Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1905 · PDF PAGE 130

Oracles

ANIMA LUNAE I25 So mused the king. Mark you, the full moon shone ! Nay, but a little past the full, she rose An hour past sunset : as some laughter gone, After the bride’s night, lost in subtler snows Rosy with wifehood. Now the shallop glides On gloomier shadier tides, While the long hair of willows bent and kissed The stream, and drew its mist Up through their silent atmosphere. Some sorrow drawing near That slow, dark river would for sympathy Have found its home and never wandered out Into the sunlight any more. A sigh Stirred the pale water…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 174

Oracles

THE HILLS TO OSCAR ECKENSTEIN WHENCE the black lands shudder and darken, Whence the sea birds have empire to range, Whence the moon and the meteor hearken The perpetual rhythm of change, On earth and in heaven deluded With time, that the soul of us kills, I have passed. I have brooded, fled far to the wooded And desolate hills. Not there is the changing of voices That lament or regret or are sad, But the sun in his strength rejoices, The moon in her beauty is glad. As timeless and deathless time passes, And death is a hermit that dwells By the …

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1905 · PDF PAGE 124

Oracles

ANIMA LUNAE II9 Or moonlight seen through trees—so came the lashes Over—and strong sight flashes !) Travelled in thought to life, and in its gleam Saw but a doubtful dream. His was a city crescent-shaped whose wall Was brass and iron : in the thrall Of the superb concave Lay orbed a waveless wave. Four moons of liquid light revolved and threw Their silvery fountains forth, whose fruitful dew Turned all the plain to one enamelled vale Green as the serpent’s glory, and—how still !— To where the distant hill Shaped like an Oread’s breast arose bey…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 132

Oracles

…e hills divide To take the nighted tide Into a darker, deeper, greener breast, Maybe to find—what rest ? Now to those girdling mountains moon-exalted Came through the hills deep-vaulted That pearly shallop : there the rocks were rent, And the pale element Flowed idly in their gorges : there the night Admits no beam of light ; Nor can the poet’s eye One ray espy. Therefore I saw not how the voyage ended, Only wherethrough those cliffs were rended I saw them pass : and ever closer bent The lady and the lover ; ever slower Moved the light craft, a…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 128

Oracles

…e water’s edge Where the king’s pinnace lodged ; but he put by That shell of ivory, And chose a pearl-inwoven canoe, whose prow Bore the moon’s own bright brow In grace of silver sculputred ; and therein He stepped ; and all the water thin Laughed to receive him ; now the city faded Little by little into many-shaded Clusters of colour. So his boat was drawn Subtly toward the dawn With little labour ; and the lake dropped down From the orb’s utter crown O’er the horizon ; and the narrowing sides Showed him the moving tides And pearling waters of…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 28

Oracles

… are lone, at last. Heaven is overcast Yet with no night. Ere her immortal wings Gather the thread of things Into her might, Up will the moon arise Through the black-azure skies : Birds shall sing litanies Still of delight. II Let my lips wander where Tender moss grows, Where through their dusky air Beams a red rose. Where the bee honey sips Let my desirous lips, Kissing, unclose 23

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1905 · PDF PAGE 29

Oracles

…neither hear nor spare ; Frenzy shall mock at prayer ; Torture’s red torch shall flare Till thou expire. IV Stars stud a cloudless sky ; Moon silvers blue ; Breeze is content to die ; Lightly falls dew.

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1905 · PDF PAGE 92

Oracles

…one down as leaves in the dark that are blown : Surely the laurel and crown have faded and left me alone. Vainly I cry in the sunlight ; moon pities my passion in vain. Dark to my eyes is the one light, aching in bosom and brain. Surely, O mother, thou knowest ! Have I not followed thy star ? I have gone whither thou goest, bitterly followed afar, 87

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1905 · PDF PAGE 45

Oracles

THE BLOOD-LOTUS THE ashen sky, too sick for sleep, makes my face grey ; my senses swoon. Here, in the glamour of the moon, will not some pitying 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 savour still of death, A sweet warm smell of hidden flowers whose heavy petals kiss the sun, Fierce tropic poisons every one that fume and s…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 121

Oracles

…Swart giants with drawn yataghans Guard, standing at his head and feet, Zôhra, the mightiest of the khans ! Each slave Circassian like a moon Sits smiling, burning with young bloom Of dawn, and weaves an airy tune Like a white bird’s song bright and bold That dips a fiery plume. So the song lulled, lazily rolled In tubes of silver, lutes of gold ; And all that palace drowsed away The hours that fanned with silken fold The progress of the Lord of Day. Yet, as he slept, a grey Shadow of dream drew near, and stooped And glided through the ranks of…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 110

Oracles

…wn, lie tranced in leisured noon, Dreaming through day towards night, Craving the perfumed light Of the stars lustrous, and the gem-born moon. Dewy with clustered diamond, The long land swoons to sleep ; the sea sleeps and yet wakes beyond. Here, in the crescent beach and bay, the sea, Curven and carven in warm shapes of dream, Answers the love-song of the lilied stream, And moves to bridal music. Stern and free, I05

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1905 · PDF PAGE 8

Oracles

THE BALLOON 3 As the chord and silk and paint, Wood and iron drifteth by. Floating in the summer sky Like a model of the moon :— How supreme to be so high In a treacherous balloon, Like the Kings of Destiny, All the earth for their spittoon. Toads are gnawing at my feet. Take them off me quick, I pray ! Worms my juicy liver eat. Take the awful beasts away ! Vipers make my bowels their meat. Fetch a cunning knife and slay ! Kill the tadpoles in my lung, And the woodlice in my spine, And the beast that gnaws my tongue, And the weasel at my chine,…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 136

Oracles

…s thy light passed over and kissed them ? Shall thy people lament thee and swoon, And we miss thee if thy love missed them, Awaiting the moon ? But thou, who art Light, and above them, Who art fire and above them as fire, Shall thy sightless eyes not love them Who are all of thine own desire ? Immaculate daughters of passion, Shalt thou as they pass be past ? And thy people bewail thee, Thalassian, Lost, lost at the last ? III Nay, ere ye pass your people pass, As snow on summer hills, As dew upon the grass, As one that love fulfils, If he in f…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 47

Oracles

42 THE BLOOD-LOTUS Why art thou paler when the moon grows loftier in the troublous sky ? Why dost thou beat and heave when I press lips of fire, hell’s princeliest boon, To thy mad petals, green and gold like angels’ wings, when as a flood God’s essence fills them, and the blood throughout their web grows icy cold ? To thy red centre are my eyes held fast and fervent, as at night Some sad miasma lends a light of strange and silent blasphemies To lure a soul to hell, to draw some saint’s charred lust, to tempt, to win Another sacrifice to sin, a…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 129

Oracles

… for ever, Here on the shining river Where the dusk gathers, and tall trees begin To wrap the shallop in, Sweet shade not cast of sun or moon or star, But of some light afar Softer and sweeter than all these—what light Burns past the wondrous night Of yonder crags ?—what riven chasm hides In those mysterious sides ? Somewhere this stream must leap Down vales divinely steep Into some vain unprofitable deep ! ”

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1905 · PDF PAGE 80

Oracles

…l me of their secrecies, Thy peace, thy purity, thy soul impenetrably wise. II All things which are complete are solitary ; The circling moon, the inconscient drift of stars, The central systems. Burn they, change they, vary ? Theirs is no motion beyond the eternal bars. Seasons and scars Stain not the planets, the unfathomed home, The spaceless, unformed faces in the dome Brighter and blacker than all things, Borne under the eternal wings No whither : solitary are the winter woods And caves not habited, And that supreme grey head Watching the …

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1905 · PDF PAGE 123

Oracles

…ived : Death, and nought died. The king’s brow fell. Sore grieved He rose, not knowing : and before his will Swan’s throat, dove’s eyes, moon’s breast, and woman’s mouth, And form desirable Of all the clustered love drew back : grew still “ O turn, my lover, turn thee to the South ! ” The girl’s warm song of the Siesta’s hour. Heedless of all that flower, Eager to feel the strong brown fingers close On the unshrinking rose And pluck it to his breast to perish there, With neither thought nor care Nor knowledge he went forth : none stayed, none d…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 118

Oracles

THE HOUSE II3 Into a pageant of triumphant shapes. So, as the night grows deeper, and no moon Stirs the black heaven, no star its cloud escapes, I sit and watch the fire : my musing drapes My soul in darker dreams ; the storm’s wild tune Rolls ever deeper in my shuddering swoon : Whereat I start, shudder, and pull together My mind. Why, surely it must be the hour ! My friend is coming through the wet wild weather Across the moor’s inhospitable heather To the old stately tower—my own dear tower. He will not fail me for a sudden shower ! My frien…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 81

Oracles

…ld speak and find me not awake— For his own sake. No voice, no song might pierce or penetrate That enviable universal state. The sun and moon beheld, stood still. Only the spirit’s axis, will, Considered its own soul and sought a deadlier deep, And in its monotone mood Of supreme solitude Was neither glad nor sad because it did not sleep ; But with calm eyes abode Patient, its leisure that galactic load, Abode alone, nor even rejoiced to know that it was God.

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1905 · PDF PAGE 85

Oracles

80 THE STORM Still pale a rose reflection lingers, in pure soft blue ; Even above the tempest, where a lonely avenue Leads from the wan moon’s image, shadowy in the air, Waning, half hidden from the sun—and yet her soul is there. So stand I looking ever down to the rolling sea, Breast-heaves of a sleeping mother, spouse of Eternity : The dark deep ocean mother, that another hath reviled, Calling her bitter and barren—and am I not her child ? O mother sea, O beautiful, more excellent than earth, How is thy travail understood, except thou give me…

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