Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1905 · PDF PAGE 148

Orpheus

… that first wonder of the kiss In its true self: how very love Is God, and hath its substance of Pure light: and how love hath its cause Beyond religions, worlds, and laws ; Is in itself the first: and moves All evolution, and disproves God in affirming God: all this In that one rapture of the kiss I knew, and all creation’s pain Fell into nothing in my brain, As I, remaining man, involved All life’s true purpose, and dissolved The phantoms (of itself create) In a mysterious sweet state, Wherein some tune began to move Whose likeness and whose …

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1905 · PDF PAGE 124

Orpheus

…ean glow; Thence into emerald and the golden light, Till ruby crowns the river’s living flow And glory of colour in the sun’s own flame— Beyond, to colours without sense or name, Impossible to man, whose vivid sight Would blast him with their splendour as they came Flashing through spiritual space, withdrawn Now, and now flung triumphant in the dawn Not of mere sun’s rise, but before the birth Of a new system on the unfolded lawn Of space beyond the sceptre of the Gods! I, seeing all this, would foil Time’s periods For one small woman on this o…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 147

Orpheus

…But winged against the black eclipse Of sense: my soul on wings did poise Her glory in the vast turquoise Of the whole sky: expanded far Beyond the farthest sun or star, Beyond all space, all time. I saw 148

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1905 · PDF PAGE 149

Orpheus

While the bright sounds are lifted up to spring Beyond this tide of being, Shadows and sense far fleeing Into a shadow deeper than the Ocean When passes all the mind’s commotion To a serener sky, a mighty calm emotion ! - The whole world fades, folds over its wide pinions Into a darkness deeper than its own. Silence hath shattered all the dream-dominions Of life and light: the grey bird’s soul is flown Into a soundless night, Lampless: a vivid flight Beyond the thrones and stars of heaven down hurled, Till the great blackness heaves An iron bre…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 84

Orpheus

…Ye are many and strong; I am stronger, and one! Come forth! I invoke ye, O years, in my evening orison. THE YEARS Crowned with Eternity, beyond beginning; Sandalled with wings, Eternity’s; the end Far beyond sight of striving soul or sinning; Ourselves see not, nor know, nor comprehend. Reeling from chaos, unto Chronos winning, Devoured of Him our Father and our friend, This is our life, lead winged or footed golden : We pass, and each of other is unbeholden. Ranged in dim spectral order and procession, We span man’s thought, we limit him in ti…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 74

Orpheus

…cross the land’s departed tune. The moon is up: the choral crowd of stars Shapen like strange or unknown animals, Move in their measure: beyond /Lolian bars The clustering winds, moving as nenuphars, Gather and muse before the midnight calls. The darkness is most deep in hollow dells. There, blacker than Cocytus, lurk the shades Darker than death’s, more terrible than hell’s, Uttering unwritten words: the silent wells Keep their sweet secret till the morning maids Bring their carved pitchers to the moss-grown side. For now beyond, below the eas…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 32

Orpheus

…Since Nature began Hath one cloven her core, Found the soul of her span ; No son that she bore Her spirit might scan ; But I, being born beyond Nature, have known her and yet am a man. Ye fieriest flowers, Life-stream of the world, In passionate bowers Of mystery curled, ct 33

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1905 · PDF PAGE 35

Orpheus

Exempt from the bond All others that binds, As a flowery frond The spark of thee blinds, Within and beyond As a thought of the mind’s In all, and about, and above! I invoke thee, my word as the wind’s. THE FIRE I, raging and lowering, I, flying and cowering, I, weaving and woven, Budding and flowering, Spiring and showering, Cleaving and cloven ! My being encloses Fountains of roses, Lilies, and light! I wrap and I sunder! I am lightning and thunder! The world-souls wonder At me and my might! All-piercing, all-winding, All-moving, all-blinding,…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 88

Orpheus

… (Whereof I am a second) Shall fall away And be no more reckoned; Shall fall into ruin. (Sad garden it grew in! ) Unguessed at, unknown, Beyond them alone, 89

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1905 · PDF PAGE 68

Orpheus

…’s central citadel. Whence we were drawn who knows? Of law or Gods or chance? But, as life’s river flows, What Sea shall clasp and close Beyond blind circumstance? Such little power we own Of vague experience, And instinct to enthrone The life’s mere needs alone, Nor answer “why” and “ whence. Nor wandering in the night Our minds may apprehend Reflecting in pure light Of soul, what sound or sight May lead us to some end. We hear the dim sound roll From distant mountains drawn, We follow, but no soul Guesses that silver goal, The sunset or the d…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 37

Orpheus

… adrift of the air. Their forces that wander No God-voice know they! Their bridals they squander! Unknown is their way! The sky’s heart? beyond her Sweet bosom they stray. Shall these then obey me and hear? . Shall the tameless ones hear and obey? From secretest places Whence darkness is drawn, Where terrible faces Enkindle the dawn, 38

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1905 · PDF PAGE 14

Orpheus

EXORDIUM FRoM darkness of fugitive thought, From problems bewildering the brain, Deep lights beyond heaven unsought, Dead faces seen dimly in rain ; From the depths of Mind’s caverns, the fire Reclaims the old magical lyre; The ways of creation are nought, If only, O mother, O Muse, I may measure Thy melodies in me again ! How wayward, how feeble the child Three watched from the stars at his birth ; Erato the fierce and the mild ; Polymnia grave ; and the girth Broad-girdled of gold and desire, Melpomene’s terrible lyre, That lifts up her life …

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1905 · PDF PAGE 136

Orpheus

…cost Remains, or may abide ? Or what perception memory steal, Once passed upon the whirling wheel ? “O hope half held. of love, and fled Beyond the ivory gate, A dream gone from the hapless head By fury of a fate! What image of the hope returns But stings with agony that which yearns? “© face half kissed in faith and fear, Eager and beautiful! Drop for mortality one tear! For life one smile recall! There is no passion made for me— Else were my water-well the sea.” Such tune my falling body snapped Within the sacred sides, While the warm waves w…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 137

Orpheus

…ge stones in many a space Of godlike rune and law. Such fancies as the fiery face Of living Art might draw. But rising up I lift my head Beyond the ripples clean : My arms with spray dew-diamonded Stretched love-wise to my queen That danced upon the light, and shed Her own sweet light between. But never a mortal joy might know, Hold never a mortal lover! Whose limbs like moonshine glint and glow, Throb, palpitate, and hover :— Pale sunrise woven with the snow Athwart a larchen cover! So danced she in the rainbow mist, A fairy frail and chaste, …

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1905 · PDF PAGE 130

Orpheus

…music toward Eurydice, Awake in day-dream all the ancient days, When love first blossomed on the springing tree ! Let me recall the days beyond regret, And tune my lyre to love, sharpen and set The strings again to the forgotten ways, That I may tread them over, and forget|! 131

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1905 · PDF PAGE 151

Orpheus

…oating above the whelming tides Of time and space: abides for ever Whether the lovers join or sever. There is no change: the love exists Beyond the moment’s suns and mists In me, abiding: and I see No lover in Eurydice, Save that her kiss awoke in me This knowledge, this supreme content, Annihilation of the event, The vast eternal element Of utter being, bliss, and thought, In dissolution direly wrought Of sense, identity’s eclipse, The shadow of a lover’s lips. The awful steel of Death divides The alternation of the tides Of consciousness, and…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 152

Orpheus

…le Set in Ionian waters, where the years Passed, one long passion, too divine for tears, Too deep for laughter: but on that divine Sense beyond sense, the shadow of the spheres Lost in the all-pervading light of love: That bliss all passion and all praise above ; Impersonal, that fervour of the shrine Changed to pure peace that had its substance of (153

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1905 · PDF PAGE 127

Orpheus

… throng When the swift sun leaps skyward? Let me speak Words rather of wisdom: hate may rage and wreak Vengeance in vain if wisdom smile beyond, Too high to care, too ultimate to seek. The bitterest sorrow of all sorrow is this : I had no time to catch one last long kiss, Nor bid farewell, nor lay one lily-frond Of resurrection for the sign of bliss, 128

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1905 · PDF PAGE 81

Orpheus

…age of sorrow Could learn its bitter lesson, and depart — Into some nightfall guiltless of a morrow, Into some cave’s unprofitable heart Beyond this curse of birth! O that dread night Could come and cover all, Even itself to fall To some abyss past resurrection’s might! For the old whispers of my old life call 82 :

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1905 · PDF PAGE 61

Orpheus

…ow cloven, A never-fading path of golden glory, Whereof the lone Leucadian promontory Holds one divinest gate: the other troven Far, far beyond in interlunar skies, Where the Himalayas stir them, and arise To listen to the song that swells our arteries. O moving labyrinth sun-crowned, dread maze Of starry paths, of Zeus-untrodden ways, Of mystic vales unfooted of the deep, Our mother, virgin yet in many places Unseen of man, beholden of the faces Only of elemental shapes of sleep 62

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