CARMEN SAECULARE *
1900
“PROLOGUE. Who calls m2 coward? Let them wait
awhile! Shall I
THE EXILE. i Bow down a loyal head to fate: despair and
“The Sun, surmounted by a red rose, shining ; die:
on a mossy bank."! I hear the sea roll strong and pure that bore
me far
OVER the western water lies a solar fire,
; ‘From Méalfourvinie’s! scalp, gray moor and
Kapt lives and drunken ecstasies of sad
lonely scaur ;
desire ) I hear the waves together mutter in counsel
Poppies and lonely flag-flowers haunt the deep :
desolate I hear the thunder the winds utter in broken
Marsh-strand: the herons gaunt still con- sleep ;
‘ ’
template oo I hear the voices of four rivers crying
What was delight, is ruin, may breed love aloud ;
jo j s .
again, Four angels trumpet, and earth shivers: the
Even as darkness brecds the day: when life
is slain,
heavens shroud
Their faces in blank terror for the sound of
° . . . . them :
O who will hear my chant, my cry ; my The mountains are disturbed and roar ° the
voice who hear, azure hem
Even in this weary misery, this danker mere, (hat laps all lands is broken, lashed in fiery
Me, in mine exile, who am driven from foam,
yonder mountains And all God’s thunderbolts are crashel—
Blue-gray, and highland airs of heaven, and against my home.
moving fountains? Written in heaven, written on earth, written
Me, who shall hear me? Am I lost, a in the deep,
broken vessel, Written by God’s own finger-birth ; the stars
Caught in the storm of lies and tossed,| _ may weep,
forbid to wrestle? The sun rejoice, thit see at last His ven-
Shall not the sun rise lively yet, the rose geance strike;
yet bloom, The fury of destruction’s blast; the fiery
The crown yet lift me, life beget flowers on spike
the tomb? As of an arrow of adamant, comet or
I was born fighter. Think you then my task meteor :
. ‘** The dog returneth to his vomit : the ancient
is done, £
whore
My work, my Father’s work for men, the
rising sunf 1 A mountain on Loch Ness, opposite the
1 This is the heraldic description of Crowley's | poet's home.
crest. 2 England.
* Crowley, an Irishman, was passionately attached to the Celtic movement, and only
abandoned it when he found that it was a mere mask for the hideous fe:itures of Roman
Catholicism.
214