Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1905 · PDF PAGE 89

Orpheus

…Is nor counted nor reckoned! Inconceivable hollow, Eternity’s womb! Cataclysmal they follow, Tomb hidden in tomb. Reeled off and unspun, Time’s fashion is done In the ultimate Abysses of fate. Eons they swallow, And swamp in the gloom, Where Eternities follow Their biers to their tomb. ORPHEUS O Mother, O hollow Sweet heart of the moon! O matchless Apollo That granted the tune! Time’s children follow The strings that commune With Nature well cloven that comes to the lyre’s lilt silver-hewn. OT O bays of the wind, And shoreland of Thrace! go

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1905 · PDF PAGE 87

Orpheus

ORPHEUS O girded and spanned By the deeds of time, Rocks shattered and planned In your depth: where climb The race and the land, And the growth sublime Of worlds—I invoke ye! Come forth, ye centuries! Come to the rhyme! THE CENTURIES How hardly a man , Though his strength were as a spring’s Shall stretch out his span To the width of my wings! The years are enfolden In my bosom golden, My periods Are the hours of the Gods. They have their plan In my seasons; all things Are woven in the span — Of the spread of my wings. My brazen gates cleft By s…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 90

Orpheus

… O mystical tune Of a magic litten Of music, the moon, The stars unsmitten, The sun, the unhewn Stones deeply bitten By runic fingers of time, where decrees of the Fates are written| Time listens, obeys me; All Nature replies ; Nought avoids me, nor stays me, Not checks, nor defies. Tribute she pays me From seas unto skies. But Death—shall he heed me or hear? shall he list to the lyre and arise ? O thou who art seated, Invisible king, The never-defeated, The shadowy thing! gI

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1905 · PDF PAGE 83

Orpheus

…e seven sweet strings! Advance and rebound! Be your pomp as a king’s! Girdled around With seasons and stings As a serpent’s encompassing Time. Come forth! on the heavy grey wings! Ye arbiter lords That sit as for doom, Bright splendour of swords Leaps forth in your gloom ! But stronger my chords Shall lift in your womb The love of your passage and time, immemorial ages, your tomb. : Ye linger for long, But ye pass and are done: 84

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1905 · PDF PAGE 71

Orpheus

…e voice of my voices Uncalled and unheard, No song that rejoices Of beast or of bird, No sound of my children sublime, But the spirit of time. Fear is his name, Nor flickers nor dies His blackening flame. Beware, were thou wise! Not him shalt thou hail from the dusk with thy breath ; His name—it is Death! | My seasons and years, Shalt thou traffic with these? Art thou Fate? Are her shears Asleep or at ease? Though Time were no more than the shape of thy glass— Beware! let him pass! ORPHEUS Not these do I fear, O Earth, for their peace. I cry ti…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 100

Orpheus

… vision laughterless! O shadowy tale! O brain that halts before its thought forgotten ! Once all ye knew me—ere the earth grew pale, And Time began, and all its fruit lay rotten, Once, when thou knewest me indeed, and fed At these strong breasts—Ah! but the days are dead ! Now, in the dusty corridors of Time, I am forgotten: Gaian language falters If I would teach thee half an hint sublime Shed of the rayless fire upon my altars. IO]

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1905 · PDF PAGE 36

Orpheus

…ss, fearless, Imperial, peerless, Creep I or climb. Nought withstands me, Bursts me or brands me; Nor Heaven commands me, Nor Space, nor Time. Above, the Supernal ! Below, the infernal! Of all am I master. On Earth, the diurnal! In all things eternal! Life, love, or disaster! Abiding unshaken, I sleep and I waken On wonderful wings ; In depth and in height, In darkness and light, In weakness and might, In blindness and sight, In mercy and spite, In day and in night, Averse or aright, For dule or delight, I am master of things. ORPHEUS O mother,…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 41

Orpheus

…ST So silent and wise In her cerement clothes, So secretly lies My soul in my snows; T awake, I arise, For my spirit now knows The first time in her eyes That a voice may unclose My petals: I hear it; I come; I clasp the warm ground In my passion profound. ORPHEUS In valleys heaped high, In drifts lying low, Swift slopes to the sky, Come forth to me, snow! 42

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1905 · PDF PAGE 46

Orpheus

THE TEMPEST Wide-winged, many-throated, Colossal, sublime, I come and am coated With feathers of Time. I hear the deep note, head My pinions to climb, The roar of devoted Large limbs of the mine That mocks the loud lords of Olympus; we mingle; I wake. I come with the sound of a snake. ORPHEUS O storm many-winded, O life of the air, Thou angry and blinded Hast sky for thy share. O mother deep-minded, My lyre to my prayer Responds, and the elements answer or ever my soul is aware. Ye powers of deep water And sea-running bays, Earth’s fugitive dau…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 7

Orpheus

… of Earth-Spirits Massed Semichorus f* of Living Creatures of Earth Chorus—The Earth . . . Str. 8 Orpheus in alternate invocation Ant. 8 Time— Semichorus a5 The Hours ” B® The Seasons— Semichorus a® Spring 99 p® Summer » > Autumn » 5° Winter Semichorus 7° The Years » 5° The Lustres Spirit Water . the five- Earth . . fold idea. Fire Semichorus e® The Centuries a’ Centuries Semichorus . vate sae # Eternity Str. y Orpheus Ant. y Death— (Suppressed antistrophe, Death being silent. His reply is really given in Books II., III., IV.) Parabasis: The Po…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 26

Orpheus

…ing only if my lover stay ; Listening to her breathing, Laughing, lover-weaving All the silken gold and glory of her head, Kissing as if time Forgot its steeps to climb, Made eternity’s, one with all the dead. Sirny CALLIOPE Listen, then listen, O Thracian ! Oeager lay on the lea: I, from my heavenly station ; I, from my house of creation, Stooped, as a mortal to be Passionate, mother and bride ; Flashed on wide wing to his side, Caught him and drew him to me. 27

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1905 · PDF PAGE 67

Orpheus

…eld | Are cancelled and expelled, And the miserable throes. All we are shapen fair In many forms of grace, But change is everywhere, And time is all our share And all the ways of space. One lives an hour of day ; One even man’s life exceeds ; One loves to chase and slay ; One loves to sing and play ; Each soul to his own deeds! A share of joy is ours, A double share of grief ; So sum the many hours In many hopes and powers, All powers except the chief. 68

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1905 · PDF PAGE 131

Orpheus

…And midmost hollow of earth, I followed Hamadryads’ feet That made at eve their mirth To where the streamlet wandered fleet To show what time was worth. I watched the waters wake and laugh Running o’er pebbly beaches, Writing amazement’s epitaph With freshets, turns, and reaches :— The only tale too short by half That nature ever teaches. Then growing grander as it swept Past bulrushes and ferns, 132

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1905 · PDF PAGE 136

Orpheus

… or died) Erect against the sky: Then plunged into the wheeling tide, And vanished utterly. “O shape half seen of love, and lost Beneath time’s sightless tide, What obolus of the vital 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 …

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1905 · PDF PAGE 54

Orpheus

… Still I had cleft me A way in her girth! I tune the loud lyre once again to the mother of men in her mirth. O mighty and glad In spring-time and summer! O tearful and sad When the sun is grown dumber, 55

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1905 · PDF PAGE 122

Orpheus

…d show Eurydice again amid her bowers, Forgetting, and myself again be born, Clasp her grave beauty in the middle corn, Forgetting also: Time as fallen snow Blotting the mind and memory that adorn At least our present littleness: nor hope Of larger excellence, extended scope, Shall help me here, forgetting: nothing skills Of this poor truth—to flatter with the trope ! Wooing in mockery !—nothing skills but this To raise her now, and resuspire the kiss, United by the splendour of the will’s Success—to marry, to be made of bliss, 123

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1905 · PDF PAGE 124

Orpheus

… 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 one mean earth, Would spoil the plan of the inane Abodes, 125

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1905 · PDF PAGE 99

Orpheus

Of time: the hateful laugh where whoredom trod ; The savage snarl of man against his friend :— How should he (such an one) perceive the end, Or listen to the voice of Nature, know it for the voice of God ? EPODE NATURE Lo! in the interstellar space of night, Clothed with deep darkness, the majestic spaces Abide the dawn of deity and light, Vibrate before the passionless pale faces Shrined in exceeding glory, eremite. The tortoise skies in sombre carapaces Await the expression and the hour of birth In silence through the adamantine girth. I rose…

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1905 · PDF PAGE 151

Orpheus

…dures; there is no lover, No loved one; all the ages cover These things from sight: but this abides Floating 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 …

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1905 · PDF PAGE 126

Orpheus

…green flower-lighted turf, and leap Into my body’s kisses, into sleep :— Sweeter this latter bridal than we found The first, now lost in time’s eternal deep. 127

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