FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION
Search the corpus.
Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.
24 matching pages
Page 1 of 21906 · PDF PAGE 33
Nay, let all light, all things, but cease! Sense is the seal of double rule. The million oracles that run Out of the mouth of God the fool are not myself. To nothing turn! To nothing look! Then, then !—discern Nothing, that one may one remain. So I am paid the horrible pain That these my brothers ordered me. I look upon their brows—I see Signs many and deep of torture past; A star, yon star, true peace at last. (There approach an aged man, riding upon an ass, with a led ass, and a Nubian servant.) The Adept. In the name of God, the One, the Gre…
1906 · PDF PAGE 111
…wont. Punch said to would-be bridegrooms: Don’t! Might I advise the same to those Shapeless and senseless embryos Who seek to live? Yes, God is wise Enough to set a snare for lies As well as truths. The soul content On earth in his own element Will be content from flesh released. But he who strives to be a beast Or strives to be a god; would gain Long bliss for a few hours of pain, Or struggles for no matter what, Continues. I would rather not. Vv. That puzzle’s grief I did not share Because on earth I did not care. I met a grave philosopher— H…
1906 · PDF PAGE 14
…haos? None. The soul rolls senseless as the sun. III. Existence, as we know it, spins A fatal warp, a woof of woe. There is no place for God or soul. Works, hopes, prayers, sacrifices, sins Are jokes. The cosmos happened so: Innocent all of guide or goal. Else, what were man’s appointed term? To feed God’s friend, the coffn-worm! Iv. Laugh, thou immortal Lesbian! Thy verse runs down the runic ages. Where shalt thou be when sun and star, My sun, my star, the vault that span, Rush in their rude, impassive rages Down to some centre guessed afar 6
1906 · PDF PAGE 38
…peech is wholly vain To carry meaning as it ought :— To enter into Jones’s thought I'd have to work with Jones’s brain. This is the High God’s cruel sport: To enter into Jones’s thought And make its inner meaning plain, I’d have to work with Jones’s brain. 3o0
1906 · PDF PAGE 94
…he mystery I mean. The dead were dancing with the worms; The live were laughing with their lemans; The dead-alive were making terms With God, and notaries, and germs, With house-agents and demons. 86
1906 · PDF PAGE 53
…; the goodliest prize were pain. Know that the utmost heaven is void Of aught save star or asteroid! Or, an it please thee, idly dream A God therein, a force supreme, 47
1906 · PDF PAGE 16
…e know them should be enough To glut our misery and our love. VIII. Why must despair to madness drive The myriad fools that fear to die? God’s but a fervid phantom drawn Out of the hasty-ordered hive Of thoughts that battle agony In the melancholy hours of dawn. When vital force at lowest ebbs Anaemic nerves weave frailest webs.
1906 · PDF PAGE 64
…nd Seeks a great light, a light sufficient, light Insufferably bright, So hidden for an hour: imagining This vast vain thing, We call it God, and Father. Empty hand And prayer unplanned Stretch fatuous to the void. Ah! men my friends, What fury sends This folly to intoxicate your hearts? Dread air disparts Your vital ways from these unsavoury follies, Black melancholies Sit straddled on your bended backs. The throne Of the unknown Is fit for children. We are too well ware How vain is prayer, How naught is great, since all is immanent, The vast …
1906 · PDF PAGE 95
…uman. ‘* Corpses have room, and men are jammed; Those offer food, and these are crammed :— And cheaper, too, is woman!” I, being neither God nor ghost, A mere caprice of matter, Hop idly in the hideous host, Content to chaff the uttermost, To cackle and to chatter. They bring their wreaths to deck the dead, As skipping-ropes the devils use them. One through the immortelles perks his head. [These sights to ghosties are as bread ; The luckless living lose them.] 87
1906 · PDF PAGE 116
…e’s fairly in it! Pumps out her fourteen babes a minute; Her (under chloroform) the voice Bids to be gleesome and rejoice: *© No sterile God balks ¢hime endeavour. This sort of thing goes on for ever.” XIII. I was a humorous youth enough On earth; I laughed when things were rough. 108
1906 · PDF PAGE 71
… Caliphs mete fantastic law And ebon eunuchs swing the sword So swift, so curved,—let voiceless awe Sit on the palace dome, to draw Some god’s destruction on its smiling lord! May many a maiden comely clad Revolve in convoluted curls, Till from each pliant pose I had (By virtue of her wondrous whirls) The illusion of a thousand dancing-girls! Let harlots robed in gold and green Sit slowly waving ivory plumes And wings of palm; the while their queen Lurks in some horror-house unseen, Damned to be smothered in divine perfumes! 63
1906 · PDF PAGE 109
…r luxuries are cheaply paid Since Satan introduced Free Trade; And necessaries—woe is me !|— Are furnished to the damned soul free. Ill. God’s hell, Earth’s heaven, are not so far. Dinner brought oysters, caviar, ) Anchovies, truffles, curried rabbit (Bad for the apoplectic habit) While ancient brandy and champagne Washed down the dainties. Once again 1 Money-changer. Mexican dollars were long the sole currency on the Chinese coast. 101
1906 · PDF PAGE 112
The same fool’s problem. I explain The simple state of things in vain. He chose to study God, and die in it. He made his bed, and he must lie in it. VI. After my dinner I debate (Urged to the task by habit’s Fate) The project of a poisoning. In hell one finds that everything Is easy. Poison to my hand; A cunning potion cool and bland Fit to administer the draught :— How like old times! I nodded, laughed, Poisoned my neighbour, a young girl Sent here for marrying an earl. Of course she did not die. But then On earth I never killed my men; They o…
1906 · PDF PAGE 115
From the peculiar standpoint of A god who says that he is Love. x. That was the poet Crowley’s point. I think 42s nose is out of joint; He bet on justice being done ; And here—it’s really rather fun !— The unlucky devil devil-spurred Writes, climbs, does Yoga like a bird; Just as he was before he ‘* died,” The ass is never satisfied. He has only been here forty days, And has already writ six plays, Made eight new passes, one new peak, Is bound to do two more this week, And as for meditation! Hard he Soars from Dhyana to Samadhi; Writes wildly s…
1906 · PDF PAGE 55
… the wheel may whirl again, That some dull devil in my ear may show me: ‘* For Johnthe Baptist’s head—so danced Salome!”? VIII. Then, in God’s name forbear! It does not matter. Life, death, strength, weakness, are but idle chatter. Nothing is lost or gained, we know too well. For heaven they balance us an equal hell. We discard both ; an infinite Universe Remains; we sum it up—an infinite curse. So—am I aman? I lack my wife’s embrace. Am I outworn? I see the harlot’s face. Is the love better and the knowledge worse? Shall I seek knowledge and c…
1906 · PDF PAGE 79
…rms Whereby some tall gray ship should drift Out to a windless, tideless sea Motionless from eternity. This then I seek, O woman-form! O god embowelled in curves of bronze! The shuddering of a sudden storm To mix me with thy minions The lost, who wait through endless night, And wait in vain, to see the light. For I am utterly consumed In thee, in thee am broken up. The life upon my lips that bloomed Is crushed into a deadly cup, Whose devilish spirit squats and gloats Upon the thirst that rots our throats. Gape wide, O hideous mouth, and suck —…
1906 · PDF PAGE 17
…matter and force and sense, No two alone. All’s one: the gold Of truth is no reward divine Of faith, but wage of evidence. The clod, the God, the spar, the star Mete in thy measure, as they are xi. So lifts the agony of the world From this mine head, that bowed awhile Before the terror suddenly shown. 9
1906 · PDF PAGE 74
…sober destinies Thought’s river shall its ripples run Into the one, the one, the one, the one. Bursting the universe, a grip Girds me to God; aha! the bliss! Begone, frail tortures wrung from whip, Weak joys sucked hard from leman’s lip, Ye are naught at all, are naught at all, in this! But brown Habiba’s fawn-wide gaze And white Zuleikha’s drowsy glance Woo me to waking unto day’s Delight from night’s unmeasured trance :— To drink, to dally, to desire, to dance. Ah! beautiful and firm your hips, Habib! ah! coolthsome your caress, Zuleikha! sof…
1906 · PDF PAGE 119
…all that melancholy host of bones; Fate’s principalities and Death’s dominions Echo the drear discord, the tuneless tones. Keep us, dear God, from ill, What time the Hell-Wind whistles shrill. The King-Ghost hath no music but their rattling ; No scent but death’s grown faint and fugitive; No light but this their leprous pallor battling Weakly with night. Lord, shall these dry bones live? O keep us in the hour Wherein the King-Ghost hath his power! III
1906 · PDF PAGE 110
… his blood. You see The fool was a damned soul like me; He had starved himself on earth in hope In heaven to banquet with the Pope, With God and Christ on either hand And all the angels’ choral band Playing sweet music. O the fool To treat earth as a baby’s school! 102