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…ent forth : none stayed, none dare Proffer a pavid prayer. There was a pavement bright with emerald Glittering on malachite Clear to the Sun : low battlements enwalled With gold the ground enthralled, Sheer to the sight Of sun and city : thither in his trance The king’s slow steps advance. There stood he, and with eyes unfolded far (Clouds shadowing a star
48 THE BLOOD-LOTUS Nor heed the haggard sun’s eclipse, feeling thy perfume fill my hair, And all thy dark caresses wear sin’s raiment on thy melting lips— Nay, by the witchcraft of thy charms to sleep, nor dream that God survive ; To wake, this only to contrive—fresh passions in thy naked arms ; And, at that moment when thy breath mixes with mine, like wine, to call Each memory, one merged into all, to kiss, to sleep, to mate with death !
…ift the Cross of Light, Rose, golden, green, and white, Rise, rise athwart the night ! Mighty Aeshuri ! VIII Flame, flame, thou Blazoned Sun ! Seal-Star of Solomon ! Seven Mysteries in One ! Godhead and Mankind ! IX Beauty and life and love ! Let fly thy darling dove ! Bend to us from above, Lady Ahathor !
24 IN A LESBIAN MEADOW Delicate lips and chaste, Sweetness divine to taste While the sun glows ; There in the dusk to dwell By the sweet water-well In the wood’s deepest dell Where—my love knows. III Skies are grown redder far ; Tempest draws nigher ; Dark lowers a single star ; Mars, like the fire ! Fiercer our lips engage ; Limbs, eyes, ears gather rage ; Sharp grows desire. Hear thy short bitter cries ? Pity thine agonies ? Loose, though love tire ? Nay, neither hear nor spare ; Frenzy shall mock at prayer ; Torture’s red torch shall flare T…
METEMPSYCHOSIS Written at Vera Cruz. DIM goes the sun down there behind the tall And mighty crest of Orizaba’s snow : Here, gathering at the nightfall, to and fro, Fat vultures, foul and carrion, flap, and call Their ghastly comrades to the domèd wall That crowns the grey cathedral. There they go— The parasites of death, decay and woe, Gorged with the day’s indecent festival. I think these birds were once the souls of priests. They haunt by ancient habit the old home Wherein they held high mass in days of old. But now they soar above it—for beh…
…eam 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 sweat through forest hours. They grow in darkness ; heat beguiles their sluggish kisses ; in the wood They breathe no murmur that is good, and Satan in their blossom smiles. 40
…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 imminent masses of ice, where the grasses Abandon the fells. There silence, arrayed as a spectre, Is visible, tangible, near, To the cup of the man pours nectar, To the heart of the coward is fear : 169
MY WIFE DIES “ Marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.”—SWINBURNE. THE sun of love shone through my love’s deep eyes And made a rainbow of her tender tears, And on her cheeks I saw a blush arise When her lips opened to say, loverwise, “ I love ”—and light broke through the cloud of fears That hid her eyes. The storm of passion woke in her red lips When first they clung to mine and rested there ; Lightnings of love were eager to eclipse That earlier sunshine, and her whole soul clips My soul—I kissed out life, within her hair Upon…
…ds despair there is a sharper fang, Reminds my night of a tempestuous morn. For I am lost and lonely : in the skies I see no hope of any sun or star ; On earth there blooms no rose, no nenuphar ; No cross is set for hope of sacrifice. I cannot sleep, I cannot wake ; and death Passes me by with his desirèd breath. 92
…he esteemed His quest partook of all and yet of none. So as he rode the woodlands out there beamed The dull large spectre of a grim flat sun, Red and obscure upon the leaden haze That lapped and wrapped and rode the horizon. The Earl rode steadily on. A crest caught rays Of that abominable sunset, sharp With needles of young pines, their tips ablaze. Their feet dead black ; the wind’s dark fingers warp To its own time their strings, a sombre mode Found by a ghost on a forgotten harp 151
… day after day grows the summer The crystals melt one after one. The hill—shall they numb her ? Their frost overcome her ? Demand of the sun ! That uttermost death of my lady Revealed in the heart of the range Is as light in the groves long shady As peace in the halls of change. The web of the world is rended ; Stayed are the causal mills ; Time is ended ; space unextended. And end of the hills !
… abides 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 ! ”
…nd reeking venom sweated, Laid open, carelessly and cynically, the doors Of belly rank with exhalations foetid. Upon this rottenness the sun shone deadly straight As if to cook it to a turn, And give back to great Nature hundredfold the debt That, joining it together, she did earn. The sky beheld this carcase most superb outspread As spreads a flower, itself, whose taint Stank so supremely strong, that on the grass your head You thought to lay, in sudden faint. The flies swarmed numberless on this putrescent belly, Whence issued a battalion Of …
… the king dreamed of love : and passing on The shape moved quicker, winnowing with faint fans The soundless air of thought : the noonday sun Seemed to the mightiest of a thousand khans Like to a man’s Brief life—a thousand such dream spans !— And so he dreamed of life : and failing plumes Wrought through ancestral looms In the man’s brain : and so he dreamed of death. And slower still the grey God wrought Dividing consciousness from breath, And life and death from thought. So the king dreamed of Nought. Yet subtly-shapen was this Nothingness, N…
… the caverns of the night, Tongues leaping from the immeasurable Up through the glittering Steeps unmanifest To the ineffable ! O Golden Sun ! Vibrating glory of my higher self ! I heard thy voice resounding in the Abyss : “ I am the only being in the deep Of Darkness : let me rise and gird myself To tread the path of Darkness : even so I may attain the light. For from the Abyss I came before my birth : from those dim halls And silence of a primal sleep ! And He, The voice of Ages, answered me and said : Behold ! for I am He that formulates In …
THE HILLS I73 So, vague as a ghost swift faded, Steals dawn, and so sunset may see How her long long locks deep-braided Fall down to her breast and her knee. So night and so sunrise discover No light and no darkness to heed. Night is above her, and brings her no lover ; And day, but no deed. Such a sense is up and within me, A tongue as of mystical fire ! Love, beauty, and holiness win me To the end of the great desire, Where I cease from the thirst and the labour, As the land that no ploughman tills Lest the robber his neighbour unloosen the s…
…ers wan That seem the soul of man !— Suddenly darkness strikes the horizon round With an abyss profound That blots the half-moon ere the sun be set. A mountain of pure jet Rears its sheer bulk to heaven ; and no snows Tinge evening with rose. No blaze of noon invades those rocks of night, Nor moon’s benignant might. And looking downward he beheld his folk Bound in no tyrant’s yoke ; Knowing no God, nor fearing any man ; Life’s enviable span
… let go. Yet you are like to it, this dung, this carrion, To this infection doubly dire, Star of my eyes that are, and still my nature’s sun, You, O my angel ! You, my own desire ! Yes ! such will you be, queen, in graces that surpass, Once the last sacraments are said ; When you depart beneath wide-spreading blooms and grass To rot amid the bones of many dead. Then, O my beauty ! tell the worms, who will devour With kisses all of you to dust ; That I have kept the form and the essential power Divine of my distorted lust.
… plant one finger presses, However soft the tress is Of even the air’s profane caresses, It closes, all its joy of light withdrawn ; The sun feels sadness in his skies above, Because one flower is folded. Thus they floated Most deathlessly devoted Beyond the trees, and where the 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 t…
…y mystic Fire.” Vanished the mist, the light, the sense, the throne ! Vanished the written horror of the curse ; Vanished the stars, the sun, the Universe. I was in Heaven, lost, alone. Alone ! A new curse gathered as a sombre breath : “ Power without Wisdom is the Name of Death ! ” And therefore from my devastating hand (for I was then unwilling to be dead) I loosed the lightning, and in hate and dread Despairing, did I break the royal wand. Mortal, a plaything for a thousand fears, I found the earth ; I found a lonely place To gaze for ever o…