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Page 1 of 11901 · PDF PAGE 81
THE MOTHER AT THE SABBATH OME, child of wonder! it is Sabbath Night, The speckled twilight and the sombre singing! Listen and come: the owl’s disastrous flight Points out the road! Hail, O propitious sight! see! the black gibbet and the murderer swinging! Come, child of wonder and the innocent eyes! Come where the toad his stealthy way is taking. Flaps the bat’s wing upon thy cheek? How wise, How wicked are those faces! And the skies Are muffled, and the firmament is quaking. Spectres of cats misshapen nestle close, And rub their phantom sides …
1901 · PDF PAGE 18
…yond belief ! I am no saintly virgin wrapped in prayer, Nor is my life one river of clear water Drawn from the wells of God. You foolish child! My love for you you cannot understand, Nor the low motive—you have shown it me— Of this beginning of our talk. MADELINE. Say on! CORA, meaningly. Much less you understand the love I bear To Ulric! MADELINE gzves a little cry. Heart of Christ! it cannot be! | CORA. No, child; I tricked you. Is your secret out ?
1901 · PDF PAGE 17
…ng skies Not unfamiliar, through exulting gates— “ Lift up your heads,” I hear the angels cry ; “ Be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors. A child-heart seeks the Lover of the Child!” O meek and holy Jesus, hath Thy heart Yearned unto me, Thy maiden? For I knew A bliss so pregnant with the unforeseen As brought me to the very feet of Christ, Weeping. How clouded that mysterious Passion! JI fell a-weeping in my bed, Forgetting, or not knowing. For a fire Too perfect for my sinful soul to touch Gathered me closely in itself, to hide Its utter glory f…
1901 · PDF PAGE 23
… phrase !— So jest the matron newspapers. The end. Since then I lived, as I am living still, Wrapped in the all-absorbing love of him My child, my child! And now my selfishness Is shamed, and I have made the sacrifice To give this pure heart to that maidenly, And let mine old age grow upon my hair, Finding my happiness in seeing him The all-devoted, and in God’s good pleasure Have little children playing at my knees, That I may listen, in their innocent prayers, For Jesus’ voice. And I will never break The secret of his being to my boy Lest he …
1901 · PDF PAGE 82
…love mocks the melancholy hearse Dressed as an altar: is she nun or nurse, The priestess chosen of the half-formed faces ? Abbess, sweet child of the unsullied eyes! Why? To blaspheme! Sweet child, the dance grows madder. O I am faint with pleasure! Ah! be wise; One measure more, and then—the sacrifice ? What victim ? Guess—a woman or an adder? Nay, fear not, baby! In your mother’s hand You must be safe ? You trust the womb that bare you! Who comes toward us? Why, our God, the Grand! Our Baphomet! Come, baby, to the band: Our God may kiss you—y…
1901 · PDF PAGE 33
THE MOTHER'S TRAGEDY 19 CORA. All is too true—my own philosophy Mars my world’s wisdom. (Suddenly.) Can you tell me why I loved you as a child, and why I dare Now take your head between my hands and kiss Your forehead with these shameful lips of mine, These harlot lips, and kiss you unashamed ? ULRIC. Strange are these words, and this emotion strange! CORA. Strange is the truth, and deadly as an asp. ULRIC. Wear me no more with this anxiety. CORA. How can I speak? For this will ruin us. ULRIC. Unspoken, I demand thy heart of thee. CORA. My hear…
1901 · PDF PAGE 87
…s : we hate each other's sight. In sullen seas sinks our sun-flaming light, Darkness is master of the dream-dominions. Lo! in thy womb a child! How rotten Seems love to me who love it as my soul! The love of thee hath broken its control, The misconceived become the misbegotten. In thee the love of me is broken. Fear, hatred, pain, discomfort mock thy days; Thou canst disdain; these solitary bays Twine with decaying myrtles for a token.
1901 · PDF PAGE 62
…hour the foolish ones shall see their souls Shrink at my manifest deity. This night My spirit on my spirit shall beget Myself for my own child. Behold! they come, Fantastically moving through the dance, The many mourners, and the fatal bier Looms in the dimness of the anteroom. It is enough. My hour is at hand! CHORUS enter and circumambulate. Even as the traitor’s breath Goeth forth, he perisheth By the secret sibilant word that is spoken unto death. Even as the profane hand Reacheth to the sacred sand, Fire consumes him that his name be forgo…
1901 · PDF PAGE 69
… and illusionary forms, And dead men’s husks, and unsubstantial things. O mother, mother, mother! I arise! RATOUM. Horus, dread godhead, child of me, arise! Arise Osiris, to the sacred rites: And marriage-bed of fuller deity, Now, at the serpent-motion of this wand, Rise from the dead! Arise, dead Horus, rise To be Osiris. Isis speaks! Arise! | Zhe coffin ts opened. The leper ts raised out of zt swathed in bandages. Out of the sleep of ages wake and live! [ The wrappings fall off. THE LEPER. I am the resurrection and the death! [Ratoum falls ba…
1901 · PDF PAGE 67
… World’s world to fertilise. The lotos is afire for love, Its yearnings are immortal still ; But in its bosom, fed thereof, Lust, like a child, will have his will. Immortal fervour, strangely blent With mystic sensual sacrament, Fills up its cup; its petals tremble With faint desires that dissemble The fierce intention to be wed, One with the spring sun’s head. The fountains of the river yearn Toward the sacred temple-walis,
1901 · PDF PAGE 65
…e, upon the ground Let water of the fertilising Nile Be spilt, because these dark maternal breasts That gave their milk to that divinest child Are not yet full of the transcending stream That knows its fountain in my deity. 51
1901 · PDF PAGE 26
…nce, reflected thence, still and intense, into the firmament; Such silence as befits the event. Re-enter CORA. CORA. This is the hour, O child whom I have loved With love more tender than a mother’s love, Being thy friend; this moment have I sought, Awaiting always the propitious time, To speak some purpose grown more definite Than is our wont. We spent the honey days In gentle intercourse: high souls have stood Watching us drink from their crystalline stream Meandering through language: mighty kings Have listened as we read of their dead pomp;…
1901 · PDF PAGE 19
…ly.) I never guessed my own poor silliness Until that moment when you frightened me. CORA. And now you know how dear he is to you! Come, child, I love you both. Your happiness Is my life’s purpose. I have seen the truth Of this in you; it comes to every one. I know that he is half in love with you. Look once again as you did look just now, And he would die for you. O foolish girl! [MADELINE weeps guzetly for a little, CORA caressing her. MADELINE. Please let me go: you are too kind to me! CORA. Rest, sunny head! A little while to sleep, And the…
1901 · PDF PAGE 32
…tice falsehood not grown journeyman ? Then, had you fifty husbands, am I one, - Reared in the faith of high philosophy, Schooled from my childhood in the brotherhood Of poets, to descend to this absurd Quibble of tedious morality ? Shame not your truth with that ignoble thought! And also—tell me, once for all, the truth! [Aztterly. Say that you love him—it is on your tongue! CORA. Learn the momentous horror of thy birth! [A pause. ULRIC. I would not urge my suit against that plea, But—I have known you, and your own pure soul Should cast no doub…
1901 · PDF PAGE 22
…it a different father. Am I sure Myself? The shameful Mammon was his name, Glittering gold! I loved my opulence, Cursed my “misfortune.” Childbirth sobered me. I loved the child, the only human love I ever tasted, and I sacrificed The popularity, the infamy,
1901 · PDF PAGE 47
… Egyptian land, And broken priests of broken deities Discrowned this hour, look up, behold your god! For I am pregnant with my own son’s child, The fruit of my desire’s desire. Most pure, The single spirit of my godhead yearned From death to reap dominion, and from birth To pluck the blossom of its fruitful love, And be the sun to ripen and the rain To water it. My soul became the bride To its own body, and my body leapt With passion from mine own Imperial loins Begotten, and made strong from my own soul To answer it. I hail thee, son of mine, …
1901 · PDF PAGE 100
86 THE WHORE IN HEAVEN The chill damp chapel. God denied them not One chance of sight and love: their bed begot The loveliest child angels e’er prayed above, A maiden that an anchorite would love. She grew to beauty and to thoughts divine, Yet knelt each day in prayer to such a Thing As could not (so she knew) create the vine, The air, the linnet, and the water-spring. And every week some red-nosed ranter jarred Her tender ears—(yes, life was very hard }). Then she guessed Love. A village boy she took, And drew his soul out with her amorous loo…
1901 · PDF PAGE 49
…are dead.” Then there came forth a leper in the hall, In the most holy temple. So amazed All shrank. And he made prophecy and said: “The child that shall be born of thee is called Fear. He shall save a people from their sin; For the old gods indeed go down to death, But the new gods arise from rottenness.” Then said the goddess: “I indeed am pure In my impurity ; immaculate In misconception; maiden in my whoredom ; Chaste in my incest, being made a god Through my own strength.” The leper with smooth words Turned, and went laughingly towards the…
1901 · PDF PAGE 48
…Less kingly for the single flower of love! I hail thee, son, the secret spouse of me, King of my body and this realm to-day! For lo! the child leapt up within my womb, Hailing me mother, and my spirit leapt, Hailing him brother! Son and spouse and king, Exulting father of the royal soul That lies here, loving me, assume thy crown And sit beside me, equal to thy queen. For look ye to the burning south, and see The Sun grown amorous, and behold his fire Leap to my godhead. For without a man I single, I the mother, have conceived Of my own loins, …