1901 · PDF PAGE 13
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE.
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Page 1 of 21901 · PDF PAGE 6
The Soul of Osiris
CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON
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1901 · PDF PAGE 144
The Soul of Osiris
CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON
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1901 · PDF PAGE 27
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 15 Come ! Once again I call, I call, I call, O perfect soul, to thee, With chants, and murmurs mystical, And whispers wiser than the sea : O lover, come to me ! The pall Of night is woven : fair and free, Draw to my kisses, let thy breath Mingle for love the wine of death.
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1901 · PDF PAGE 35
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 23 Absorb her eyelids’ lazy light, And read her bosom to devise Fresh blossoms of the heart of hell, And secret joys of Jezebel. Her lips are fastened to my breast To suck out blood in feverish tides ; The token of her I possessed Still on my withered cheek abides. Thus slowly the desire grows To kill and have her yet—who knows ?
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1901 · PDF PAGE 49
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 37 And slip half-conscious to the old embrace. And now you will not let me see your face Or hear your voice or touch you. Ah ! the hour ! He moves. Come back, come back, my life’s one flower ! Come back. One kiss before you leave me. So ! Stop—turn—one little kiss before you go ; It is my right—you must. Oh no ! Oh no !
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1901 · PDF PAGE 7
The Soul of Osiris
CONTENTS. PAGE PROLOGUE .......................................................... vii THE COURT OF THE PROFANE : FAME ............................................................ 3 THE ALTAR OF ARTEMIS ................................... 4 TO RICHARD WAGNER ..................................... 9 “ THE TWO EMOTIONS ” ................................... 10 ASMODEL ..................................................... 11 “ THE SONNET ” ............................................. 16 JEZEBEL. PART I. ......................................... 18 …
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1901 · PDF PAGE 41
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 29 LOVE AT PEACE. HE valleys, that are splendid With sun ere day is ended And love-lutes take to tune, See joyless and unfriended The perfect bowstring bended, Whose bow is called the moon. They see the waters slacken And all the sky’s blue blacken, While in the yellow bracken Love lies in death or swoon. The stars arise and brighten ; The summer lightnings lighten, Faint and as midnight mute ; And far white snowfields tighten The iron bands that frighten No fairy’s tender foot. Across the stiller river Stray flowers o…
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1901 · PDF PAGE 61
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 49 It hath no shape ; and I have no escape ! It wraps around me, as a mist, despair. Fear without sense and horror without shape Most surely there ! O melancholy ! charming child of folly, Where is thy comfort told without a word ? Where are thy plumes, beloved melancholy, Familiar bird ? O emerald star, deep beauty’s avatar, Are thy skies dim ? What throne is thine above ? Where is the crown of thee—thy sevenfold star, My heart of love ? Then from the clinging mist there came a singing, A dirge re-echoes to the poet p…
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1901 · PDF PAGE 57
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 45 “ MANY WATERS CANNOT QUENCH LOVE.” N my distress I made complaint to Death : Thy shadow strides across the starry air ; Thou comest as a serpent unaware, Striking love’s heart and crushing out man’s breath : Thy destiny is even as God saith To mark the impotence of human prayer, Choke hope, sting all but Love ; and never care If man or flower or sparrow perisheth. Thee, I invoke thee, though no mercy move Thy heart ! No power is to thy hate assigned On love (sing, poets ! shrill, Pandean reeds !). But me, look on me…
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1901 · PDF PAGE 21
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 9 TO RICHARD WAGNER. (BEFORE HEARING “ SIEGFRIED.”) MASTER of the ring of love, O lord Of all desires, and king of all the stars, O strong magician, who with locks and bars Dost seal that kingdom silent and abhorred That stretches out and binds with iron cord The hopes and lives of men, and makes and mars ! O thou thrice noble for the deadly scars That answered vainly thy victorious sword ! Wagner ! creator of a world of light As beautiful as God’s, bend down to me, And whisper me the secrets of thy heart, That I may f…
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1901 · PDF PAGE 23
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 11 ASMODEL. ALL down that star whose tender eyes Were on thy bosom at thy birth ! Call, one long passionate note that sighs ! Call, till its beauty bend to earth, Meet thee and lift thee and devise Strange loves within the gleaming girth, And kisses underneath the star Where on her brows its seven rays are. Call her, the maiden of thy sleep, And fashion into human shape The whirling fountains fiery and deep, The incense-columns that bedrape Her glimmering limbs, when shadows creep Among blue tresses that escape The gol…
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1901 · PDF PAGE 43
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 31 I, whose strong arms enfold her Immaculate surrender. Pure as the dawns that quicken On snow-topped mountains stricken By first gray light that grows, By beams that gather, thicken, A web of fairy ticken, To make a fairy rose : Pure as the seas that lave With phosphorescent wave The sombre architrave Of Castle No-man-knows. Pure as the dreams, undreamt (That men have in contempt, That wise men yearn to see), Of angel forms exempt From mockeries that tempt Who fly about the lea ; Proclaiming things unheard, Unknown t…
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1901 · PDF PAGE 59
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 47 LOVE, MELANCHOLY, DESPAIR.1 EEP melancholy—O, the child of folly !— Looms on my brow, a perched ancestral bird ; Black are its plumes, its eyes are melancholy, It speaks no word. Like to a star, deep beauty’s avatar Pales in the dusky skies so far above : Seven rays of gladness crown its passionate star, One heart of love. The fringing trees, marge of deep-throated seas, Move as I walk : like spectres whispering The spaces of them : let me leave the trees— It is not spring ! Spring—no ! but dying autumn fast and fly…
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1901 · PDF PAGE 51
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 39 THE MAY QUEEN. (OLD STYLE) T is summer and sun on the sea, The twilight is drawn to the world : We linger and laugh on the lea, The light of my spirit with me, Sharp limbs in close agony curled. The noise of the music of sleep, The breath of the wings of the night, The song of the magical deep, The sighs of the spirits that weep, Make murmur to tune our delight. Slow feet are our measures that move ; Swift songs are more soft than the breeze ; Our mouths are made mute for our love ; Our eyes are made soft as the dov…
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1901 · PDF PAGE 19
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 7 For, swooning at the fervid lips Of Artemis, the maiden kisses Sob, and the languid body slips Down to enamelled wildernesses. Fallen and loose the shaken tresses ; Fallen the sandal and girdling gold, Fallen the music manifold Of moving limbs and strange caresses, And deadly passion that possesses The magic ecstasy of these Mad maidens, tender as blue seas. Night spreads her yearning pinions, The baffled day sinks blind to sleep ; The evening breeze outswoons the sun’s Dead kisses to the swooning deep. Upsoars the m…
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1901 · PDF PAGE 55
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 43 A SAINT’S DAMNATION. OU buy my spirit with those shameless eyes That burn my soul, you loose the torrent stream Of my desire, you make my lips your prize, And on them burns the whole life’s hope : you deem You buy a heart ; but I am well aware How my damnation dwells in that supreme Passion to feed upon your shoulders bare, And pass the dewy twilight of our sin In the intolerable flames of hair That clothe my body from your head ; you win The devil’s bargain ; I am yours to kill, Yours, for one kiss ; my spirit for …
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1901 · PDF PAGE 17
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 5 For, maddening to fiercer thought, The fiery limbs requicken, wheel In formless furies, subtly wrought Of swifter melodies than steel That flashes in the fight : the peal Of amorous laughters choking sense, And madness kissing violence, Rings like dead horsemen ; bodies reel Drunken with motion ; spirits feel The strange constraint of gods that dip From Heaven to mingle lip and lip. The gods descend to dance ; the noise Of hungry kissings, as a swoon, Faints for excess of its own joys, And mystic beams assail the moo…
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1901 · PDF PAGE 25
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 13 The agony of extreme joy, And horror of the infinite blind Passions that sear us and destroy, Rebuilding for the deathless mind A deathless body, whose alloy Is gold and fire, whose passions find The tears of their caress a dew, Fiery, to make creation new. This agony and bloody sweat, This scarring torture of desire, Refine us, madden us, and set The feast of unbegotten fire Before our mouths, that mingle yet In this ; the mighty-moulded lyre Of many stars still strikes above Chords of the mastery of love. This sub…
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1901 · PDF PAGE 31
The Soul of Osiris
THE COURT OF THE PROFANE. 19 Anon, and I am driven out In desert places by desire ; My mouth is salt and dry ; I doubt If hell hath such another fire ; If God’s damnation can devise A lust to match these agonies. The desert wind my body burns, The voice of flesh consumes my soul ; My body towards the city turns, My spirit seeks its fierier goal ; In wells of heaven to quench my thirst, And take God’s hand among the first. I conquered self, I grew at last A prophet chosen of the Lord ; I blew the trumpet’s iron blast That called on Zimri Omri’s …
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