Collected Works (Vol. I)

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