Collected Works (Vol. I)

¥46 THE FATAL FORCE Of angels hastening to fulfil Thy supreme, single will ! Alone, intense, unmoved, change, Let thy one godhead rise To move like morning, and like day to range, A furnace for the skies, That all men cry: ‘‘ The uncreated God! Formless, ineffable, just, whose period Is as his name, Eternity!” So bear The sceptre of the air ! So mayest thou avenge, all-seeing, blind, The wrath of this consuming fire, that licks The rafters and the portals of the house, The gateways of the kingdom, where behind Lurk ruinous fates and consequence; where fix Their fangs the scorpions; where hide their brows The shamed protectors of the Egyptian land. Go forth avenging ; men shall understand And worship, seeing justice as a spouse Lean on thine iron hand. not made for For Murder walks by night, and hides her face, But righteous Wrath in the light, and knows his place ; For hate of a mother is ill, and the lightning flashes But foil a harlot’s will, burn the earth to ashes, Cleanse the incestuous sty of a whore’s desire, Scatter the dung to the sky, and burn her with fire ! So the avenging master shall cleanse his fate of shame, Set his seal of disaster, a royal seal to his name. [ Bxeusnt. SAFI. I am not Horus, but I shall be king. Enter THE LEPER. THE LEPER. I am a leper, but I am the king. S’AFI. Monstrous illegible horror, let thy mouth Frame from its charnel-house some pregnant word Intelligible. THE LEPER. I am king; thy mother’s limbs Clung fast to mine when I begot thy father. S’AFI. He died in battle; thou art not the king. THE LEPER. I did not fall in battle ; but my queen Saw on my breast the livid mark of sin That was the leprosy of her own soul, And drove me forth to compass my disgrace With infamies ineffable. S’AFI. I know; I shall avenge. The old gods come again. THE LEPER. Nay! I have lived through all these barren years, Discrowned, diseased, abominable, cast out, And meditating on the event of life, And that initiated Hope that we, Royal, inherit, of the final life, Nor newer incarnation, and possessed Of strange powers, who have moved about this court Loathed, and unrecognised, and shunned, have thought That the old bondage was as terrible As thine incestuous mother’s iron hand, Rending the entrails of her growing realm To seek her bloody fate, whose violence Even now makes the abyss of wrath divine Boil in the deep. Thou mayest be that great Osiris, bidding man’s high soul be free, Justified in its own higher self, made pure And perfect in its own eyes, being a god.