Collected Works (Vol. I)

118 MYSTERIES : LYRICAL AND DRAMATIC So, birds, are you shy to awake Your voices to laughter-tuned numbers? So, sun, do you tremble to shake The dews of the night from our slumbers? Yvonne ! So, breeze, too reluctant to take The dews of the night from our slumbers? Light breaks, and the breezes caress Cool limbs and soft eyes and fair faces ; The nightingales carol to bless The dawn of our maiden embraces, Yvonne! The woods wear a lovelier dress In the dawn of our maiden embraces ! PERDURABO.! EXILE from humankind! The snow’s fresh flakes Are warmer than men’s hearts. My mind is wrought Into dark shapes of solitary thought That loves and sympathises, but awakes No answering love or pity. What a pang Hath this strange solitude to aggravate The self-abasement and the blows of late! No snake of hell hath so severe a fang ! I am not lower than all men—TI feel Too keenly. Yet my place is not above, Though I have this—unalterable Love In every fibre. I am crucified Apart on a lone burning crag of steel, Tortured, cast out ; and yet—I shall abide. ON GARRET HOSTEL BRIDGE.’ HERE in the evening curl white mists and wreathe in their vapour All the gray spires of stone, all the im- mobile towers ; 1 ‘**T shall endure to the end.’’ This was the mystic title taken by Crowley at his first initiation. 2 A bridge on the ‘‘ Backs'' at Cambridge. IIere in the twilight gloom dim trees and sleepier rivers, ITere where the bridge is thrown over the amber stream, Chill is the ray that steals from the moon to the stream that whispers Seeret tales of its source, songs of its fountain-head. Ilere do I stand in the dusk; like spectres mournfully moving Wisps of the cloud-wreaths form, dissipate into the mist, Wrap me in shrouds of gray, chill me and make me shiver, Not with the Night alone, not with the sound of her wing, Yet with a sense of something vague and unearthly stalking (Step after step as I move) me, to annul me, quell Tlope and desire and life, bid light die under my eyelids, Bid the strong heart despair, quench the desire of Heaven. So I shudder a little; and my heart goes out to the mountain, Rock upon rock for a crown, snow like an ermine robe ; Thunder and lightning free fashioned for speech and seeing, Pinnacles royal and steep, queen of the arduous breast ! Ye on whose icy bosom, passionate, at the sunrise, Ye in whose wind-swept hollows, lulled in the moonrise clear, Often and oft I struggled, a child with an angry mother, Often and oft I slept, maid in a lover’s arms. Back to ye, back, wild towers, from this flat and desolate fenland, Back to ye yet will I flee, swallow on wing to the south ; Move in your purple cloud-banks and leap your far-swelling torrents, Bathe in the pools below, laugh with the winds above,