Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.
… Closer than Clodias clasp, Death had me down To his black heart, and fed upon my breath, So that we seemed a stillnesswhiter than The stars, more silent than the stars, a crown Of stars ! For in the icy kiss of death I found that God that is denied to man So long as love and thought And life avail him aught.
47 THE PRIESTESS OF PANORMITA HEAR me, Lord of the Stars ! For thee I have worshipped ever With stains and sorrows and scars, With joyful, joyful endeavour. Hear me, O lilywhite goat ! O crisp as a thicket of thorns, With a collar of gold for Thy throat A scarlet bow for Thy horns ! Here, in the dusty air, I build Thee a shrine to yew. All green is the garland I wear, But I feed it with blood for dew ! After the orange bars That ribbed the green west dying Are dead, O Lord of the Stars, I come to Thee, come to Thee crying. The ambrosial moon th…
…pleasure, grief and joy ? Is God a wanton boy To play with us so bitter cheap By such a jewelled light ? Be thine the power, Rose of the Stars, in this thy tortured hour When the wee lips that clung to thee are cold, To give the world a light of other gold From that men hoard, from that the suns afford In their implacable cars As they roll on impassive ; bid thy Lord (O Rose, Rose of the Stars !) And slave make known thy beauty and thy passion In his imperfect fashion, So that thy wisdom and thy strength are sold In every mart of earth ; So tha…
8 ROSA COELI And even did confirm the Bible tale By playing Jonah to your Jonahs whale. So, to the stars ! VIII A poet is at ease In all such voyages : Why, as a boy, I steered Up to the Scorpion and tweaked his tail, Plucked foolish Capricornus by the beard And kissed the Blessed Damozel that leaned upon the golden rail, Drank from the glad rim of the grail Or soothed the squally Twins (for they could weep !) And while I smiled In Heaven how safe I am ! Found myself in my little bed asleep Having been butted thither by the Ram. IX But in …
…k their mothers womb again, And are born the triple treasure, Peace and purity and pleasure. Hush, my child, and come aloft Where the stars are velvet soft !
…e skull Of humanity ; And the mad, malicious fool, Laughing brazenly, Gaily blows his bubbles high In the air apace. Will they reach the stars that lie At the end of space The shining globeO fragile veil ! Gives one leap supreme, Breaks and spits its soul out, frail As a golden dream. Groans the skull at every puff : Peace, I pray thee, peace ! The game is fierce and fond enough Will it never cease ? That which thy babes mouth, cruelly fain, Squanders in the scud, Monstrous assassin is my brain, My flesh and my blood !
…lack wildernesses To fiends insatiate caresses. Thou camest crowned and helmed and armed, Sworded, a mighty man of war : Swayed all the stars, aghast, alarmed As at the Thunderbolt of Thor ! The very aethyr rocked and shook At thine indomitable look ! [Here must we utterly restrict Our theological remarks. One whom not Heaven could contradict Says : Now, Sir, if you please, no larks ! Hence for third stanza (with a curse) I write instead this sorry verse.]
85 THE OCTOPUS THE red lips of the Octopus are more than myriad stars of night. The great beast writhes in fiercer foam than thirty stallions amorous. I would they clung to me and stung ; I would they quenched me with delight, The red lips of the Octopus. They reek with poison of the sea, scarlet and hot and languorous. My skin drinks in their slaver warm ; my sweats his rapt embrace excite. The heavy sea rolls languidly oer the ensanguine kiss of us. We strain and strive, we die for love ; we linger in the lusty fight ; We agonize ; our clutc…
…an ocean in anger With sleek and fantastical curls ; My lips like a sunset for languor, My skin like a moonrise of pearls. Ah ! but like stars in the deep Deep of the night, and asleep, Are the eyes that await thee, and weep.
…the paps With a golden girdle of glory, Dost thou wait me, thy slave who am, As a wolf lurks for a strayed white lamb ? The chain of the stars snaps, And the deep of night is hoary ! Thou whose mouth is a flame With its seven-edged sword proceeding,
…, the tiger, and the snake. I yield ; her soft, her strenuous breath Fills me and feeds my soul on death. O Sphinx, more sacred than the stars ! O beast ! O God ! thy passion chars This life. Beneath thy claws I writhe. For like a lion thou art lithe And like a bull exceeding strong. Thine eagles scream beats down my song. Ah slay me, slay me now ! Have done ! . . . The torture is but half begun.
…there screaming Between our knivesOr blood ! confess The truth ; or am I dreaming ? Yea ; floating on that cold pale flood Were two red stars of our own blood. We left our laugh, a smouldering coal Upon his naked middle : We ravelled out his love ; we stole His heart-strings for our fiddle : Strange tortured music from his soul We wrung, a writhing riddle ! Yea : our mouths took a subtle curve As we devoured him nerve by nerve. We danced, obscenely delicate, The dance of cup and thyrsus ;
…lch and snivel of Tennyson ! Hail and farewell, my brother ! I am he To plant in hell thy sunkissed sea-lily Thou has lived ! As I live, stars in midnights deep. Thou hast died. All die ; why boggle at the leap ? Serene and splendid blazed thy fire, nights sun : Thy task is ended, brother, thy work done. Drone on thy shore, no pæan stir thy surge ! A period to life, death, heaven, and hell ! There is no God : hail, brother ! and farewell !
…eth Like a slave under the whip ; And his tortured groans can only wreathe A sneer upon her lip. In the half-light her jewels flame Like stars that presage pestilence. O laughterless, O hideous game Of sterile smiles, of cold incense ! Her deaths-head grins the gargoyle shame Of her virile virulence. Now let the slave gasp out his soul In the agony supreme !
…urpass us.) And touched in our beatitude The peak of Mount Parnassus. Yea ; we did well to break the bars, And dwell one moment with the stars ! We played the ancient Comedy That Pan taught to the Satyrs.
…l An admirable miracle. Carved minute and clean, a key Of purest lapis-lazuli More blue than the blind sky that aches (Wreathed with the stars, her torturing snakes) For the dead gods kiss that never wakes ;
THE WIZARD WAY 27 Surely in the circle millions Of immaculate pavilions Flash upon the trembling turf Like the sea-stars in the surf Millions of bejewelled tents For the warrior sacraments. Vaster, vaster, vaster, vaster, Grows the stature of the master ; All the ringed encampment vies With the infinite galaxies. In the midst a cubic stone With the Devil set thereon ; Hath a lamb's virginal throat ; Hath the body of a stoat ; Hath the buttocks of a goat ; Hath the sanguine face and rod Of a goddess and a god ! Spell by spell and pace by pa…
… through the race of the luminous scud. Poison and poison and poison ! I quiver, Drenched with the hate of the horrible river O but the stars of it stagger and shiver ! Leave me in peace, O disaster of light ! Leave me to solitude, leave me to night ! Is there no moon to enkindle the height ? V See how the moon with her amrita dews Drinks up the death of the Star, and renews Life in cascades of peonian hues ! Nay, but she curves to arise, to increase ; Glamour on glamour to sicken and cease. How shall the warrior win to the peace ? Fade, O tho…
…ight praise Thee, though Thou damn. But oh ! not ever a soul hath heard Its echo, O Thou great I Am ! Lo ! Thou hast made the winds, the stars, The sun, the moon, the great grave earth ; Thou has touched the swaying nenuphars With music, and made godly mirth With corn and wine ; Thou hast made Thee man ; Thou hast loved and suffered, died and risen ; Buthath Thy mouth grown white and wan, Sucked out into that strange sweet prison Nay, Thou hast never kissed the mouth Of Dorothy ! as I ! as I ! Thou hast never felt its eager growth Upon my Lesb…
…s there uproll To cloud that mirror-soul of mine ? Above my head there screams a flying scroll Whose word burnt through My being as when stars drop in black disastrous dew. X For in that scroll was written how the globe Of space became ; of how the light