Collected Works (Vol. I)

JEPHTHAH 83 CHORUS. Fair as the dawn is the maiden wise ; Pale as the poppies by still white water ! Sunlight burns in her pure deep eyes ; Love lights the tresses of Jephthah’s daughter. Kissing rays of the moon have caught her, Rays of the moon that sleeps and sighs, JARED [aszde]. In our disgrace, behold! our vengeance strikes. I am inspired with so profound a hate— He shall not triumph: in the very hour When his o’ermastering forehead tops the sky I strike him to the earth. I need not move. Silence—no more—and all accomplishes. Leviathan, how subtle is thy path ! CHORUS. Not now may the hour of gladness fade, The wheel of our fate spins bright and beaming. God has fashioned a sun from shade. Mercy and joy in one tide are streaming. Fortune is powerless, to all good seeming. Fate is stricken, and flees afraid. JARED. Bring me the sackcloth and the ashes now ! ELEAZAR, Behold ! the crown of all our maiden wreath, Adulah, white and lissome, with the flames Of dawn forth blushing through her flower- crowned hair. CHORUS. Behold a virgin to the Lord ! Behold a maiden pale as death, Whose glance is silver as a sword, And flowers of Kedar fill her breath, Whose fragrance saturates the sward, Whose sunny perfume floating saith : From my ineffable desire is drawn The awful glory of the golden dawn. Behold her bosom bare and bold Whose billows like the ocean swing ! The painted palaces of gold Where shell-born maidens laugh and sing Are mirrored in those breasts that hold Sweet odours of the sunny spring. Behold the rising swell of perfect calm In breezy dells adorable of balm ! Behold the tender rosy feet Made bare for holiness, that move Like doves amid the waving wheat, Or swallows silver in the grove Where sylph and salamander meet, And gnome and undine swoon for love ! Her feet that flit upon the windy way Twin fawns, the daughters of the rosy day. Behold, the arms of her desire Wave, weave, and wander in the air, Vines life-endued by subtle fire So quick and comely, curving bare. The white diaphanous attire Floats like a spirit pale and fair. The dance is woven of the breeze ; the tune Is like the ocean silvered by the moon. Behold the maidens following ! O every one is like a flower, Or like an ewe lamb of the king That comes from water at the hour Of even. See, the dancers swing Their censers ; see, their tresses shower Descending flames, and perfumes teem divine, And all the air grows one pale fume of wine. Their songs, their purity, their peace, Glide slowly in the arms of God ; [is lips assume their sanctities, His eyes perceive the period Of woven webs of lutes at ease, And measures by pure maidens trod, Till, like the smoke of mountains risen at dawn, The cloud-veils of the Ain? are withdrawn. 1 The Negative, surrounded by a triple veil in the Vheogony of the Qabalists, from which all things spring and to which all shal] return. see ‘' Berashith ” in a subsequent volume.