Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1898 · PDF PAGE 42

Jephthah

…d arms most perdurable. I am lost In thought beyond all cost— Nay, but my spirit breaks the slender chain That held it down. The pain Of death is past and I am free. Nay, I, This body, dead, must lie Till Thou come home again, O soaring Soul. The gates supernal roll ! Flash through them, O white-winged, white-blossom ghost ! Ah, God! for I am lost. - [Jephthah remains motionless, [Morning dawns. Enter Jared, Soldters, Prophet. SOLDIERS. . Hail, captain! We are ready now for death, Or victory, if shining wings are fain To hover over dauntless he…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 66

Jephthah

…; Happy songs our love had made Ere the sun had sunk his fire, - In the moonrise fall and fade, And the dregs of our desire Fall away to death ; Tears divide our labouring breath That our sister—O our sister ! Moon and sun and stars have kissed her She must touch the lips of death, Touch the lips whose coldness saith : Thou art clay. Let us fare away, away To the ice whose ocean gray Tumbles on the beach of rock, Where the wheeling vultures mock Our distress with horrid cries, Where the flower relenting dies, And the sun is sharp to slay ; Wher…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 48

Jephthah

…erstood the victory. Enter Second Messenger. SECOND MESSENGER. Rejoice, O Israel, for this day hath seen Utter destruction overtake, and death Ride furious over, trampled necks of men Desperate in vain, and seen red hell gape wide To swallow up the heathen. Victory Swells the red-gleaming torrent of pursuit, And Israel shakes her lazy flanks at last A lion famished, and is greedy of death. CHORUS. O joyful day! And where is Jephthah now? | MESSENGER. Faint with the heat of a hard battle fought, But following hard after with the horse. For from …

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1898 · PDF PAGE 27

Jephthah

…ow me Through slippery ways of blood to Ephraim To beat with sturdy swords unwearying Our foemen to their Ammon, and to grapple With red death clutching at the throat of us, With famine and with pestilence, at last To reach a barren vengeance, and perchance An hundred of your thousands to return Victors—so best God speed us—and for worst Death round our cities horrible and vast, And rape and murder mocking at our ghosts ? A SOLDIER. Better they taunt our ghosts than us for cowards! Live through or die, I will have my sword speak plain

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1898 · PDF PAGE 11

Jephthah

… shall fathom it? | PROPHET. Thy help is from the hills and desert lands. CHORUS. Our help is from the hills: we know the Lord. PROPHET. Death rides most violently against the sun.

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1898 · PDF PAGE 12

Jephthah

…ng an olive-branch to us. PROPHET. The god has overcome me, I am silent. CHORUS. He lies as one lies dead; none wakens him. Nor life nor death must touch him now: beware! ELEAZAR. Beware now, all ye old wise men, of this. For high things spoken and unjustly heard, Or heard and turned aside, are fruitless words, Or bear a blossom evil and abhorred, Lest God be mocked : consider well of this.

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1898 · PDF PAGE 70

Jephthah

…all Israel go, Toward the hollows weird and white, Toward the sorrow of the snow ; To desolation black and blind They move, and leave us death behind. The Lord is great, the Lord is wise Within His temple to foresee

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1898 · PDF PAGE 46

Jephthah

42 JEPHTHAH. PROPHET. Thy spear shall turn against thyself, alas! But welcome, death, thou looked-for spouse of mine ! Thy kiss is pleasant as the shaded well That looks through palm leaves to the quiet sky. [ Dies. JEPHTHAH. Thou didst no evil in the slaying him, For God is a consuming fire; high zeal Against idolatry lacks not reward. And now the sun is up: for Israel, march! JARED. Good luck be with your spears ; and homecoming Gladden victorious eyes ere set of sun. [Exeunt Jephthah and Soldiers. Enter Eleazar, Ahinoam, Chorus of Elders. CH…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 28

Jephthah

24 JEPHTHAH. To these damned massacring invaders. Say, My fellows, will ye follow Jephthah? Hail! SOLDIERS. We follow Jephthah to the death. All hail! JEPHTHAH. Go then, refresh yourselves, and sleep to-night. I will send messages to their dread lord Demanding his fell purpose, threatening ‘ My present aid to you with men of valour Chosen of all your tribes, and charging him As he loves life, and victory, to content His army with their present brief success, Lest he pass by the barrier of our suffering, And find our wrath no broken sword, and f…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 54

Jephthah

…, with the flames Of dawn forth blushing through her flower-crowned hair. . CHORUS. Behold a virgin to the Lord! Behold a maiden pale as death, Whose glance is silver as a sword, And flowers of Kedar fill her breath, Whose fragrance saturates the sward, Whose sunny perfume floating saith : From my ineffable desire is drawn The awful glory of the golden dawn. Behold her bosom bare and bold Whose billows like the ocean swing! The painted palaces of gold, Where shell-born maidens laugh and sing,

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1898 · PDF PAGE 16

Jephthah

…rrow to one home of ours. Better bear the heavy hours Under God’s avenging breath, Better brave the horrid powers, Nor avoid the foreign death, Humbling all our pride before God’s most holy throne, abasing Every man’s strong soul, and facing All the heathen Ammon bore On the angry shore, Trusting to the mercy rare Of Jehovah, than to bare Hearts and bosoms to a friend

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1898 · PDF PAGE 26

Jephthah

22. JEPHTHAH. The people were sad for his wrath, The elders were bowed with despair, And Death was the piteous path ; With ashes we covered our hair; The voice of the singer was dumb, the voice of the triumph of prayer. But God had pity upon us, Our evil and fallen way; His mercy was mighty on us ; His lips are as rosy as day Broken out of the sea at the sunrise, as fragrant as flowers in May. Our sin was great in His sight: _ We chased from our gates our brother, We shamed his father’s might, We spat on the grave of his mother, We laughed in h…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 31

Jephthah

…mult awaken ; When foam by fresh foam overtaken Boils sanguine and fervent and free. For its sides are a million of paces; Its centre is Death as he stands Pale-horsed, where the iciest places Chill blood in the furious hands. He stands like a spectre, and urges The horsemen in thunderous surges On columns where blood not asperges The splashing of struggling bands. The sword is like lightning in battle, The spear like the light of a star; It strikes on the shield, and the rattle Of arrows is hail from afar.

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1898 · PDF PAGE 39

Jephthah

…ike light through the portals they bounded, Their lithe limbs with cruelty curled, And the noise of their crying resounded To kindle the death of the world. For the heaven at sunset is sundered, Its gates to the sages unclose,

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1898 · PDF PAGE 10

Jephthah

…ob us of our dearest. Woe on woe, The overwhelming summit of a wave Too black, too concentrate, too impious, And culminating in a double death, Hangs imminent to crush the slender sides And battered bulwarks of our state. O thou Whose hoary locks and sightless eyes compel Our pity and our reverence, and whose mouth Foams with the presence of some nearer god Insatiate of thy body frail, give tongue, If tongue may so far master deity As give his fury speech, or shape thy words From the blind auguries of madness. PROPHET. Ha! The rose has washed i…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 23

Jephthah

…us eyes, Nor smote us with the fury of His hand, Nor clouded over His mysterious skies, And storm and wind had no more might at all, And death and pestilence forgotten were, And angels came to holy men that call, And gracious spirits thronged the happy air; When God was very gracious to all folk, And lifted from us the Philistian yoke, And all the iron power of Edom broke, And all the Earth was fair! Now, seeing that we are sinners, wilt not thou Relent thy hateful brow, And bend on us a forehead full of peace, And bid thine anger cease, And sp…

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