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Page 1 of 31898 · PDF PAGE 124
… JUIVE Rose dotted with grey stars the bed Where my fair Jewess lay and smiled : Her breasts were full, her eyes were red, Her lips with God unreconciled. In wanton disarray, her hair Streamed jetty black—Ah ! God, how fair ! The quilt had gold embroidery, About the room were furs and silk : Her eyes were full of devilry, Her finger-tips were soft as milk : Above the bed a crest was set, A gold and sapphire coronet. She was of noble birth, and—best A Jewess ; her bad lips enticed My lips to taste ; I held her breast Fresh from the crucifying Ch…
1898 · PDF PAGE 32
26 THE RAINBOW Come down, O Lord God, and deliver Our souls from the wheel and the chain, That Love may lie fragrant and shaded, And Joy may spread wings unto flight, And Peace stand above, unupbraided, As splendid as night. No longer the sun shall cast shadow, No longer the flower shall lack rain, The word shall be fair as a meadow, And Love know no tincture of pain ; The Glory of God shall be on us, And over the kingdom unpriced The Spirit of Love is upon us, A crucified Christ ! O rapture ! O glory ! O gladness ! When Satan is fled from the …
1898 · PDF PAGE 28
22 A FRAGMENT Th’ Eternity of an immortal self That is, and shall be while the stars endure, Or while a God of Love is pitiful Of all men’s sorrows, and most happy in Their joys— She. Ah ! joys are fleeting !— He. But our love Is anchored in the portals of the dawn Where heaven begins. She. And heaven begins with us This day. Behold the flowers, whose kindly gaze Of modest love is on us as we stand, And clasp fond hands before high Heaven to swear Truth an eternal bond, no parchment scroll Of perishable matter ill devised And scored upon with p…
1898 · PDF PAGE 61
ALL NIGHT 55 Kissing the gates of hell, the sword of God, Each unto each a serpent or a rod, A well of wine and fire, each unto each, Whose lips are fain convulsively to reach A higher heaven, a deeper hell. Ah ! Day So soon to dawn, delight to snatch away ! Damned day, whose sunlight finds us as with wine Drunken, with lust made manifest divine Devils of darkness, servants unto hell— Yea, king and queen of Sheol, terrible Above all fiends and furies, hating more The high Jehovah, loving Baal Peor, Our father and our lover and our god ! Yea, th…
1898 · PDF PAGE 25
PREFATORY SONNET TO THE VIRGIN MARY Mother of God ! who knowest the dire pangs Of childbirth, and has suffered, and dost know How utter sweet the full fruit of thy woe, And how His heel hath crushed the serpent’s fangs, Be with me in the birth of this my book, These songs of mine, poor children, like to die ; Yet, if they may not perish utterly, It is to thee for sustenance I look. Mother of God ! be with me in success, Abide with me if peradventure fail These faint songs, murmurs of a summer gale That my heart clothes within a mortal dress ; A…
1898 · PDF PAGE 29
…s sacred, still shall dwell Together—Not the cold embrace Of “ We shall meet again ”, but let us say The ritual of a lover, being this “ God be with you ! ” She. O heart too dear to me, Too much beloved for lover’s tongue to tell, God be with you ! Farewell, sweet heart ! He. Farewell. (EXEUNT). BESUNT CETERA.
1898 · PDF PAGE 24
… turn back Over my shoulder if so be that thus My mouth may find thy mouth, if aught there lack To thy desire, till love is one with us. God ! I shall faint with pain, I hide my face For shame. I am disturbed, I cannot rise, I breathe hard with thy breath ; thy quick embrace Crushes ; thy teeth are agony—pain dies In deadly passion. Ah ! you come—you kill me ! Christ ! God ! Bite ! Bite ! Ah Bite ! Love’s fountains fill me.
1898 · PDF PAGE 95
…lame of love, the fount of blood at my light bidding spilt ; And my desires, if aught thou wilt, are with thy mind, and thy account With God shall bear my name the more ; give me the knowledge, me the power For some new sin one little hour, and bankrupt God the creditor : Steal from his stock of suffering ; his tender mercies rob at will ; Destroy his graciousness, until he must avenge the name of king. Strange fascinations whirl and wind about my spirit lying coils ;
1898 · PDF PAGE 63
… 57 Deeper than ocean, higher than the sky, Vaster than petty loves that dream and die, Insatiate, angry, terrible for lust, Who shrivel God to adamantine dust By our fierce gaze upon him, who would strive Under our wrath, to flee away, to dive Into the deep recesses of his heaven. But we, one joy, one love, one shame for leaven, Quit hope and life, quit fear and death and love, Implacable as God, desired above All loves of hell or heaven, supremely wed, Knit in one soul in one delicious bed More hot than hell, more wicked than all things, Vast…
1898 · PDF PAGE 132
…myself. I hate myself, alas ! More than all these. I cannot rid me of Myself, my hates, my tortures, or my love ; My golden-haired Greek goddess, who divines In me a god, who cannot read the lines Of anguish on my forehead, neither scent The poison of breast, blood, and excrement ! I gnash my teeth in impotent despair That I may never hold her heavenly hair Again, nor bite her lips, as once my teeth Met in her cheek, to cull a rosy wreath Of blood upon it, nor assuage the pangs Of love with hardy limbs, and dolorous fangs, And sweating body, cr…
1898 · PDF PAGE 73
…s thou spreadest for me there ; How my red mouth immortal honey sips From thy ripe kisses, and sucks nectar rare When each the shrine of God Priapus clips In hot mouth passionate more than man may bear, Boy of red lips !
1898 · PDF PAGE 133
…ve leprous sores ; Inward, my filthy blood ; its poison pours Corruption through me. In the eyes of man I am contemned, the haughty one. God’s fan Is eager on my threshing-floor ; his rod Smites no vain stroke. Oh, how I curse thee, God ! What is my aid ? But yet to Satan’s power I lend my utmost vigour for an hour, To wrest Thy damned throne from out thy hands ! My aid ? How shall I burst thy bitter bands, Strike off thy shackles, from thy fetters break, I, whom Thy name appals, whose vitals quake At the dim thought of Thee ? Have mercy, Chris…
1898 · PDF PAGE 127
LA JUIVE 121 Prolong the orgie, shriek aloud With drunken vehemence above All violence more than Corybant To our Iacchian God—Absinthe ! Ah ! thy red lips, and its green glint ! Its wavy splendour, and the dance Thy belly weaves, a triple hint Of Hell, and Algiers, and France ! Ah ! Judas-love ! this flask we’ll drain, Kiss hard—and so to bed again !
1898 · PDF PAGE 45
…ot, that ye may know My paths shall be most surely trod, That I who answer thus, who show Myself in wielding sword and rod, Am high Lord God ! ” Silent the voice, and through the nave And chancel droned the choir ; the sun Darkened, as Satan’s perjured slave, The priest, in blessing, made them one. The Deed was done.
1898 · PDF PAGE 105
VICTORY 99 VICTORY Ah, God ! that thou has made me thus, Content of nought, intent to attain The summits of hills amorous, The crests desired of all of us, By that fierce superflux of pain, That battling with strange enemies, The awful holocaust of gain, And golden rushing of men slain Before Thy throne, whose woven lies, Fixed by enchantment in the dome Of fiery aether, burn with eyes Insatiate of Paradise— Fixed, if the curse of brackish foam Upon the salt unpiteous sea Be fixed, or if the faith of Rome Shall find in hearts of men a home
1898 · PDF PAGE 82
…ing from hell our last home, this is the key of our might. Come, fiery birds of a clime we know not, and sing us your paean ; Triumph of gods that are known secretly, not by a name, Gods whose implacable feet have trampled the god Galilean, Cast though they be into hell, given to death and to shame. Heaven and hell has striven in war, Sappho and Hylas, with Christ and Jah ; We are of those, though they lose their power, Never shall fade their fiery flower.
1898 · PDF PAGE 91
…OTUS The ashen sky, too sick for sleep, makes my face grey ; my senses swoon ; Here, in the glamour of the moon, will not some pity- ing godhead weep For cold grey anguish of her eyes, that look to God, and look in vain, For death, the anodyne of pain, for sleep, earth’s trivial paradise ? Sleep I forget. Her silky breath no longer fans my ears ; I dream I float on some forgotten stream that hath a saviour still of death, A sweet warm smell of hidden flowers whose heavy petals kiss the sun, Fierce tropic poisons every one that fume and sweat th…
1898 · PDF PAGE 101
…! Another travels tainted to the tomb ! My sin, my madness, in thy blood are set, A vile imperishable coronet, To hound thee into hell ! God spits at thee The curse thy parents earned. Revenge be thine ! Kiss Lust, kill Truth, and worship at Sin’s shrine. And foul His face with dung—thy infamy !
1898 · PDF PAGE 118
…ove too soft to hold. No dove that Hylas knew, No dove that Sappho kissed, Nor in wide Heaven there grew This child of stranger dew Than God’s good spirit wist. Yet his wings bare him high, Divine beyond control, And, like for love to die, I felt his arrow fly Within my very soul. Ah Love ! the ambiguous kiss, Not man’s nor woman’s touch, In that ecstatic bliss— Not hell’s heat, as I wis, Had warmed us overmuch.
1898 · PDF PAGE 110
104 VICTORY And thus from foe to foe betrayed, No pain or pleasure but we knew Its utterest essence, whence we made All agonies, that God has paid With rotting blood, save one, that few Could dream of, so divine it is, So exquisite, so rich to do, The which to-night we meet unto— To consummate the angry bliss Of all excesses of delight ; The pain of this divine disease, The luxury of the obscene kiss, The carnal anguish, and the sight Of sore bloody breasts and thighs, The bright green river foamed with white, The horrid spasms of the night. Lo…