single day, And wrought into continuous tune,<<1>> One laughter with one langour for its neightbour. One thought of winter with one word of June, Muddled and mixed in mere dismay, Chiselled with the cunning chisel of despair, Found wanting, well aware Of its own fault, even insistent Thereon: some fragrance rare Stolen from my lady's hair Perchance redeeming now and then the distant Fugitive tunes. <<1. It will be noticed in fact that this poem is in an original metre, no stanza being complete in itself, but one running on into the next.>> 18. Ah! Love! the hour is over! The moon is up, the vigil overpast. Call me to thee at last, O Rose, O perfect miracle lover, Call me! I hear thee though it be across The abyss of the whole universe, Though not a sign escape, delicious loss! Though hardly a wish rehearse The imperfection underlying ever The perfect happiness. {55A} Thou knowest that not in flesh Lies the fair fresh Delight of Love; not in mere lips and eyes The secret of these bridal ecstasies, Since thou art everywhere, Rose of the World, Rose of the Uttermost Abode of glory, Rose of the High Host Of heaven, mystic, rapturous Rose! The extreme passion glows Deep in this breast; thou knowest (and love knows) How every word awakes its own reward In a thought akin to thee, a shadow of thee; And every tune evokes its musical Lord; And every rhyme tingles and shakes in me The filaments of the great web of Love. 19. O Rose all roses far above In the garden of God's roses, Sorrowless, thornless, passionate Rose, that lies Full in the flood of its own sympathies And makes my life one tune that curls and closes On its own self delight; A circle, never a line! Safe from all wind, Secure in its own pleasure-house confined, Mistress of all its moods, Matchless, serene, in sacred amplitudes Of its own royal rapture, deaf and blind To aught but its own mastery of song And light, shown ever as silence and deep night Secret as death and final. Let me long Never again for aught! This great delight Involves me, weaves me in its pattern of bliss, Seals me with its own kiss, Draws me to thee with every dream that glows, Poet, each word! Maiden, each burden of snows Extending beyond sunset, beyond dawn! O Rose, inviolate, utterly withdrawn In the truth: -- for this is truth: Love knows! Ah! Rose of the World! Rose! Rose! {55B} II. THE NIGHTMARE. Up, up, my bride! Away to ride Upon the nightmare's wings! The livid lightning's wine we'll drink, And laugh for joy of life, and think Unutterable things! The gallant caught the lady fair Below the arms that lay Curling in coils of yellow hair, And kissed her lips. "Away!" The lover caught his mistress up And lifted her to heaven, Drank from her lips as from the cup Of poppies drowsed at even. "Away, away, my lady may! The wind is fair and free; Away, away, the glint of day Is faded from the ghostly grey That shines beyond the sea." The lordly bridegroom took the bride As giants grasp a flower. "A night of nights, my queen, to ride Beyond the midnight hour." The bride still slept; the lonely tide Of sleep was on the tower. "Awake, awake! for true love's sake! The blood is pulsing faster. My swift veins burn with keen desire Toward those ebony wings of fire, The monarchs of disaster!" The golden bride awoke and sighed And looked upon her master. The bride was clad in spider-silk; The lord was spurred and shod. Her breasts gleamed bright and white as milk. Most like the mother of God; His heart was shrouded, his face was clouded, Earth trembled where he trod. {56A} "By thy raven tresses; by those caresses We changed these five hours past; By the full red lips and the broad white brow I charge thee stay; I am weary now; I would sleep again -- at last." "By thy golden hair; by the laugher rare Of love's kiss conquering, By the lips full red and the ivory bed I charge thee come, I am fain instead Of the nightmare's lordly wing!" The bride was sad and spoke no more. The tower erect and blind Rocked with the storm that smote it sore, The thunder of the wind. Swift to their feet the nightmare<<1>> drew And shook its gorgeous mane. "Who rideth me shall never see His other life again. <<1. Night-mare has of course nothing to do with the horse, etymologically. Mare is from A.S. "mara," an incubus. -- A. C.>> "Who rideth me shall laugh and love In other ways than these." "Mount, mount!" the gallant cried, "enough Of earthly ecstasies!" The pale bride caught his colour then: The pale bride laughed aloud, Fronting red madness in her den: "The bride-robe be my shroud! "The bride-robe gave me light and clean To kisses' nuptial gold. Now for a draught of madness keen! The other lips are cold." They mount the tameless thundering side; They sweep toward the lea; The mare is wild; they spur, they ride, Mad master and hysteric bride, Along the lone grey sea. The pebbles flash, the waters shrink! (So fearful are those wings!) The lightning stoops to let them drink. They see each other's eyes, and think Unutterable things. {56B} And now the sea is loose and loud; Tremendous the typhoon Sweeps from the westward as a shroud, Wrapping some great god in a cloud, Abolishing the moon. And faster flying and faster still They gallop fast and faster. "Turn, turn thy rein!" she shrieked again, "'Tis edged with sore disaster." He looked her through with sight and will: -- The pale bride knew her master. And now the skies are black as ink, The nightmare shoreward springs; The lightning stoops to let them drink. They hold each other close, and think Unutterable things. The roar of earthquake stuns the ear; The powers volcanic rise, Casting the lava red and sheer A million miles in ether clear Beyond the labouring skies. Ghastlier faces bend around And gristlier fears above. They see no sight: they hear no sound; But look toward the hill profound End and abyss of love. The water and the skies are fallen Far beyond sight of them. All earth and fire grasp and expire: The night hath lost her starry host, Shattered her diadem. Eternity uplifts its brink To bar the wizard wings. The lightning stoops to let them drink. They silently espouse, and think Unutterable things. The nightmare neighs! The untravelled ways Are past on fervid feet. The limits of the limitless Flash by like jewels on a dress, Or dewdrops fallen in wheat. {57A} "O love! O husband! Did you guess I did not wish to go? And now -- what rapture can express This? -- do you feel and know?" The girl's arms close in a caress; Her lips are warm aglow; She looks upon his loveliness: -- The night has frozen the old stress; His mouth is cold as snow! But closer to the corpse she links, And closer, closer clings. Her kiss like lightning drops and drinks. She burns upon his breast, and thinks Unutterable things. Now half a moment stayed the steed; And then she thought he sighed; -- And then flashed forward thrice the old speed: -- And then she knew he had died. But close to him clings she yet, And feeds his corpse with fire, As if death were not to forget And to annul desire. And therefore as the utter space Sped past by hour and hour, She feeds her face upon his face Like a bird upon a flower. "Awake, awake! for love's own sake! I grow so faint and cold; I charge thee by the bridal bed, The violet veins, and the lips full red, And the hours of woven gold!" And colder now the bride's lips grow And colder yet colder, Until she lies as cold as snow, Her head against his shoulder. The nightmare never checked its pace. The lovely pair are gone Together through the walls of space Into oblivion. {57B} III. THE KISS I BEHOLD in a mist of hair involving Subtle shadows and shapes of ivory beauty. Gray blue eyes from the sphered opal eyelids Look me through and make me a deep contentment Slow dissolving desire. We sit so silent Death might sweep over sleep with flowers of cypress (Gathered myriad blossoms, Proserpina's), Stir us not, nor a whisper steal through love-trance. Still we sit; and your head lies calm and splendid Shadowed, curve of an arm about it whispering. Still your bosom respires its sighs of silver; Still one hand o' me quivers close, caresses. Touches not. O a breath of sudden sadness Hides your face as a mist grows up a mountain! Mist is over my eyes, and darkness gathers Deep on violet inset deep of eyepits. Neither holds in the sight the lovely vision. Slow the mist is dissolved in the wintry sunlight On the fells, and the heather wakes to laughter: -- So sight glimmers across the gulf of sorrow. You the lily and I the rose redouble, Bend, soft swayed by a slow spontaneous music, Bend to kiss, are alight, one lamp of moon-rays Caught, held hard in a crysal second. Swiftly Touch, just touch, the appealing floral sisters, Brush no bloom off the blossom, lift no lip-gleam Off the purple and rose, caressing cressets, Flames of flickering love. They draw asunder. Thus, and motionless thus, for ages. Hither! {58A} IV. ANNIE ANEMONES grow in the wood by the stream; And the song of the spring in our garden Wakes life to the shape of an exquisite dream; And reason of passion asks pardon. I made up a posy by moonlight, a rose, And a violet white from its cranny, And a bluebell, and stole, on the tips of my toes, At the dark of the night to my Annie. Her window was open; she slept like a child; So I laid the three flowers on her breast, And stole back alone through the forest deep-aisled, To dream of the lass I loved best. And the next night I lay half awake on my bed, When -- a foot-fall as soft as the breeze! Oh! never a word nor a whisper she said To distrub the low song of the trees. But she crept to my side. Awhile we lay close: Then: "Have pardon and pity for me!" She whispered -- "your bluebell and violet and rose I can give but one flower for three." V. BRUNNHILDE.<<1>> <<1. See Wagner, from whose "Ring of the Nibelungs" the symbolism of this poem is taken.>> THE sword that was broken is perfect: the hero is here Be done with the dwarfs and be done with the spirit of fear! Hark! the white note of a bird; and the path is declared; The sword is girt on, and the dragon is summoned and dared. {58B} Be down with the dragons! Awaits for the lord of the sword On the crest of a mountain the maid, the availing award. The spear of the Wanderer shivers, the God is exhaust. Be done with the Gods! the key of Valhalla is lost. The fires that Loki the liar built up of deceit Are the roses that cushion the moss for the warrior's feet. Be done with the paltry defences! She sleeps. O be done With he mists of the mountain! Awake to the light of the sun! Awake! Let the wave of emotions conflicting retire, Let fear and despair be engulfed in delight and desire. There is one thing of all that remains: that the sword may not bite: It is love that is true as itself; and their scion, delight. True flower of the flame of love: true bloom of the ray of the sword! The lady is lost if she wit not the name of her lord. Awaken and hither, O warrior maiden! Above. The Man is awaiting. Be done with the lies! It is love. VI. DORA. DORA steals across the floor Tiptoe; Opens then her rosy door, Peeps out. "Nobody! And where shall I Skip to?" Dora, diving daintily, Creeps out. {59A} "To the woodland! Shall I find Crowtoe, Violet, jessamine! I'll bind Garlands Fancy I'm a princess. Where Go to? Persia, China, Finistere? Far lands!" Pity Dora! Only one Daisy Did she find. The sulking sun Slept still. Dora stamped her foot. Aurora Lazy Stirred not. Hush! A footstep. Dora Kept still. What a dreadful monster! Shoot! Mercy! ('Twas a man.) Suppose the brute Are her? By-and-by the ruffian grows "Percy." And she loves him now she knows Better. VII. FATIMA.<<1>> <<1. Written in collaboration with S. M.>> FRAUGHT with the glory of a dead despair, My purple eidola, my purple eidola March, dance -- through hyacinthine spheres Moaning: they sweep along, attain, aware How frail is Fatima. They bathe the Gods with stinging tears. They weave another thread within the mystic veil. They are drawn up anon in some great hand. They shudder and murmur in the web of Kama. They hear no music in the white word Rama. They rush, colossi, liquid swords of life Strident with spurious desire and strife. Mocked! I am dumb: I await the gray command: I wait for Her: {59B} Inscrutable darkness through the storm Loomed out, with broidered features of gold: its form Wing-like lay on the firmaments, River-like curves in all its movements Swift from inertia of vast voids rolled, stirred Gigantic for roar of strepitation: whirred The essential All That was Her veil: her voice I had heard Had not large sobbing fears surged; will and word Fall Down from the black pearls of the night, down, back To night's imperled black; Down, from chryselephantine wall And rose-revolving ball. Doomed, fierce through Saturn's aeons to tear, Fraught with the glory of a dead despair. VIII. FLAVIA. I KISSED the face of Flavia fair, In the deep wet dews of dawn, And the ruddy weight of my lover's hair Fell over me and held me there On the broad Italian lawn. And the bright Italian moon arose And cleft the cypress grove; For sadness in all beauty grows, And sorrow from its master knows How to appear like love. Alas! that Falvia's gentle kiss, And Flavia's cool caress, And Flavia's flower of utter bliss Must fade, must cease, must fall and miss The height of happiness. The moon must set, the sun must rise, The wind of dawn is chill. Oh, in this world of miseries Is one hour's pleasure ill to prize? Is love the means of ill? {60A} Oh, if there were a God to hear! Or Christ had really given His life! Or did a Dove appear Bearing a rosebud, we might fear Or hope for hell or heaven. Alas! no sign is given. But short Bliss of the earth is ours; The kiss that stops the avenging thought; The furtive passion shrewdly caught Between the summer flowers. So, Flavia, till the dawn awake Cling close, cling close, as this is! While moonlight lingers on the lake, Our present happiness we'll take And fill the night with kisses! IX. KATIE CARR. 'TWAS dark when church was out! the moon Was low on Rossett Ghyll;<<1>> The organ's melancholy tune Grew subtle, far, and still. <<1. A pass in Cumberland.>> All drest in black, her white, white throat Like moonlight gleamed; she moved Along the road, towards the farm, Too happy to be loved. "O Katie Carr! how sweet you are!" She only hurried faster: She found an arm about her waist: A maiden knows her master. Through grass and heather we walked together; So hard her heart still beat She thought she saw a ghost, and fast Flickered the tiny feet. "O Katie Carr, there's one stile more! For your sweet love I'm dying. There's no one near; there's nought to fear." The lassie burst out crying. {60B} "From Wastdale Head to Kirkstone Pass There's ne'er a lass like Kate:" -- The gentle child looked up and smiled And kissed me frank and straight. The night was dark, the stars were few: -- Should love need moon or star? Let him decide who wins a bride The peer of Katie Carr. X. NORAH. NORAH, my wee shy child of wonderment, You are sweeter than a swallow-song at dusk! You are braver than a lark that soars and trills His lofty laughter of love to a hundred hills! You lie like a sweet nut within the husk Of my big arms; and uttermost content I have of you, my tiny fairy, eh? Do you live in a flower, I wonder, and sleep and pray To the good God to send you dew at dawn And rain in rain's soft season, and sun betimes, And all the gladness of the afterglow When you come shyly out of the folded bud, Unsheath your dainty soul, bathe it in blood Of my heart? Do you love me? Do you know How I love you? Do you love these twittering rhymes I string you? Is your tiny life withdrawn Into its cup for modesty when I sing So softly to you and hold you in my hands, You wild, wee wonder of wisdom? Now I bring My lips to your body an touch you reverently, Knowing as I know what Gabriel understands When he spreads his wings above for canopy {61A} When you would sleep, you frail angelic thing Like a tiny snowdrop in its own life curled -- But oh! the biggest heart in all the world! XI. MARY. MARY, Mary, subtle and softly breathing, Look once eager out of the eyes upon me, Draw one sigh, resign and abide in maiden Beauty for ever! Love me, love me, love me as I desire it, Strong sweet draughts not drawn of a well of passion, Truth's bright crystal, shimmering out of sunlight Into the moon-dawn. Closer cling, thou heart of amazed rapture, Cords of starlight fashioned about thee net-wise, Tendrils woven of gossamer twist about us! These be the binders! Night winds whirl about the avenger city; Darkness rides on desolate miles of moor-land; Thou and I, desparted a little, part not Spirit from spirit. Strange and sister songs in the middle ether Grow, divide; they hover about, above us. We, the song consummate of love, give music Back to the mortal. Here, my love, a garden of spice and myrtle; Sunlight shakes the rivers of love with laughter; Here, my love, abide, in the amber ages, Lapped in the levin. Linger, linger, light of the blessed moonrise! Full-orbed sweep immaculate through the midnight! Bend above, O sorrowful sister, kiss me Once and for ever! {61B} Let the lake of thought be as still as darkmans<<1>> Brooding over magian pools of madness! Love, the sun, arise and abide above us, Mary Mavourneen. <<1. Night -- an old English canting word.>> XII. XANTIPPE. SWEET, do you scold? I had rather have you scold Than from another earn a million kisses. The tiger rapture on on your skin's Greek gold Is worth a million smiles of sunken cold And Arctic archangelic passion rolled From any other woman. Heaven misses The half of God's delight who doth not see Some lightning anger dart like love and strike Into the sacred heart its iterant glee Of scathing tortures worth Hell's agony To melt -- ah, sweet, I know! in foam and free Lustre of love redoubled. Come to me! I will avenge the anger, like to like With gentle fires of smitten love, will burn Into your beauty with the athletic rush Of conquering godhead; and you cheek shall burn From red of wrath to shame's adorable blush, And so in tears and raptures mix the cup Of dreadful wine we are wont to drain and -- well! -- Needs but one glance to lift the liquor up, One angry grip to wake me, and to swell The anguish into rapture -- come, to sup The liquid lava of the lake of Hell! XIII. EILEEN. THE frosty fingers of the wind; the eyes Of the melancholy wind: the voice serene Of the love-moved wind: the exulting secrecies Of the subtle wind: lament, O harmonies Of the most musical wind! Eileen! {62A} The peace of the nameless loch: the waiting heart Of the amorous loch: the lights unquessed, unseen, Of the midnight loch; the winter's sorrow apart Of the ice-bound loch: O majesty of art Of the most motionless loch! Eileen! The gleam of the hills: the stature of the hills Facing the wind and the loch: the cold and clean Sculpture of the stalwart hills; the iron wills Of the inscrutable hills! O strength that stills The cry of the angonised hills! Eileen! Come back, O thought, alike from burn and ben And sacred loch and rapture strong and keen Of the wind of the moor. A race of little men Lives with the little. The exalted ken Knows the synthetic soul. Eileen! Close in the silence cling the patient eyes Of love: the soul accepts her time of teen, Awaits the answer. Midnight droops and dies, A floral hour; what dawn of love shall rise On a world of sorrow? Peace! Eileen! Mazed in a Titan world of rock and snow? Horsed among the bearded Bedwain? Drowsed on a tropic river in the glow Of sunset? Whither? Who shall care or know, When one and all are this? Eileen! XIV. THE night is void of stars: the moon is full, Veiling their radiance with her beautiful Mist of still light. O slumbrous air! Wings of the winter, droop to-night! Behold The mirror of shuddering silver in the gold Setting of loose involving hair! {62B} Closer and closer through the dusk of sense Avails the monotone omnipotence. Steady, in one crescent tune, Rises the virgin moon; And from the depth of eyes flooded with love Shines ecstasy thereof. Words pass and are not heard. The ear, awake Only for its master's individual sake, Strains only for three whispered songs, Hears naught beside, interprets silence so, Till liquid melodies of music flow "I love you." We afford to wait; who longs That knows? And we know; for the moon is full. Steals in the ambient aura of delight That quivering ray intense and cool Self centred. Woven of a million lines There is a curve of light, A pure, ideal curve, single, that shines Amid the manifold night Of all the flowery dreams that build it up. So from the azure cup Of heaven inverted is the white wine poured. Stay, O thou vivid sword Of soul, and cease, and be not! Unto me Through all eternity Let me be not, and this thing be! XV. O THE deep wells and springs of tears! O the intenser rays of blue, Fleeting through gray unaltering spheres, Like skies beholden through the dew! O pearls of light! O sombre meres Wherein a waterwitch is hid, And chants of sunset rise unbid, Your eyes, your eyes! They read me through, Sphinx; and your soul, the Pyramid, Burns upward, and I worship you. {63A} 2. But had I moulded beauty's eyes I had not touched the carving tool Thus tenderly: my spirit dies Before you, but my life still lies Salient, unwounded, and to dule Wakes: I had rather you were now Medusa, of the awful brow, The snaky hair, the face of fear. So could I shout my eyes; feel how Your hair fell back on me and bit, Your lips descended on my face In one exenterate kiss: and wit I should abide a little space -- So little a space! -- and solemn rise, Face the black vaults of the alone, And, knowing, lift to you mine eyes, Look on your face, and turn to stone. XVI. THE schoolboy drudges through his Greek; Plods to the integral calculus; Makes sulphuretted hydrogen; And, if the poor dumb thing could speak, He'd say: Hic labor omnibus Prodest: vitae verae limen. Deinde missa juventute Ave! cum otio dignitas!<<1>> So I: and stove and did not shirk. <<1. This work is good for all men, the threshold of real life. Then, once youth is past, Hail! Ease and dignity.>> But now? Confront me life and duty: Toil is my daily hap, alas! And work is still the sire of work. Shall I repine? What joys are hid In weariness of idleness? Rich, young, beloved, shall I recede? Enjoy? Not I! I work unbid; Book follows book: ideas press Hurrying over the green mead {63B} Of mind: they roll, a rippling stream Hurrying, hurrying: hour by hour The brain throbs: shall I never rest? Ay! for a little: peace supreme Receives my head that lies a flower Borne on the mountain of thy breast. XVII. SPEAK, O my sister, O my spouse, speak, speak! Sigh not, but utter the intense award Of infinite love; arise, burn cheek by cheek! Dart, eyes of glory; live, O lambent sword O' the heart's gold rushing over mount and moor Of sunlit rapture! rise all runes above, Dissolve thyself into one molten lure, Invisible core of the visible flame of love; Heart of the sun of rapture, whirling ever; Strength of the sight of eagles, pierce the foam Of ecstasy's irremeable river, And race the rhythm of laughter to its home In the heart of the woman, and evoke the light Of love out of the fiery womb of night! XVIII. FRIENDSHIP. BETTER than bliss of floral kiss, Eternal rapture caught and held; Better than rapture's self is this To which we find ourselves compelled, The trick of self-analysis. Thoughts fetter not true love: we weld No bands by logic: on our lips The idle metaphysic quibble Laughs: what portends the late eclipse? What oracle of the solar sybil? {64A} Orion's signal banner dips: "This is the folly of your youth, Achieving the exalted aim; Because you have gained a higher truth To call it by a lower name." XIX. ROSE on the breast of the world of spring, I press my breast against thy bloom, My subtle life drawn out to thee: to thee its moods and meanings cling. I pass from change and thought to peace, woven on love's incredible loom, Rose on the breast of the world of spring! How shall the heart dissolved in joy take form and harmony and sing? How shall the ecstasy of light fall back to music's magic gloom? O China rose without a thorn, O honey-bee without a sting! The scent of all thy beauty burns upon the wind. The deep perfume Of our own love is hidden in our hearts, the invulnerable ring. No man shall know. I bear thee down unto the tomb, beyond the tomb, Rose on the breast of the world of spring! XX. LIE still, O love, and let there be delight! Lie on the soft banks of ambrosial air, The roseate marble of invisible space. Secure and silent, O caressing night, We are in thee; and thou art everywhere. Lie still, and read thy soul upon my face. Swayed slowly by the wind, made craftsmen of The mystery of happiness, we lie And rock us to and fro, and to and fro. Shrined in the temple of the world, O love, We wait self-worshipped through eternity, Until "to ignore" is equal to "to know." {64B} Lie still, O love, and let me hide my brows In the deep bosom and the scented vales. Thy deep drawn breath embrace my hair, resume My life in thine! Here is an amber house With gateways of old gold. Far nightingales Sing like smooth silence through the extreme perfume. Moving, flying, exulting, on we go, Borne on blue clouds of glory. On the river, Over the mountains of the night, above The stars of the night, above the floral glow Of the sun dawning now for us for ever Who rest content in the abode of love! Lie still, O love, and let the fragrant sleep Perfume our eyelids with dew-dropping death, And silence be the witness of the will. Fall, fall, fall back in the uprolling deep Wrapt in rose mist of unsuccessive breath Of love, of love. Lie still, O love, lie still. XXI. UNDER the stars the die was cast to win. The moonrays stained with pale embroidered bars The iridescent shimmer of your skin, Under the stars. Great angels drove their pearl-inwoven cars Through the night's racecourse: silence stood within The folded cups of passion's nenuphars. You were my own; sorrowless, without sin, That night -- this night. Sinks the red eye<<1>> of Mars; The hand of Hermes<<2>> guides us as we spin Under the stars. <<1 & 2. Tibetan astrologers give these symbols to the planets Mars and Mercury.>> XXII. DROOP the great eyelids purple-veined! Stand, pure and pale and tremulous! Dare to believe, O soul unstained, The truth unguessed and unexplained! The unquiet air monotonous Wreathes the sad head in whirring mist. Hath the delicate will disdained The delicate lips that would be kissed? Like far blue snows by sunrise caught Love lights the enlightened eyes of blue. Dare to believe the child-heart's thought, And wake in wonder! For I knew From the first hour that this was true. XXIII. PROTOPLASM. ALTHOUGH I cannot leave these bitter leas, And whisper wiser than the southern breeze, And mix my master music with the sea's; Although I shiver and you smile; heap coal And you stand laughing where the long waves roll; There is a sympathy of soul to soul. Not Scylla, not the iron Symplegades Shall bar that vessel, in delighted ease Winning her way by stainless sorceries. Though I be melancholy and thou fair, And I be dark and thou too high for care; Both yet may strive in serener air, Clasping the vast, the immeasurable knees; Searching the secrets of the calm decrees Of Hermes gray or gold Musagetes! Is there another? Unprofane, aware, See me secreted, silent, everywhere. And then consider! Dos thou dare to dare? The live sun leaps by invisible degrees; The blessed moon grows slowly through the trees; And fire has fire's ingressive agonies. {65B} I everywhere abide, and I control Olympian glories and the Pythian goal. What isle unfurls yonder life's glimmering scroll? This be thy shrine, and all its splendours these! Awake to dream! Two desolate nudities Woven through sculpture into ecstasies. XXIV. AUM! I unfold the tinted robe, My love's embroideries one by one, Unveil her glories, globe on globe, And find beneath the quivering probe A shaking skeleton. The smile of vermeil lips is past; The skull's black grin awhile remains; The fallen flesh desplays aghast Ribbed bars of bone: was Venus cast For this? What Mars attains? Where is the poesy that shed Its dewfall downward through her eys? Gaunt sockets stare from bony head. Moves she? Ah me! the living dead! The poet loves? He lies. Others perceive thee, peerless maid Broidered with beauty, starred and gemmed With purity and light, arrayed In wit -- like moonlight down a glade With flowers diademed. But I remember; see the form Serene sink slowly to the dust. 'Tis but a date: the eventful storm Comes: then or now? What odds? They swarm, The winds: this breath, one gust. Ah! in the spiritual soul Is there no essence to abide When flesh and bone alike shall roll From shape to shape, from goal to goal, On time, the envious tide? {66A} All tire, all break, all pass. Beware False thirst, false trust, false doubts of truth Whilst thou art young, whilst thou art fair, Awake and see the sepulchre For beauty yawn and youth. Strive to cessation. Only this I the true refuge: this alone Be implicit in our subtle kiss, Be master of the imperfect bliss We call perfection's throne. Then, if we strive, not all in vain This vision of the barred bones; This knowledge in a poet's brain, Daring to sing its own deep pain In shapeless semitones. Ah! if we strive, we attain. In sooth, The effort is of old begun, Or I had hardly seen the truth Beneath thy beauty and thy youth: -- A mouldering skeleton! XXV. I AM so sad and, being alone to-night, I will not see you. Self-disdain forbids. I wander through the icy hermitage Of the populous streets, hoping. O might Some idle God look through his drowsy lids And will us happiness! Serene and sage Therefore I sit, as if I loved you not, And train a practised pen, and strive to art; Accomplish art, and lose the art therein. I sit, a bitter Witenagemot,<<1>> The saint, the poet, the man: the lover's heart Pleads at the bar. How should he hope to win? The saint is silent while the poet strings These futile follies, gives for bread a stone, and the man endures. The lover breaks the lyre. Its death-cry, agony, O agony! rings One name. The love sits in hell alone Fondling the devil that men call desire. {66B} <<1. The ancient parliament of Britain.>> XXVI. WHEN the wearily falling blossom of midnight Stirs the face of a sleeper, Mother of Sorrow! Look thou down in he dawn of heavier dewfall. Tears of widow despair, O mutely lamenting Crouched in heavenly bowers over the carven Gateway's ivory flower, tears of revival Fall, oh fall, to the black abodes of the lonely. I await, I await, I sing not for sorrow, Train the fugitive lights of music across me, Seek by force to avail me, vainly attempting Song with feather detested, agony futile: Ply these piteous exercises of cunning, Hateful -- ay! to myself! To me it were better Only to woo in the silence, magical silence, Silence eloquent, wert thou here or afar, love. Woo thee, nay! but abide in certain recession; Stilled to the splendid currents fervid of passion; Float to seas of an unassailable silence Down the river of love. The words are awakened: Let the soul be asleep. The dawn is upon us. XXVII.<<1>> <<1. An acrostic.>> ECSTASY, break through poetry's beautiful barriers, Intricate webs, labyrinthine mazes of music! Leap, love, lightning's self, and, athwart the appalling Evil clouds of an agony bound by existence, Enter, avail me, exult! In the masses of matter Nothing avails; in the splendour spirit is, nothing. Give me love; I am weary of giants colossal, Royal, impossible things; I am fain of a bosom Always breathing sleep, and the symphony, silence. Years are forgotten; abide, deep love, I am happy. {67A} XXVIII. COULD ivory blush with a stain of the sunset on highlands Of snow: could the mind of me span The tenderness born of the dew in immaculate islands Virgin of maculate man: Could I mingle the Alps and Hawaii; Strath Ness and A'pura<<1>> and Baiae; Kashmir and Japan: <<1. Anuradapura, the ruined sacred city of Ceylon.>> Could lilies attain to the life of the Gods; could a comet Attain to the calm of the moon: I would mingle them all in a kiss, and draw from it The soul of a sensitive tune. All lovers should hear it and know it: not needing the words of a poet In ebony hewn. O beam of discovery under the eyelids awaking The sense of delight! O assent Slow dawning through cream into roses! O white bosom shaking The myrtles of magical scent In the groves of the heart! O the pleasure that runs over all overmeasure, The wine of Event! Overmastered the hurl of the world in the hush of our rapture; Entangled the bird of success In the snare of bewildering fancies. We capture Delight in the toils of a tress Rough gilded of sunlight and umber with virginal shadows of slumber -- Ah! sorrow, regress! Till the idle abyss of eternity swoon to our pinions With music of wings as we fly Through the azure of dreams, and the purple of mighty dominions Exalted, afoam in the sky; And to us it were wiser and sweeter to ruin the race of the metre, And song were to die. {67B}