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Page 1 of 11910 · PDF PAGE 109
… And strong, my lover, my delight !) Have all died down ; And in the darkness, clear As the dawn’s transient light Are thy lips, live at last ; Thine eyes, aflame at the red holocaust Of me thou gloatest over. See, I draw close, (O vital, murder-loving lover !) And all my being flows In a flood to my lips, and I kiss kiss kiss Madly, madly kiss, Out of rhythm, out of rime, Out of space, sense, time, Thy mouth — and I am thine : Sealed, sealed at last, enthroned upon The very star thou ridest on. O wine ! o wine ! Wine of thy luminous body rushi…
1910 · PDF PAGE 38
PREFACE. XXXIII — what a washerwoman lost to mankind ! was the French nation’s epitaph upon her — drove the last nail into the coffin of art in England. Though ’twas needless cruelty : whom have we had of the first rank in England since Eli- zabeth but the Revolutionaries ? Blake, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Byron, Swinburne, Swift, Butler, Milton, every one exiled, starved, bullied, driven insane ; except Milton, whose supreme hypocrisy saved him, as it damned the nation for ever. Anyhow, bad as it was, Victoria made it worse, and, under a quee…
1910 · PDF PAGE 183
I30 THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY. AGRIPPA So I have heard. Last year I flirted With Isis — but was unconverted. If this man’s prophet loose my nails I’ll gibe no more at prophet’s whales. PUBLIUS I loathe and despise all kinds of fiction Whether or no it ease life’s friction. AGRIPPA Anoint the next fair lambkin’s fleece With rock-sand in the stead of grease. PUBLIUS He speaks again. ISSA Forgive me, brothers ! I knew not what I did. PUBLIUS His mother’s Here; wants the body.
1910 · PDF PAGE 11
…he fact that they were far more exclusive than any other religious body in Europe) was composed of a few of the old guard, my father the last of them all, and the meanest crew of canaille that ever wriggled. With my father’s death the small schisms which had hitherto lopped off a few members every year or two were altogether surpassed by the great Raven heresy which split the body into two equal halves, and extinguished the last sparks of its importance. I am going beyond my subject, but I cannot refrain from telling the awful story of the Meet…
1910 · PDF PAGE 147
…y cook keeps razor-sharp for salted swine. Nine thousand cuts, nine hundred cuts, And ninety cuts and nine Cut exquisitely fine, And the last slash in your guts If by an hair’s breadth your recital Obscure the true, omit the vital ! ALEXANDER Out springs the screw. Ho ! the mannikin slim and sprightly
1910 · PDF PAGE 122
… Let it crow for her ! One by one they defile her. MIRIAM Scarce forty ! Yet the dawn begins to stir : The Wolf’s tail blots my star. At last I strain Some strength that strains my body back again. THE CENTURION Enough, lads ! If she breed not, at my peril I shall uphold it “ Jewish girls are sterile. ”
1910 · PDF PAGE 44
PROEM Master, I come. But ere the pregnant gloom Lighten at last, I ask myself for whom I take the pen, since English throbs and glows Forth from its gold, like streams from sunny snows. And if I write for England, who will read ? As if, when moons of Ramazan recede, Some fatuous angel-porter should deposit His perfect wine within the privy closet ! “ What do they know, who only England know ? ” Only what England paints its face to show. Love mummied and relabelled “ chaste affection, ” And lust excused as “ natural selection.” Caligula upbraid…
1910 · PDF PAGE 74
…F EROS. 2I First born ? — I’ll never have another, I’m Yaugh Waugh, Yaugh Waugh. Bow to Me, you lumpy lambkin ! Haw ! Haw ! Haw ! Now at last a wooden thing That will do my business for me. Uck ! Uck ! The morning’s carrion Bubbles in my paunch. I am belching dreadfully. What ? Uck ? Uck ? How strange ! For the windy vomit of me Shapes itself into a sorry And bedraggled pigeon. Birdie, have you got religion ? Yes, he bows most properly. Come then, let us take our counsel How to stop this sad behaviour, This gross impropriety, Irreligion — Uck !…
1910 · PDF PAGE 110
…eftly-woven camel’s hair, Where the trembling captive-woman Waits his pleasure-hour inhuman ! All the roots of love and power Flushed at last into a flower. All the films of sense dissolved ; All the spirit sight evolved, So that after myriad aeons Filled with trumpet-pealing paeans, With the nuptial bliss of man Prostituted unto Pan, Rises on the vast inane Your dread red star again ! O star, thy secret I possess : I, watcher for man’s happiness. I go to ward thy craven curse From the maiden Universe.
1910 · PDF PAGE 123
…f. MIRIAM The dawn ! oh, curses on the dawn that breaks This night of joy. God ! my whole being wakes Into a world of rapture. I am I At last — the little fool that wondered why ! I am abreast of God’s whole tide of thought. Like gold into fine linen, I am wrought Into the royal vesture of the globe. I am the Empress of the City of Sin, Wrapped in its purple robe Stained with mine own maid’s blood. Yea ! for all glorious within Am I, most like the daughter of a king, Voluptuously languishing Like a great queen afloat upon the flood In gilded ba…
1910 · PDF PAGE 159
…unset’s garlic to the midnight’s rose, The red whore’s writhings, clutches swift to close On this worn limb, exact the woman-debt To the last mite, the cold grey glutinous sweat — These things, I say, assailed me, bade me pause Praising the goodness of the great First Cause. JOHN Yet all we know His vast benevolence. ISSA Thou hast religion, but no common sense. The cud of wisdom is not duly chewed When whoredom’s whittled with a platitude.
1910 · PDF PAGE 174
THE GREY NIGHT. I2I To grind thee in the mills of martyrdom, That at last thy spirit may fully come To understand and to repent — Else might thy new-born strength relent And all thy father’s hate corrode Thy will, as the breath of a bloat toad Might rot the lungs of a young child. Then were indeed the earth defiled And the sole seedling that must lurk In the desert world — waste by thy Work — Itself its loveliness transplant To a flawless field whose grace should grant Life to that bright inhabitant. ISSA These eyes are blind with blood and tea…
1910 · PDF PAGE 70
…in a furious flood That rages and hisses and foams in the blood. See ! I am dead ! I am passed, I am passed Out of the sensible world at-last. I am not. Yet I am, as I never was, A drop in the sphere of molten glass Whose radiance changes and shifts and drapes The infinite soul in finite shapes. There is light, there is life, there is love, there is sense
1910 · PDF PAGE 71
…lendour to death Beyond light, beyond love, beyond thought, beyond breath. Ah ! but my master ! the death of the sun — Break, break, the last veil ! It is done — It is done, He falls, as one dead, upon the grass. HERACLEITUS I bless these happy virgins, souls unstained, Through whose delight my darling hath attained
1910 · PDF PAGE 29
…e, Sterne, Swift, Rabelais, Villon, — what names have we to put against these ? Milton and some lesser. And to-day ? What authors of the last century do we find on our shelves ? Byron, exiled, yet with wealth suffi- cient to mock his foes ; Shelley, expelled from Oxford, exi- led, robbed of his children ; Keats, bullied into consump- tion ; Blake, nigh starved ; Flaubert, Baudelaire, Gautier, Zola, Richepin all prosecuted, suppressed ; Verlaine, his life a mere holiday between spells of prison. I cannot quote you the good authors, the popular a…
1910 · PDF PAGE 25
…the shadow of the Lion de Belfort, I became aware of a temptation of the devil. Quite a num- ber of people had been asking me during the last few months to compromise with respectability. And by Jove ! I nearly did ! I was ill — forgive the wavering ! I am
1910 · PDF PAGE 16
PREFACE. XI accusations against me, though, as you shall hear, almost equally silly. I learnt at last, through the intervention of my uncle, in a lucid interval, what I was supposed to have done. I was said to have tried “ to corrupt Chamberlain ” — not our great patriotic statesman, shifty Joe — but a boy. (I was 12 years old, and quite ignorant of all sexual matters till long after). Also I had “ held a mock prayer mee- ting ”. This I remembered. I had strolled up to a group of boys in the playground, who were indeed holding one. As they saw …
1910 · PDF PAGE 15
…sed. This punishment, which I believe criminal authorities would consider severe on a poisoner, went on for a term and a half. I was, at last, threatened with expulsion for my refusal to “ confess ”, and so dreadful a picture of the horrors of expulsion did they paint me — the guilty wretch, shunned by his fellows, slinks on through life to a dishonoured grave, etc. — that I actually chose to endure my torture, and to thank my oppressor. Physically, I broke down. The strain and the misery affected my kidneys ; and I had to leave school altogeth…
1910 · PDF PAGE 17
… pro- viding a witness — like the witnesses against Naboth ! Then the witness and his story, as smooth as a policeman’s. Next, sentence. Last, execution, with intervals of prayer ! Champney’s physique being impaired, one may suppose by his excessive devotion of Jesus, he arranged to give 60 strokes one day, and 60 the next. My memory fails — perhaps Barton will one day oblige with his reminiscences — but I fancy the first day came so near killing him that he escaped the second. I remember one licking I got — on the legs, because flog- ging the …