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ORPHEUS:
A LYRICAL LEGEND
ORPHEUS A LYRICAL LEGEND BY ALEISTER CROWLEY
IN TWO VOLUMES OF WHICH THIS IS VOLUME TWO EACH ONE CROWN
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CONTENTS
BOOK III.
Orpheus recounts his journey to Hades—“As I pass in my flight” Invokes the guardians—“Hail to ye, wardens” Continues his voyage—“The phantoms diminish” Invokes Hecate—“O triple form of darkness! Sombre splendour!” Continues his voyage—“The night falls back” Trio: Minos, Æacus, Rhadamanthus—“Substantial, stern, and strong” Orpheus’ plea—“O iron, bow to silver’s piercing note!” Trio: Minos, Æacus, Rhadamanthus—“Brethren, what need of wonder” Orpheus continues his voyage—“Ah me! I find ye but ill counsellors” Invokes Hades—“Now is the gold gone of the year, and gone” Invokes Persephone—“In Asia, on the Nysian plains, she played” Persephone awakes—“Ah me! I feel a stirring in my blood” Orpheus pleads with her—“And therefore, O most beautiful and mild” Persephone invokes Hades—“Ah me! no fruit for guerdon” Orpheus invokes the Furies—“In vain, O thou veiled” Septet: The Furies, Orpheus, Hades, Persephone, Echidna—“Ha! who invokes? What horror rages” Orpheus invokes Hermes—“O Light in Light! O flashing wings of fire!” Orpheus’ song of triumph—“The magical task and the labour is ended” Continues to recount his journey—“So singing I make reverence and retire” Sings his triumph—“O light of Apollo” Sings, but with misgiving—“Alas! that ever the dark place”
BOOK IV.
Company of Mænads—“Evoe! Evoe Ho! Iacche! Iacche!” Song—“Hail, O Dionysus! Hail” “Evoe Ho! Give me to drink” Hymn to Dionysus—“Hail, child of Semele” “He is here! He is here!” Dionysus—“I bring ye wine from above” Mænads—“O sweet soul of the waters! Chase me not” Orpheus his spell—“Unity uttermost showed” His allocution—“Worship with due rite, orderly attire” His hymn to Pan—“In the spring, in the loud lost places” His alarm—“What have I said? What have I done?” Lament for Orpheus—Quartet: a Spirit, the River Hebrus, Calliope, the Lesbian Shore— What is? what chorus swells” Sappho’s song—“Woe is me! the brow of a brazen morning” Duet: Calliope, the Lesbian Shore—“Silence. I hear a voice” Finale. Nuith—“Enough. It is ended, the story”
LIBER TERTIUS VEL LABORIS
TO THE MEMORY OF IEHI AOUR,
WITH WHOM I WALKED THROUGH HELL, AND COMPELLED IT
Neither were his hopes frustrated: For having appeased them with them melodious sound of his voice and touch, prevailed at length so far, as that they granted him leave to take her away with him; but on this condition, that she should follow him, and he not to look back upon her, till he came to the light of the upper World; which he (impatient of, out of love and care, and thinking that he was in a manner past all danger) nevertheless violated, insomuch that the Covenant is broken, and she forthwith tumbles back again headlong into Hell.—The Wisdom of the Ancients.
Moody Pluto winks while Orpheus plays.—Rape of Lucrece.
ORPHEUS TRAVELS TO HADES
As I pass in my flight On the awed storm cloud, Steeps steeper than sleep, Depths deeper than night, I have furrowed and ploughed (Deep calling to deep!) Through the spaces of light, The heads of them bowed For the fears that weep, And the joys that smite, And the loves disallowed. They are risen; they leap; They wing them in white, Crying aloud Words widowed that keep The frost of their fires forgotten and faded from Memory’s steep.
As I pass in my glory O’er sea and land, I smite the loud tune From a fervid hand, By the promontory, The mountainous moon. Vivid and hoary, Twin birds, as I hark Take fire, understand The ways of the dark, As an angel did guide me, Waving the brand Of the dawn’s red spark. My measures mark The influence fine Of the voyage divine Of the airy bark Wherein I travel O’er mountain and level. The land, and the sea, And the beings of air, And the lives of the land, And the daughters of fire, And the sons of the Ocean, Come unto me; My chariot bear, My tunes understand, My love desire, Share my emotion. They gather, they gather, Apollo, O father! They gather around; They echo the sound Of the tune that rejoices, The manifold measure Of feet tuned to voices Of terrible pleasure. We pass in our courses Above the grey treasure Of seas in Earth’s forces, Her girdle, her splendour. We bridle the horses Of sea as we lend her Tunes subtle and tender To sink in her sources. The air’s love? We rend her! We pass to the West, We sink on the breast Of the Ocean to rest.
As I pass, as I madden In fury of flight, The sea’s billows gladden Invoking the light. The depths of her sadden Not seeing the sight Of the glorious one, Whose steed is the Sun, Whose journey is certain, Who speeds to the gate, The visible curtain Of visible fate. My soul takes no hurt in Their gloom: I await The portals to rise In the desolate skies. I trust to my song Irresistibly strong To sunder and shatter Those towers of matter. They rise! Oh! They rise, The terrible towers Of Hades: they lift Across the white skies Those terrible-cliffed Rocks, where the hours Beat vainly: where lies The horrible rift Of the earth’s green bowers Where the wan ships drift, And the sun’s rays shift, And the river runs Whose banks have no flowers, Whose waves have no suns. Sheer to the terror Of heaven, the walls Strike; and the mirror Of water recalls No truth, but dim error. The soul of me falls Down to the glamour Of dream; and fear Beats like a hammer. Here! it is here! Lost are my friends; The elements shrink Where the life-world ends On the icy brink Of the sunless river; Ends, and for ever!
I pass to the portals Of death in my flight. I sound at the gates. I call the immortals Of death and of night. I call on the Fates By the summons of light. The gates are rended; The rocks divide; My soul hath descended Abreast of the tide. I, single and splendid, Death have defied! I pass by the terrible gates and the guardians dragon-eyed.
I thunder adown The vast abyss. (The journey’s crown Is a woman’s kiss!), What terrors to master! What fear and disaster To gain the renown And the fadeless bliss! I thunder aloud On the rocks as I fly, Borne on a cloud In the gloomy sky. Shaped like a shroud, Draped like a pall, I shrink not; I fall To the blackness below With my soul aglow. No taint of a fear! For I know, I know Eurydice near, Eurydice here! The purpose divine Thrills my soul as wine. Now I pass to the soul of the dark, confronting the innermost shrine.
Hail to ye, warders That guard the borders Of Hades! All hail to ye, dwellers of night! But I am the soul In a man’s control. Ye have nought to do with the dweller of light!
Hail to ye, hail In the hollow vale, Your weapons are lifted against me in vain. My lyre shall charm ye, My voice disarm ye, For I am the soul overshadowed of pain!
Hail to ye, wardens Of Death’s grey gardens! O flowerless and vineless your bowerless vale! But I must alone To the wonderful throne. Let fall the vain spears, shadows! Hail to ye! Hail!
The phantoms diminish, The shadows fall back. Lost in the vision In fires that finish Stark and black With lust and derision; And all the illusion Is fallen to the ground. The warders are beaten; They go in confusion; Their place is not found. The air hath eaten With wide-gaping jaws A furious folk. Lost is the cause In Tartarean smoke. I, through the wall Of impassable gloom, Apart from the sun, Pass as a ghost, Bearing the lyre. The sad notes fall To the sorrowful womb; One after one They leap as a host With weapons of fire On a desolate coast, Where love is lost And the bitterness clings of fear, and the sadness dogs of desire!
Thrice girded with brass, Thrice bound with iron, The gate is in three Pillars of gold. But I will pass (My heart as a lion, My lyre as a key!) To the gates of old, To the place of despair And the walls of dread, The halls of the doomed, The homes of the dead, The houses where The beautiful air Is as air entombed. Nothing can shake Those terrible walls. No man can wake With silver calls The home of the lost and the lone, the gate of the Stygian thralls.
But thou, O Titan! O splendour triform! Gloomiest dweller Of uttermost night! My journey enlighten! O soul of the storm! Waker and queller Of sombre delight, Hecate! hearken The soul of my prayer! Glitter and darken Through sulphurous air! Let the sacrifice move thee to joy, the invoker thy glory declare In words that shall please Thy terrible peace, O speedy to save, In flames of fine fire that bedew the deepest Tatarean cave!
[Invoking Hecate] O triple form of darkness! Sombre splendour! Thou moon unseen of men! Thou huntress dread! Thou crownèd demon of the crownless dead! O breasts of blood, too bitter and too tender! Let me the offering Unseen of gentle spring Bring to thy shrine’s sepulchral glittering! I slay the swart beast! I bestow the bloom Sown in the dusk, and gathered in the gloom Under the waning moon, At midnight hardly lightening the East; And the black lamb from the black ewe’s dead womb I bring, and stir the slow infernal tune Fit for thy chosen priest.
Here where the band of Ocean breaks the road Black-trodden, deeply-stooping, to the abyss, I shall salute thee with the nameless kiss Pronounced toward the uttermost abode Of thy supreme desire. I shall illume the fire Whence thy wild stryges shall obey the lyre, When thy Lemurs shall gather and spring round, Girdling me in the sad funereal ground With faces turnèd back, My face averted! I shall consummate The awful act of worship, O renowned Fear upon earth, and fear in hell, and black Fear in the sky beyond Fate! I hear the whining of thy wolves! I hear The howling of the hounds about thy form, Who comest in the terror of thy storm, And night falls faster ere thine eyes appear Glittering through the mist. Of face of woman unkissed Save by the dead whose love is taken ere they wist! Thee, thee I call! O dire one! O divine! I, the sole mortal, seek thy deadly shrine, Pour the dark stream of blood, A sleepy and reluctant river Even as thou drawest, with thine eyes on mine, To me across the sense-bewildering flood That holds my soul for ever!
The night falls back; The shadows give place; The threefold form Appears in the black, As a direful face Half seen in the storm. I worship, I praise The wonderful ways Where the smitten rays Of darkness sunder. The hand is lifted; The gates are rifted; The sound is as thunder! She comes to the summons, Her face as a woman’s, Her feet as a Fear’s, Turned back on her path For a sign of wrath:— She appears, she appears! I step to the river. The lyre-strings quiver; The limbs of me shudder; So cold is the mist; So dark is the stream; So fearful the boat; So horrid the rudder; So black is the tryst; So frightful the beam; So fearing to float; The steersman so dread, The shadowy shape of a ghost that guides the bark of the dead!
Agèd and foul, His locks wreathe about him. Horrid his scowl! Haggard his soul! My songs control While they fear him and doubt him. I step in the boat, And the waters ache, And the old boards shake. I shall hardly float, So heavy the soul Of a living man On those waters that roll Nine times around The fatal ground; Yet still to my singing we move on the river Tartarean.
So darker and colder The stream as we float: Blacker and bleaker, The mist on the river! Stronger the shoulder Impels the sad boat. Sadder and weaker Shudder and quiver The notes of the lyre. Quenched is my fire In the fog of the air. Dim my desire Cuts through the snare. The cold confounds me; The mist surrounds me; Life trembles and lowers; Earth fades from my life. The love of my wife, The light of the flowers, Earth’s beautiful bowers, Pass, and are not. I am awed by the soul of the place, the hopeless, the desolate spot.
Here is the wharf Wearily standing, Misshapen and dwarf, Well fit for such landing! Darker the bloom Of the night-flowers glows, Shadowing the tomb, The indicible woes. Dark and unlovely the cypress still grows Deformed and blistered, Stunted and blackened, Where the dead gleams glistered, The dusk-lights slackened. Such is the shore Who reacheth may never Return o’er the river! Here pace evermore The terrible ghosts Malignant of men, Whose airless hosts In wars unjust Went down to the den; Whose fury and lust Turned poison or steel On their own bad lives. Here whirls the grim wheel Where the dead soul strives Ever to climb To the iron nave, Find Space and Time, Or a God to save, Or a way o’er the wave. The Fate contrives That he never thrives. Revolving anon, The gleam is gone, And the shadowy smile Of Hecate darkens. My sad soul hearkens; Moves fearfully on:— O place of all places discrowned! Lamenting, I linger awhile! But fronting me tearful, Me full of lament, Shoots up the fearful Den of the hound. Ages they spent, Gods, in the graving That cavern profound, That temple of hate Of horror and craving:— O who shall abate The moaning, the raving? Dark the dull flame Of the altar, the flood Of the black lamb’s blood! But who shall proclaim That his soul can descry The depth of that cavern immense where the guardian of Orcus may lie? Sleepest thou, devil? Monster of evil! Spawn of Typhon By Echidna’s lust! The hateful revel In blood and dust! The obscene crone And the monster’s terror! The hideous thrust Of an unclean thirst In the halls of error! Expunged and accurst, A lapping of hate, A bride-bed rotten, And thou, miscreate And misbegotten!
O Hecate, hear me! The terrors awaken, The cavern is shaken With horrible groanings. Cryings and moanings And howlings draw near me. I tremble, I fear me! My lyre is forsaken. The heart of the hollow Is helpless to bear The notes of Apollo Through Stygian air.
But heavier shrieking Revolves and resounds In the ghastly profounds; And the voice unspeaking Of the hound of the damned Runs eager, and bounds, Malignantly crammed In my ears, and the noise Of infernal joys In the houses of sin:— Let me pass to a direr place, to the terrors unspoken within!
Dead silence succeeds The sound of the prayer. Again the loud lyre Shudders and bleeds In the desolate air With a sound as of fire! The hound recedes; But the gates stand there, Barring desire, Barring the way Of the dead unburied, Unshrived, and unblessed; They stand and pray In legions serried, Beating the breast, Tearing the hair, Rending the raiment. There is none to care, No golden payment Availeth at all. There is none to call; There is none to pity: They stand in their pain At the gate of the city. There is none to feel Or give relief; They are lost; they are vain; They are eaten of grief. They are sore afraid, They are weary with care. There is none to aid. There is none to pity. They wail in despair At the gate of the city.
But I, shall I halt At the thrice-barred portal In the lampless vault, I, half an immortal? By love of my mother, By might of my lyre, By Nature’s assistance, I, I, not another Demand my desire, Rebuke your resistance, By mighty Apollo Whose power yet abides, Though his light may not follow Through Stygian tides! By my power over things Both living and dead, By my influence splendid In heavenly court, The song of me springs. My favour is dread. Be your portals rended! Your bolts be as nought! The ethereal kings Encompass my head. My soul hath transcended The limits of thought! Unbar me the gates! Revolve me the hinges! Mine be the Fate! Mine be the springes Wherein ye have taken The spirits forsaken! But I, shall I quail at a nod? Shall I fail for a God? Is the soul of me shaken?
Darklier winding And steeper the way, Baffling and binding Eyes used to the day. Bocks cloven by thunder And shattered by storm Awry or asunder Rise and reform In marvellous coils Round the adamant road Whose tangles and toils Lead on the abode, Where dwell in the light Of justice infernal The judges that smite, That judge men aright, Whose laws are eternal! Those kings that in reigning For bribing or feigning Swerved never an hair From justice and truth; Turned never a care To wrath or to ruth; Did justice, and died.
Thither I haste To face the austere Faces of peace. Shall the lyre cease? Its music be waste? Themselves not hear? I stride to the presence and sing: and my soul is not conquered of fear.
Now the road widens and grows darker still As if the shadow of some ancient tower Cast its deep spell on the reluctant will.
Still tortuous winds the deep descent; the hour Lies bitterer on my soul: I fear to fail, To loose in vain the lyre’s dissolving power
On the white souls armed in that triple mail Of justice, virtue, truth: percipience Beyond the mute and melancholy veil
That covers from the drowsy eye of sense The subtle thought that hides behind the mask. I fear indeed: but now the soul intense
Of truth precedes me and informs the task Of the steep ways: I gladden and go on Ready to sing, to answer, or to ask
As all may happen: now the stern light shone Vivid across the blackness, and the rock Recedes: the narrow stair is changed and gone
And the wide air invades: a mighty shock To my numbed senses void of vital air And to my lure reverberate to mock
With changing echoes and discordant, where The dome reached up, almost to earth, so high Rolled back the pillars and the walls, aglare
With iron justice’ frightful symmetry Blazoned in blood-like flame, gushing from springs Unseen, unguessed, incredible! There fly
The dreaded banners of the demon kings In fearful colours, and the vast inane Dome catches music from my mouth, and rings
Back iron curses to the blessings vain I pour in desperate fervour from the lyre. So, baffled by the echoes of hell’s pain,
Blinded by grisly glamour of hell’s fire, I take my refuge in the solitude And grandeur of that irony of ire,
That mockery of mercy: thus I brood Apart, alone, upon the cause of Things And wait those fearful Three. A lifeless mood
Stirs my grey being: ay! no passion springs In flowerless halls as these: awhile the mind Wanders on void unprofitable wings
No whither: gains new strength at last to find Custom breed sight and hearing: in the hall The sounds grow clear, the black fires fail to blind.
I see the mighty buttress of the wall Lost in its mighty measure: hear again The lyre’s low notes and light distinctly fall
A gentle influence in the place of pain. Oh now the central glory of the place Falls splendid on the unbewildered brain,
And I am found contemplating a face More passionless than mortals’: central sits Throned on pure iron, with brass for carapace,
Minos: and either side of him befits The mighty Rhadamanthus throned on gold And canopied with silver: sternly knits
His brows the awful Æacus, in cold Splendour of justice throned on carven lead; And o’er his head twin dragons bend and hold
A cobra’s hood made of some metal dread Impossible on earth: how calm, how keen Flash their wise eyes, those judges of the dead,
In silent state: how eager, how serene Are the broad brows: the heart shrinks up and sinks, Seeing no gallery to slip between
And pass those agèd ones—oft a man thinks He faces truth! I know this hour, alas! That face to face with naked truth he shrinks.
His web of woven fiction may not pass (He who believes it to be truth) with them Who see his mind as though it were a glass
Without a shadow. Yet the ninefold gem And million-facet glory of my song Glittering, made splendid in the diadem
Of flashing music shall assoil the wrong, A finer truth interpret. Though the heart And core of music hold a poisonous throng
Of lies—yet, sing it to sufficient Art, The lie abolishes itself—the tune Redeems the darkness—the keen flashes start
Of truth availing though the midnight moon Darken, the stars be quenched in utter cloud, And the high sun eclipsed at very noon.
So flash I back the glory calm and proud Irradiating the Three. So shall my lyre Sweep the vast courts with acclamation loud
Of splashing music, of exulting fire That revels in its penetrating cover Of azure life that smites its flickering spire
Of sworded splendour inwards, to discover Not justice, not discernment, not desire, Not passion, but the sheer will of a lover!
Minos Substantial, stern, and strong, Who lifts an alien lyre? Confounds our echoes dire With strange and stubborn song?
Æacus Here in the House of Dole Where shadows hardly dare Stand, who doth deem to fare Forth from the outer air Mortal, a strenuous soul?
Rhadamanthus The large and lordly land Fertile of earth hath sent With dolorous intent Some shape or element. What spell of might hath rent The veil of Hell, and bent Death’s purpose to his hand?
Minos What shaft from the bow of Apollo?
Æacus What quiver of wonder Hath cleft the black walls of the hollow?
Rhadamanthus What terror?
Minos What thunder Hath shaken Hell’s gates to the base?
Æacus Hath mockèd the guards to their face?
Rhadamanthus Hath rent him asunder The portals of Dis in his wrath?
Minos Hath made for his will An arrow of light for his path?
Æacus Left stagnant and chill The waters of Styx unappeased? The keys of our prison hath he seized,
Rhadamanthus A mortal!
Minos An ill Most alien to Heaven, by Zeus!
Æacus But impiety’s doom, By Poseidon, shall fill for his use No well-omened tomb.
Rhadamanthus By Hades, our dogs let us loose! Let death in the gloom Bring peace to the Hall of the Dead!
Minos A passionate being! No weal to the light of his head In the place of the seeing!
Æacus Awake, wild justice of dread! Lest shadows be fleeing In fear of the portent to lurk In a deeper-detested Cave, ere we wake to the work.
Rhadamanthus Black snakes many-crested, Arise! lest the calm of the murk From our places be wrested.
Minos Who art thou?
Æacus What ails thee to irk From earth tender-breasted To the milkless dugs of the grave And the iron breasts of the pit?
Rhadamanthus Can a bodily presence save Against a shadowy wit?
Minos Thy hope doth dwell, O slave, Where thy mother fashioned it, Oh heart of a fool, in thy breast.
Æacus Away, away to the skies!
Rhadamanthus That our dead may take their rest.
Minos Arise to the air, arise!
Æacus Away to the mountain crest!
Rhadamanthus Veil, veil from the awful eyes!
Minos Endure thy heart as it may, And steel thine heart, Thou shalt hear and know and obey As I say “Depart”; Lest the arrow find its way And the sternly-shapen dart.
Æacus A second our justice waits.
Rhadamanthus It falleth anon.
Minos O fool of hopes and hates Arise and begone!
Æacus O toy of the mirthless fates! Who art thou to con The mysteries of the dead in the back-souled bastion?
Minos, Æacus, Rhadamanthus Away! away! to the light of day! Now as it may: then as it must. We are loath to pardon, and loath to slay, Void of greed and anger and lust,— But we are iron and thou art clay; We are marble and thou but dust.
Orpheus O iron, bow to silver’s piercing note! O marble, see the shape of ivory! My justice fountains from a sweeter throat My death is bound beyond eternity.
O wise and just, hear ye the voice of man, Not seeking to involve in woven spells Or trickery the decree Tartarean, By words to blink that justice which is Hell’s!
I came indeed before this awful throne To seek a party favour, but I wait Shuddering and silent, stedfast and alone, And change my music at the call of Fate.
For while ye spake in tumult, in this ear A music rang from earth’s remotest mine, From star and comet, flaming wheel and sphere, From Hell’s deep vault and from the House divine.
A voice diverse, a voice identical Called me this hour from bitterest woes and black, Constraining eloquence and mighty thrall Of cosmic agony, and wrung me back
From my poor plea to challenge in my song The whole domain of deeply-seated law, Launch thunders not Olympic at the strong Bars of the Order backed with strength and awe
That men call Will of Zeus: the after scheme And primal fate and most primoridal plan Shaped from the earth’s first protoplasmic dream Up to the last great mischief that is man.
All this I challenge: that the suns and stars Work in due order and procession meet Without caprice in viewless, changeless bars, Nor self-determinate in their wingless feet.
All nature and all consciousness and thought He hath thrown asunder and divided them; Fixing a gulf of agony athwart, Where rolls a tide no soul of man may stem.
Himself fixed high, he mocked us with his name Of “reconciler,” and of “one beyond all”; And cast his shadow to the deep, to shame That oneness in its own division’s thrall;
So that Himself appears in cloud and fire Distorted in the world’s distorted mirror; And dark convulsion and confusion dire Stands for his form of error and of terror.
But I perceive, I Orpheus, Lord of Song, And every Lord of Song that me shall follow Down steeps of time’s own agony and wrong, Shall see the lightning bridge the dreadful hollow
With jagged flame of master-music, hear The blind curse thunder forth against in vain When the swift glory of the rolling sphere Of song pours forth its utterance, keen with pain,
Mad with delight, and calm beyond woe and pleasure. Yea, every son of this my soul shall know In the swift concourse of his music’s measure One thing impatient of this to and fro
March of hell’s dancers. I perceive a key To lock the prison of the world on him That built the iron walls and made decree Long past in æons now grown gray and dim,
Like halls ancestral whence their folk have fled, The marbles all are broken, and the weeds Grown o’er the bones of the unquiet dead, And time’s remorse avails not on its deeds.
I see that time is one: future and past Are but one present; space is one, the North And South and all the sixfold shame holds fast No more: the poet’s fiat hath gone forth
And tamed the masters of division. Me Nor sun can burn, nor moon make mad, nor time Alter: I drown not in the deepest sea, Nor choke where icy mountain ridges climb
The steeps of heaven: but these, these children, cry Their bitter cry for justice. Mighty Ones, Lords of the Dusk, incline ye, mercifully, Rightly, to misery of all stars and suns
And planets and all grains of dust that sorrow— Hark! from grim Tartarus, most doleful bound, Their throats of anguish notes of triumph borrow At my loud strain’s unprofitable sound.
For who are ye? Poor judges of the dead, In your stern eyes the sadness is mine own, Mingled with sense that all your forces dread Are vain to take the spirit from one stone.
I would have called to ye in wild strong joy; “Arise, O Lords of Justice, and be girt With lightnings, and be ardent to destroy This Fool’s creation and to heal its hurt
With swift annihilation!” Ye are vain, Alas! poor powers! But yet the damned rejoice Hearing the splendour, prophet in my strain, And certain comfort in my mighty voice.
For this shall be, that in the utter end Shall be an end, that in the vast of time Shall come a ceasing, and the steel bar bend Of the God’s will, himself from his sublime
Pinnacled house in heaven headlong cast Like his own thunder to the abyss of nought When space and time and being shall be past, And the grim thinker perish with his thought.
Therefore I leave in hands unshakable The destinies of being, and care not For all the miseries of the damned in hell, Or the vain gods’ unenviable lot.
I leave the cry of chaos, and recall My private pang and woe particular, One drop of water by mischance let fall From some white slave’s divinely carven jar.
O Lords of justice, universal woe Hath yet its shadows in a singer’s soul, He feels the arrow from a party bow Who yet hath strength to struggle with the whole.
I love my wife. The many-coloured throne Of Grecian meadows hath nor charm nor lure Now she is gone. Lamenting and alone My dulled heart aches, most that it must endure.
Give this decree, O masters! Few the days And light the hours since Heracles descended The dusky steep, the intolerable ways, And one prey—Theseus—from your prisons rended
By might of godhead and the skill of man. But now with music from a Muse’s breast Sweetened with milk of tenderness, I scan Your eyes with hope, and with a man’s unrest
And a man’s purpose I appeal. Be just, O ye whom greater justice baulks and bars! Return my lover from the unkind dust To the sweet light of the eternal stars!
Be kind, and from the unjust place of fear Return by kindness her, the innocent one, From the grey places to the waters clear And meadows fair, and light of moon and sun!
Relent. Reverse the doom. I see your eyes Quiver despite ye: but your hands ye wring; Little by little bitter tears arise Like stubborn water from a frozen spring,
And deep unrest is seated in your limbs. Ye pity me. Ye pity. Mute and weak With the long trouble of persistent hymns I bow myself and listen while ye speak.
Minos Brethren, what need of wonder That Hell is burst asunder Shaken from base to brow, as if with Zeus’ own thunder? What wonder if our peace Broke, and our mysteries Quaked at the presence of these solemnities?
Æacus Child of the earth and heaven, Our spirits thou has riven With words we must admit, with power of song—whence given? Neither of God nor man, Thy song’s amazing span Hath caused strange joy among the woes Tartarean.
Rhadamanthus Never in the centuries Till godlike Heracles Burst the wild bonds, hath mortal found the fatal knees; Nor hath the bitter cry Of worlds in agony Answered the groans of those who weep, and cannot die.
Minos Iron of heart and strong, We also suffer wrong. We know these words are just. We avail not. Though thy song Were the sole word of Zeus, Should that avail to loose The bands of being firm, invulnerable dews Tincturing its bitter brass, Shielding its vital mass From every word that cries, “Thus, and thy day shall pass.”
Æacus Typhon! Typhon! Typhon! Heard ye that awful moan Leap through the blackness from the miserable throne? Vain as each pallid ghost, Where is thy fatal boast, Destroyer named of old on Khem’s disastrous coast? Old power of evil curled Below the phantom world, Canst thou destroy, whose might to misery is hurled?
Rhadamanthus What god beyond these twain Abides or may remain Seated, too strong to quell, the Lord of Being’s pain. Aloof from time and chance Fate, will and circumstance, Canst Thou not wither Life with one indignant glance? Thy name we know not; Thine Is the unbuilded shrine. We doubt us if Thou be among the powers divine!
Minos Bound by strict line and law, Fearful with might and awe, We hold the powerless power For many an agèd hour. We move not from our place. We ask nor give not grace, Nor change our lordly looks before a suppliant’s face.
Æacus Stern in all justice, we Assent aloud to thee, We affirm thy cause as right: We put forth all the might Of aid: and all is done. Our utmost power is none To lift one soul to live and look upon the sun.
Rhadamanthus For righteous thought and deed Apportioning its meed; For evil act and mind Rewarding in its kind; So sit we: but our power Apportions not an hour To light the dying lamp, revive the faded flower.
Minos But thou, be strong to sing!
Æacus Loose arrows from the string!
Rhadamanthus Bid the wild word take wing!
Minos Hades hath evil fame To suppliants—bitter shame!— Inexorable.
Æacus Aim Yet the swift prayer, abide His word whate’er betide. What worse?
Rhadamanthus The Gods thy guide! Go and assail him!
Minos Stay, The Queen of Hell!
Æacus That way Leads to the light of day.
Rhadamanthus A woman’s heart may yearn, To a man’s love may turn.
Minos Should she, the ravished, spurn A man whose love is reft?
Æacus Meadows and flower, she left To Him—O bosom cleft With a wife’s loss!—a wife.
Rhadamanthus Too doubtful is the strife.
Minos Yet go! perchance to life.
Æacus Go! and the Gods above Guard thee, O soul of love!
Rhadamanthus I doubt me much thereof.
Orpheus Ah me! I find ye but ill counsellors. For I will conquer. Have I spent these stores Of will and song for nought? Hell’s heart may rend, But mine endureth even to the end.
Severe and righteous Lords, O fare ye well! Are not my feet forced forward on a road Leading to innermost abodes of Hell
Exalted as above the green abode Of nymphs on broad Olympus, raises high Its head the kingly snow, gigantic load
Of sombre whiteness cleaving through the sky For gods to dwell in—So I pass the hall And seek the gloomy thrones of majesty,
Where I may pledge my last despairing call Unto the mightiest of the House of Dread, And loosen Death’s inexorable thrall
And bring my lover from among the dead. Now in the blackness of the rocks that span The dolorous way I spy a golden thread
Veined in the strength of the obsidian Flowing and growing, joining vein to vein, Like fresh blood in the arteries of man,
Up to the very heart. And as I go Loosen the knees of anguish and grow dim The shattering flames of pain: the songs of woe
Flicker and alter to a solemn hymn Chanted in slowest measure in deep awe. Now as a yew-tree sends a mighty limb
Shooting to sunset, the black road’s black maw Gapes to the westward; the great trunk divides And all the armies of infernal law
Stand ranked about the venerable sides Of the black cave: they speak not; dumb they stand And all the frost of all the air abides
Upon them, as a vampire stooped and spanned The white throat of a maiden and held still Her powers by virtue of its hate’s command,
Somewhat like love’s: so all the solemn chill Invades those statued ranks of warriors, And I pass through, the lightning of my will
A steady stream of flame: high instinct pours Its limpid light of water on my mind, So that I range inhospitable shores
Assured of Her I shall most surely find Ere the end be: awake, O living lyre, Since in the narrow way and pass confined
I see a darkness infinite as fire, Clear as all spirit vision, lustrous yet As ebony shows in caverns rendered dire
By dreadful magic, or as if pure jet Had taken of itself an inner light, And its own blackness filled night’s coronet
With a new jewel: so I see aright Where no light is like earth’s. The path grows broad And lofty, till the whole hall springs to sight,
And I am standing where the dreaded Lord And Lady of the region of the lost Hold awful sway: yet here the flaming sword
Of sight is broken by the deadly frost That clusters round their thrones: a mist of fire Congealed to vital darkness: yet exhaust
Like a seer’s magic glass of air: expire The dumb black hours in fear: but I am ware, Well ware, by instinct surer still and higher
Than the own sight of soul that they are there, No mockery of their presence: so even hither My mother’s might is on me, on I flare
Into wild war of song: my keen notes wither The flowers of frost about me and I turn Ever the strength and mastering frenzy thither
With energy of madness: yea, I burn! My soul burns up upon the lyre! I lend My whole life’s vigour to one song, to earn
Their guerdon of the gods, a god to friend, And seek through devious ways a single end.
[Invoking Hades
Str. I
Now is the gold gone of the year, and gone The glory of the world, and gathered close The silver of the frost. Far splendid snows Shine where the bright anemone once shone. Ay! for the laughter live Of youths and maids that strive In amorous play, the ancient saws of eld And wisdom mystical From bearded lips must fall, Old eyes behold what young eyes ne’er beheld: Namely, the things beyond the triple veil Of space and time and cause, eternal woof Of misery overproof: And aged thoughts assail The younger hopes, and passion stands aloof, And silence takes possession, and the tale Of earth is told and done. Then from the Sire of all the Gods, from War And Love and Wisdom and the eternal Sun Worship is torn afar: While unto Thee, O Hades, turn we now, Awful of breast and brow, And hear thee in the sea, behold thee in the Star.
Ant. I [Echo of the Damned]
Ay! is the earth and upper ether gone, And all the joy of earth, and gathered close The darkness and the death-wind and the snows On us on whom the sun of air once shone. What souls are left alive Vainly lament and strive, For they shall join the dead of utmost eld; The concourse mystical Who see the seasons fall Shall soon behold what all we have beheld:— The accursed stream, the intolerable veil Of night and death and hell, disastrous woof Of anguish overproof That fruitless wills assail Ever in vain: good fortune stands aloof And all kind gods: we, taking up the tale Of dead men past and done, Declare that ceaseless is the eternal war, And victory stedfast set against the Sun. Yet we perceive afar Even in Hades, at the end, not now, Some light upon his brow, Some comfort in the sea, some refuge in the Star.
Str. 2.
O thou! because thy chariot is golden, And beautiful thy coursers, and their manes Flecked with such foam as once upon the sea Bore Aphrodite, and thy face is olden, Worn with dim thought and unsuspected pains, And all thy soul fulfilled of majesty; Because the silence of thy house is great, And thy word second spoken after Fate, And thy light stricken of thine own grim hand; Because thy whisper exceedeth the command Of Zeus; thy dim light far outshines his glory; Because, as He the first is, Thou the last:— Therefore I take up sorrow in my hands, And ply thine ear with my most doleful story, Asking a future, who have lost a past: A guerdon of my singing like the land’s When spring breaks forth from winter, and the blood Of the old earth laughs in every new-born bud.
Ant. 2 [Echo of the Damned]
O thou! because thy lyre is keen and golden, And beautiful thy numbers through our veins Pouring delight, as on the starry sea Burn gems of rapture; though the houses olden Relax awhile their unredeeming pains, And through dead slaves thrill bounteous majesty? Though the strong music of thy soul be great:— Shall thy desire avail to alter Fate? Or impious hands unloose the awful hand? Or futile words reverse the great command? Or what availeth? Though great Hades’ glory Stoop to thy prayer, and answer thee at last, Should Clotho catch the thread in weaving hands, Respin what Atropos once cut—that story Were vain for thee—that which is past is past, Nor can Omnipotence avail the land’s Death—Spring’s is alien through ancestral blood, And a new birth is current in the bud.
Str. 3.
Think, then, the deed impossible is done Since Theseus fared forth to the ambient air! His thread once cut—was that indeed respun Or patched by witchery? a deceit? a snare? I tell ye; past and future are but one, And present—nothing; shall not Hades dare His own omnipotence against the Sun, And let no tittle of his glory share With all the earth’s recuperating wheel, And every dawn’s sure falchion-flash of steel?
Ant. 3. [Echo of the Damned]
Indeed, a deed impossible was done Were the new Theseus heavier than the air. Nay! but a new thread phantom-frail was spun And men’s blind eyes discovered not the snare, Else were that elder cord and this yet one, Cut but in fancy. Yet, shall mortal dare To fling a wanton word against the Sun, And stand forth candidate for lot and share Where hangs Prometheus, rolls Ixion’s wheel, And the stone rolls upon the limbs of steel?
Epode
These echoes, in my mind foul torturers, Present my fears, and image my distrust. No answer comes, no voice the silence stirs With joyful “may” or melancholy “must.” Nor, though the gloom requicken, may I see Hades enthroned, my prayers who heedeth nought Nor glowing tear of bowed Persephone Drooped earthward for the ninefold misery wrought. In utter sorrow ever bound she stays, Hears not my song, nor heedeth anything, Whose mind lamenting turns to ancient days And Nysian meadows and the hour of spring. Yea, but perchance to touch that secret chord Were to awake that sorrow into life; Sting, as a wound a deep-envenomed sword, The inmost soul of the Aidonean wife. Listen! I tune my music to that hour; The careless maidens and the virgin laughter, The bloom of springtide and the fatal flower, And all that joy the sorrow echoing after. So that, dread Hades, thou mayst hear and yield, Thyself unmastered and inexorable, The gentle maid as crying in that field, Now thy soul’s keeper on the throne of Hell! Hail, Hades! Thou who hearest not my song, Repealest not the heaven’s unjust decree, Revengest not for me the woe and wrong, Shalt glean my sorrow from Persephone. Hail, Hades! In the gloom the echoing cry Swells, and the chorus darkens as I sing, And all the fibres of Eternity Shake as I loose the loud indignant string. Hail, Hades! hear thy wrong proclaimed aloud, And thou the wronger safe because too great. To like offence harden thy neck, and proud Blow thou the dismal challenge unto Fate!
In Asia, on the Nysian plains, she played, A slender maid, With the deep-bosomed Oceanides; Where the tall trees Girded the meadow with grave walls of green. Alone, unseen, The tender little lady strayed, Moving across the breeze.
It was a meadow of soft grass and flowers, Where the sweet hours Lingered and laughed awhile ere noon reposes. There were red roses And crocus, and flag-flowers, and violets, And hyacinth, regrets Of the ill-fortuned God, the quoit-player; And soft cool air Stirred all the field—and there were jessamines And snaky columbines. So all these maidens played, and gathered them From sad green stem Rejoicing blooms with sunlight mixed therein. But she, for sin And iron heart of the ill-minded Zeus, Caught up the dews Deep on her ankles, and went noiselessly Toward the laughing sea, And sought new blossoms—O the traitor, Earth, That brought to birth That day, as favouring the desire that swelled Beneath her heart of eld, Where dwelt the lonely, the detested one Intolerant of the sun, Hades! But Earth for love of him, for spite Of the young girl’s delight, And shame of her own age, brought forth that hour The fatal flower, Narcissus—which what soul of man shall smell Goes down to hell, Caught in the scent of sin—for such a doom Demeter’s flying loom Hath woven for revenge and punishment. The bright child went Thither; an hundred heads of blossom sprang; The green earth sang, And the skies laughed, and danced the sea’s young feet For joy of it. So the child went across that fairest plain To pluck, to strain That blossom of all blossoms to her heart. Her long hands dart, Exceeding delicate and fair, to cull That bloom too beautiful, Eager to gather the fresh floral birth. The grim black earth Gaped; roared athwart the gulf the golden car; And flaming far The four white horses with their flashing manes! The might-resisting reins Lay in the ghastly hands, the arms of fear Of that dread charioteer, Death; and great Hades armed stood glittering, Stooped to his spring, And whirled the child to the beneath abode. O heavy load! O bitter harvest of rich-rolling tears! What cry who hears? A shrill shrill cry to father Zeus cried she, Forlorn Persephone! Heard was that agony of grief by none Save only by the Sun, And Her who sat within her awful cave, Contemplative and grave, Hecate, veilèd with a shining veil Utterly frail As the strange web of dainty thoughts she wove, Somewhat like love. She heard, and great Apollo: neither stayed Hades, nor stretched to aid A pitying hand. O pitiful! O grief Baffling belief! The gentle child—the cruel god—Ah me! Persephone! Thus of thy grace, thy sorrow, thy young way Torn from the day Of all thy memory of soft shining flowers And happy-hearted hours, Mayst thou be very pitiful to me Who aye have pitied thee, Persephone!
Persephone Ah me! I feel a stirring in my blood. Pours through my veins a delicate pale flood Of memory. Not the pale and terrible Goddess whose throne is manifest in Hell —I am again a child, a playful child.
Orpheus And therefore, O most beautiful and mild Sweet mother! art the girl beloved again Of Hades mighty on the Nysian plain. And therefore are thine eyes with sorrow dim For me, and thy word powerful with Him.
Persephone Ah me! no fruit for guerdon, Who bore the blossom’s burden; There shines no sunlight toward Persephone. Ravished, O iron-eyed! From my young sisters’ side, Torn and dragged down below the sundered sea, No joy is mine in all thy bed, And all thy sorrow shaken on my head.
Cursed above gods be thou Whose blind unruffled brow Rules the grim place of unsubstantial things! Hated, to me thy face Turns not the glance of grace. I rule unloved above the infernal kings, And only thee in all deep Hell I charm in vain, despair my royal spell.
By might of famine long And supplication strong Demeter won the swift Hermetic word: In bitter days of eld Thus by great force compelled The glad earth saw me, careless of my lord, Rise to her crystal streams and sapphire seas, And Theseus thus owed life to Heracles.
Thou mockest me with power; Thy sceptre’s awful dower Avails me nothing. Shall a mortal bring Such pity wrapped in song And Echo’s choral throng Of all things live and dead to hear me sing;— And I by pity moved and love Have not thy voice to grant him grace thereof?
Inexorable Lord! Accursèd and abhorred Of men, begin in Hell to show thy grace! Not to a man’s weak life, Not to thy shuddering wife, But to the queen’s unfathomable face Dread beyond sorcery and prayer, And fearful even because it is so fair!
Yea, from the ghastly throne Unchallenged and unknown Let the fierce accents roll athwart the skies! My voice is given, my power Fares forth to save the flower Broken but plucked not by these fingers wise. I love the song—be thou not mute, But turn a lucky lot towards the suit!
Orpheus In vain, O thou veiled Immutable queen! Thy strong voice bewailed, Thy fair face was seen! It flushed up and paled; The song echoed clean— But alas! for the veil of the night and the fear that is ever between!
Of pity unfilled And void of remorse, He moves unappealed In the terrible course. But the lyre is unchilled:— By force unto force He shall answer me power unto power at the source of its source!
Dost thou hear how the weight Of the earth and the moon Shudder, as if fate Were involved in the tune? The portals of hate Shake at the rune Of the magical nature-cry, the song from the mountains hewn!
To the horrible hollow In Tartarus steep, O song of me, follow! I flee to the deep. That word of Apollo Shall shudder and leap; That word in the uttermost night shall awake them who know not of sleep.
Hear, O ye Three, In the innermost pit Dwellers that be! Tartarus, split! Arise unto me For I call ye with wit Of the words that constrain and compel, of the summons ordered and fit!
O daughter of Earth, Tisiphone dread, The ophidian girth, And the blood-dripping head, In hideous mirth Bring living and dead To torture! Arise! I conjure by the might of the words I have said.
Megæra, thou terror, O daughter of Night Whose sight in a mirror Is death of affright, Wingèd with error, I chain thee, and cite The words that thy soul must obey if a mortal but say them aright!
Alecto! I call thee, My words ring thee round. My spells enwall thee. My lyre is crowned With might to appal thee With terror profound. Arise! O Alecto, arise! for my song hath compelled thee and bound.
Ye furies of Hell! Ye terrors in Heaven! The strength of the spell Is as thunder at even The rocks of the fell That hath blasted and riven Come forth! I invoke ye, Erinyes, the charm of the One that is seven.
By the Five that are One, And the One that is Ten; By the snake in the sun And her mirror in men; By the Four that run And return them again; By the fire that is lit in the Lion, the wave in the Scorpion den!
By the One that is Seven, The whirling eyes; The Two made Eleven, The dragon’s devise; The Eight against Heaven, All crowns of lies; Come forth! I invoke ye, Erinyes, move, answer, take shapes and arise!
By the cross and the wheel I call ye to hear; By the dagger of steel I command ye, give ear! By the word that ye feel, The summons of Fear; Come forth! I invoke ye, Erinyes, move, answer, arise and appear!
For my purpose is swift, And my vengeance strong; I shall not shift; I shall cry the wrong. My voice I uplift In terrible song As your forms take shape before me in the likeness for which ye long.
The shape of my passion And bitter distress Shall clothe ye, and fashion An equal dress. Ye shall force compassion With awful stress From the soul that hath mocked me, and turned his heart from my song’s excess.
The ruler of Hell, The invisible Lord, Hath laughed at my spell, Hath slept at my word. He hath heard me well— Awake, O Sword! Shall he flout a suppliant thus and no answer of favour accord?
If mercy be sundered From splendour and power; If he answer with thunder The plaint of a flower; Shall justice wonder If Furies devour So bitter a heart, set a term to his date that was aye but an hour?
Avenge me, ye forces Of horror and wrath! Clear the dread courses! Split open the path! With cruel remorse is His heart brought to scath. And a terror is on him at last, the seed of his hate’s aftermath.
Megæra Ha! who invokes? What horror rages Here, to compel our murderous hands to smite?
Alecto What mortal summons? Who his battle wages So strongly as to call the seed of Night?
Tisiphone Ha! The grim tyrant of despair engages Our deadly anguish with his useless might.
Hades Detested fiends! avaunt!
Megæra He speaks!
Alecto He thunders!
Tisiphone His lightnings split the living rock.
Megæra Hell sunders The livid walls and iron-bound prisons of death.
Hades Thus! to your towers and wail!
Alecto He speaks!
Tisiphone His breath Is cold as ours.
Hades Depart! Due silence keep, Lest I enchain ye in a fouler deep Than aught your horror pictures!
Megæra Dost thou hear, Sister?
Alecto Sweet sister!
Tisiphone Dost thou think we fear Who are all fear? or feel, who are but pain?
Megæra Creep round his heart, and cluster in his brain, Ye serpents of my hair!
Alecto His blood shall drip For sweet warm juice on my decaying lip.
Tisiphone My fearful wings enfold him!
Alecto My foul eyes Hold his in terror!
Megæra All my agonies Crawl in his vitals!
Tisiphone He is mine, mine, mine! Pour forth of Thebes’ abominable wine! Mine, O thou god, detested and adored!
Megæra Mine! he is mine! my lover and my lord!
Alecto Mine! I am in his shape!
Megæra Despair! Dispute Never my passion!
Tisiphone Sisters! Be ye mute! I am the livid agony that starts Damp on his brow; the horror in his heart’s Envenomed arteries! and I the fear, The torment, and the hate!
Megæra Be of good cheer! Rend him apart! Hunger and lust we sate, Equal in terror on that heart of hate.
Alecto Hell’s throne be kingless!
Tisiphone Mortal! is it well, Our vengeance on the impious lord of Hell?
Orpheus Well! it is well! And yet my eyes are wet To see such anguish.
Megæra Tear the fatal net!
Alecto Bite with strong acid his congealing blood!
Tisiphone Rend out the bowels!
Megæra Pour the monstrous flood Of unclean wisdom in his soul!
Persephone Desist!
Alecto O face of woman wretched and unkissed, What hast thou here to do with us?
Tisiphone Be quiet!
Megæra Quench not the fire of murder!
Alecto Loose the riot Of worms beneath the skull!
Tisiphone Tear wide apart The jaws!
Megæra Force fear against the inmost heart!
Persephone Mercy! I plead, sweet sisters!
Orpheus And I plead Vengeance, and help in my extremest need Pile up the torture! Had he not the power, And silence mocked me?
Megæra Urge us hour by hour, Thou couldst not add one particle of pain.
Alecto He speaks not! Bid his torture speak again!
Tisiphone Speak, murderer!
Megæra Hades! answer us!
Alecto Expel These torments from thy being, us from Hell, Or Zeus from Heaven!
Tisiphone Or else obey!
Megæra Obey!
Alecto Obey!
Hades O throne of hell! O night! O day Of anguish exquisite beyond control, Fibre and substance of my inmost soul! There is a power not mine, and yet in me Burning its cold and cruel agony With icy flames, its cutting poison fangs Striking my being with detested pangs. Alas! of me and not to be expelled, Conjured, assuaged, averted. Grey as eld The juice of blood that stagnates in my veins, Appals their current with avenging pains:— O pain! O pitiful and hateful sense Of agony and grief and impotence! O misery of the day when Orpheus bore First his loud lyre across the Stygian shore! Hath Hell no warders? Is the threefold gate Brazen in vain against the foot of Fate? Now is but little choice—abase my pride, Or sink for ever to the gloomy tide Of fire beneath the utmost reach and span Of Stygian deeps and walls Tartarean. Yet I abide.
Megæra Fall! Fall!
Alecto Descend the abyss!
Tisiphone Link the lewd fiend with your incestuous kiss!
Megæra Hither!
Alecto O hither!
Hades Steams a newer shape Of threefold terror.
Tisiphone Shall the god escape The monstrous wedlock?
Alecto Let him turn again His horrid passion to the Nysian plain!
Megæra Echidna!
Alecto Mother of the Sphinx and snake Of Colchus, and the marsh-beast of the lake Lernean, of Chimæra and Hell’s hound—
Tisiphone Answer!
Alecto Arise!
Megæra Awake from the profound!
Tisiphone Here is a worthy partner unto thee To wake thy womb with monstrous progeny Yet more detested and detestable Than all the shapeless brood of hate and Hell.
Echidna Ha! rose-lipped lover! Welcome to this bed!
Megæra She plays with words of love!
Alecto Her black eyes shed Disease for tears.
Tisiphone Her fangs and lips are red With gouts of putrid blood.
Megæra Her guile employs The sweet soft shape of words of upper joys More bitterly to rack his soul.
Alecto Ha, sister, The embrace!
Tisiphone She conquers.
Megæra He hath moved.
Alecto He hath kissed her!
Tisiphone Ha! the worse hate of hate in love’s white dress.
Megæra And lewdness tricked to look like loveliness.
Alecto Uttermost pain in pleasure’s hour supreme.
Megæra Hate’s nightmare waking love’s unreal dream.
Alecto Claws, teeth, and poison!
Tisiphone How she plies her pest!
Megæra Strangling she holds him.
Alecto In the inmost breast Her hands defile him.
Tisiphone In his rotting brain Her teeth, her breath, pass all imagined pain.
Megæra Sisters!
Alecto We conquer!
Tisiphone Have we power?
Megæra The king Endures, and is not moved at anything.
Alecto He will not now relent.
Tisiphone He’s ours for ever!
Hades Ai! Ai!
Megæra Hark!
Alecto Listen!
Tisiphone Now he yields—or never!
Hades Release! Relent!
Echidna Fair lover, let my embrace Still gladden thee to rapture! let my face Be like a garden of fresh flowers to cull, And all thy being and thy body full As mine of gentle love—then sink to sleep!
Megæra Ha! Ha! She mocks him! In the utter deep, Her house of evil, sleep is stranger there.
Alecto She sings!
Tisiphone The final misery! Beware!
Echidna O tender lover! My wings still cover Thy face, and my lips Are on thine, and my tresses Like Zephyr’s caresses When the twilight dips.
Hades This passes all. Relent. Release! Depart! I yield: my power is broken, and my heart Riven, and all my pride ruined, and me Compelled to earth to loose Eurydice.
Orpheus Depart!
Erinyes Baffled! O misery! Bethink, Proud Hades, ere thy torture gar thee drink Humiliation’s utmost dregs!
Hades I spake. Depart ye! lest my power regained awake, And smite ye with a terror more than ye.
Megæra We are borne on bitter winds.
Alecto We sink.
Tisiphone We flee!
Megæra To the abyss!
Alecto Descend!
Tisiphone Nor hope in vain The ill-hearted one shall feel our fangs again.
Megæra Murder and violation, deafened ear To suppliants, these our friends are.
Alecto Hate and fear Leave not for long that bosom.
Tisiphone Now away! Back from this night more splendid than our day!
Megæra We may not drag him down this chance.
Alecto Despair Not, O my sisters!
Tisiphone The next suppliant’s prayer Rejected—
Megæra Come, my sisters, we’ll be there.
Hades Well, be it so. O wizard, by this strength Thou hast availed in deepest Hell at length. I grant thy prayer. Eurydice be given To the sweet light and pleasant air of heaven! Even on this wise. With Hermes for a guide Up the dread steeps there followeth thee thy bride, And thou before them singing. If thou yearn Towards her, if thy purpose change or turn While in these realms; if thou thy face revert; That shall be hostage unto me for hurt Of further magic: she shall fade and flee A phantom frail throughout Eternity, Driven on my winds, adrift upon my seas! These are thy favours, and thy duties these. Invoke thou Hermes, and thy lyre restring!
Orpheus This I accept and this shall be, O king!
[Invoking Hermes]
O Light in light! O flashing wings of fire! The swiftest of the moments of the sea Is unto thee Even as some slow-foot Eternity With limbs that drag and wheels that tire. O subtle-minded flame of amber gyre, It seems a spark of gold Grown purple, and behold! A flame of gray! Then the dark night-wings glow With iridescent indigo, Shot with some violet ray; And all the vision flame across the horizon The millionth of no time—and when we say: Hail!—Thou art gone!
The moon is dark beside thy crown; the Sun Seems a pale image of thy body bare; And for thine hair Flash comets lustrous with the dewfall rare Of tears of that most memorable One, The radiant Queen, the veilèd Paphian. The wings of light divine Beneath thy body shine; The invisible Rayed with some tangible flame, Seeking to formulate a name, A citadel; And the winged heels are fiery with enormous speed, One spurning heaven; the other trampling hell; And thou—recede!
O Hermes! Messenger of inmost thought! Descent! Abide! Swift coursing in my veins Shoot dazzling pains, The word of Selfhood integrate of Nought, The Ineffable Amen! the Wonder wrought. Bring death if life exceed! Bid thy pale Hermit bleed, Yet Life exude; And wisdom and the Word of Him Drench the mute mind grown dim With quietude! Fix thy sharp lightnings in my night! My spirit free! Mix with my breath and life and name thy mood And self of Thee.
[Hermes appears: Orpheus departs.
The magical task and the labour is ended; The toils are unwoven, the battle is done; My lover comes back to my arms, to the splendid Abyss of the air and abode of the sun. The sword be assuaged, and the bow be unbended! The labour is past, and the victory won.
The arrows of song through Hell cease to hurtle. Away to the passionate gardens of Greece, Where the thrush is awake, and the voice of the turtle Is soft in the amorous places of peace, And the tamarisk groves and the olive and myrtle Stir ever with love and content and release.
O bountiful bowers and O beautiful gardens! O isles in the azure Ionian deep! Ere ripens the sun, ere the spring-wind hardens Your fruits once again ye shall have me to keep. The sleep-god laments, and the love goddess pardons, When love at the last sinks unweary to sleep.
The green-hearted hours shall burst into flowers. The winds shall waft roses from uttermost Ind. Our nuptial dowers shall be birds in our bowers, Our couches the delicate heaps of the wind, Where the lily-bloom showers all its light, and the powers Of earth in our twinning are wedded and twinned.
So singing I make reverence and retire; Not with high words of worship fairly flung To that sad monarch from the magic lyre,
And half the triumphs in my heart unsung, Surpassing, as such triumphs must, all praise Of golden strings and human-fashioned tongue.
But now I follow the uprising ways By secret paths indubitably drawn Straight from the centre of the trackless maze
To light of earth and beauty of the dawn, A sure swift passage taught of wit divine To the wide ocean, the Achæan lawn.
For, wit ye well, not easy is that shrine Of access to the mortal, as some tell, Not knowing,: easy and exact the line
Of light to upper air: but awful spell And dire demand the inward journey needs: That is the labour, that the work: for Hell
Is not designed for men’s aspiring deeds. The air is fatal, and the fear unspanned, Even ere the traveller fronts the Stygian meads
And utmost edge of the detested land. Wherefore already doth the light appear Shaped in the image of a little hand
Far up the rocky cavern: warm and clear The good air sends its fragrance: glory then To the great work accomplished even here,
Promise and purpose unto little men Bound in life’s limits: death indeed I sever By will’s efficiency and speechless ken
Of power not God’s but man’s. Forget this never, O mortals chained in life’s detested den! I leave this heritage to you for ever.
O light of Apollo! O joy of the sky! We see thee, we follow, We draw to thee nigh. We see thee unclouded, Whose hearts have been thinned, Whose souls have been shrouded, Whose ears are bedinned, By hell’s clamour. How did The strength that has sinned Avail in the crowded Abodes of the wind?
By lightning of rapture The soul of my song My love doth recapture; Lead up to the long Years in blithe measure Of summer and ease; Linger at leisure For passion and peace. Sadness and pleasure Relent and release:— A torrent, a treasure, A garden of Greece!
Selene, our sister, Our lover and friend, Thy light hath long missed her: That hour hath an end. All æons to squander We chance at our will: We may woo, work or wander Through time to our fill, Hither or yonder By fountain or hill, Each day growing fonder, Each night growing still!
Bright Hermes behind me Caduceus-armed Guides: shall he blind me? My spirit be charmed? The song shall not swerve her, Its glory shall shed Respite, deserve her From gulfs of the dead. Ah me! let it nerve her These conduits to tread That lead to the fervour Of earth overhead!
Fire, thou dear splendour Of uppermost space, Turn to me tender Thine emerald face! Thy rubies be blended With diamond light! Thy sapphires be splendid, Extended to sight! The portals be rended That govern the night, And the guardians bended To magical might!
O air of the glorious Garb of the globe, Don thy victorious Glittering robe! The sun is before us; The moon is above. Rise and adore us Ye dwellers thereof! The Muses restore us To Greece: as we move Swell the wild chorus Of welcome and love!
Alas! that ever the dark place Should from its rocky base Give up no echo of the god’s strong stride, And no one whisper steal and thrill My heart, dissolve the ill That gathers close and fears me for my bride.
I were no worse if I were blind. I may not look behind To catch one glimpse of the dear face that follows, Lest I should gain forbidden lore And wisdom’s dangerous store Of the black secrets of those heights and hollows.
Alas! the way is over long, And weary of my song I sing who yearn to catch my love, and hold In such ten-thousandfold caress As shall annul distress, And from the iron hours bring the years of gold.
Alas! my soul is filled with fear, Is the hard conquest here? Where is Eurydice? The god hath faded Back to invisible abodes And on these rocky roads Comes no deep perfume of her hair light-braided.
Alas! I listen; and no breath Assures the walls of death That life remembers, that their hate is quelled. My ears, my scent avail me nought; My slavish eyes are brought By the command wherewith I am compelled.
Alas! my heart sinks momently. Fear steals and misery. From faith in faith of Hell my thoughts dissever. Yet, O my heart! abide, endure! Seek not by sight to assure, Or she is lost to thee and lost for ever!
Now breathes the night-air o’er the deep, And limb-dissolving sleep Laps my own country, and the maiden moon Gleams silver barley from the sea, And binds it royally Into a sheaf that waves to the wind’s tune.
The rocky portals rise above. Here I may clasp my love, Here Hermes shall deliver. Ah! how shook Yon cliff at the wind’s ardent kiss! This is the hour of bliss— The sea! The sea! Eurydice! Look, Look!
Ai! but like wind-whirled flowers of frost The flying form is lost! Cancelled and empty of Eurydice The black paths where she trod! Ai! Ai! My God! My God! Apollo, why hast thou forsaken me?
EXPLICIT LIBER TERTIUS
LIBER QUARTUS VEL MORTIS
TO MY WIFE
Lysander (reads). “The riot of the tipsy Bacchanals Tearing the Thracian singer in their rage.”
Theseus. That is an old device. —Midsummer Night’s Dream.
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore The Muse herself, for her enchanting son Whom universal Nature did lament When by the rout that made the hideous roar His gory body down the stream was sent Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore? Lycidas.
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far; A new Peneus rolls his fountains Against the morning star. Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
● ● ● ● ● ●
Another Orpheus sings again And loves, and weeps, and dies. Hellas.
Mount Ida: The Company of Mænads
Mænads Evoe! Evoe Ho! Iacche! Iacche!
Hail, O Dionysys! Hail! Wingèd son of Semele! Hail, O Hail! The stars are pale. Hidden the moonlight in the vale; Hidden the sunlight in the sea.
Blessed is her happy lot Who beholdeth God; who moves Mighty-souled without a spot, Mingling in the godly rout Of the many mystic loves.
Holy maidens, duly weave Dances for the mighty mother! Bacchanal to Bacchus cleave! Wave his narthex wand, and leave Earthy joys to earth to smother!
Io! Evoe! Sisters, mingle In the choir, the dance, the revel! He divine, the Spirit single, He in every vein shall tingle. Sense and sorrow to the devil!
Mingle in the laughing measure, Hand and lip to breast and thigh! In enthusiastic pleasure Grasp the solitary treasure! Laughs the untiring ecstasy!
Sisters! Sisters! Raise your voices In the inspired divine delight! Now the sun sets; now the choice is Who rebels or who rejoices, Murmuring to the mystic night.
Io! Evoe! Circle splendid! Dance, ye maids serene and subtle! Clotho’s task is fairly ended. Atropos, thy power is rended! Ho, Lachesis! ply thy shuttle!
Weave the human dance together With the life of rocks and trees! Let the blue delirious weather Bind all spirits in one tether, Overwhelming ecstasies!
Io Evoe! I faint, I fall, Swoon in purple light; the grape Drowns my spirit in its thrall. Love me, love me over all, Spirit in the spirit shape!
All is one! I murmur. Distant Sounds the shout, Evoe, Evoe! Evoe, Iacche! Soft, insistent Like to echo’s voice persistent:— Hail! Agave! Autonoe!
Agave Evoe Ho! Iacche! Hail, O Hail! Praise him! What dreams are these?
Autonoe Sisters, O sisters!
Agave Say, are our brethren of the rocks awake?
Autonoe The lion roars.
Mænads O listen to the snake!
Autonoe Evoe Ho! Give me to drink!
Agave Run wild! Mountain and mountain let us leap upon Like tigers on their prey!
Mænads Crush, crush the world!
Agave Tread earth as ’twere a winepress!
Autonoe Drink its blood, The sweet red wine!
Mænads Ay, drink the old earth dry!
Agave Squeeze the last drops out till the frame collapse Like an old wineskin!
Autonoe So the sooner sup Among the stars!
Agave The swift, swift stars!
Mænads O night! Night, night, fall deep and sure!
Autonoe Fall soft and sweet!
Agave Moaning for love the woods lie.
Autonoe Sad the land Lies thirsty for our kisses.
Mænads All wild things Yearn towards the kiss that ends in blood.
Agave Blood! Blood! Bring wine! Ha! Bromius, Bromius!
Mænads O sweet God, Come forth and lie with us!
Autonoe We, maidens now And then and ever afterwards!
Agave Chaste, chaste! Our madness hath no touch of bitterness, No taste of foulness in the morning mouth.
Autonoe O mouth of ripe red sunny grapes! God! God! Evoe! Dwell! Abide!
Agave I feel the wings Of love, of mystery; they waft soft streams Of night air to my heated breast and brow.
Mænads He comes! He comes!
Agave Silence, O girls, and peace! The God’s most holy presence asks the hymn, The solemn hymn, the hymn of agony, Lest in the air of glory that surrounds The child of Semelé we lose the earth And corporal presence of the Zeus-begot.
Autonoe Yea, sisters, raise the chant of riot! Lift Your wine-sweet voices, move your wine-stained limbs In joyful invocation!
Mænads Ay, we sing.
Hail, child of Semelé! To her as unto thee Be reverence, be deity, be immortality!
Shame! treachery of the spouse Of the Olympian house, Hera! thy grim device against the sweet carouse!
Lo! in red roar and flame Did Zeus descend! What claim To feel the immortal fire had then the Theban dame!
Caught in that fiery wave Her love and life she gave With one last kissing cry the unborn child to save.
And thou, O Zeus, the sire Of Bromius—hunger dire!— Didst snatch the unborn babe from that Olympian fire:
In thine own thigh most holy That offspring melancholy Didst hide, didst feed, on light, ambrosia, and moly.
Ay! and with serpent hair And limbs divinely fair Didst thou, Dionysus, leap forth to the nectar air!
Ay! thus the dreams of fate We dare commemorate, Twining in lovesome curls the spoil of mate and mate.
O Dionysus, hear! Be close, be quick, be near, Whispering enchanted words in every curving ear!
O Dionysys, start As the Apollonian dart! Bury thy hornèd head in every bleeding heart!
Agave He is here! He is here!
Autonoe Tigers, appear!
Agave To the clap of my hand And the whish of my wand, Obey!
Autonoe I have found A chariot crowned With ivy and vine, And the laurel divine, And the clustering smell Of the sage asphodel, And the Dædal flower Of the Cretan bower; Dittany’s force, And larkspur’s love, And blossoms of gorse Around and above.
Agave The tiger and panther Are here at my cry. Ho, girls! Span there Their sides!
Mænads Here am I! And I! We are ready.
Agave Strong now and steady!
First Mænad The tiger is harnessed.
Second Mænad The nightingale urges Our toil from her far nest.
Third Mænad Ionian surges Roar back to our chant.
Fourth Mænad Aha! for the taunt Of Theban sages Is lost, lost, lost! The wine that enrages Our life is enforced. We dare them and daunt.
Agave The spirits that haunt The rocks and the river, The moors and the woods, The fields and the floods, Are with us for ever!
Mænads Are of us for ever. Evoe! Evoe!
Autonoe Agave! He cometh!
Agave Cry ho! Autonoe!
All Ho! Ho! Evoe Ho! Iacche! Evoe! Evoe!
The white air hummeth With force of the spirit. We are heirs: we inherit. Our joys are as theirs; Weave with you prayers The joys of a kiss! Ho! for the bliss Of the cup and the rod. He cometh! O lover! O friend and O God, Cover us, cover Our faces, and hover Above us, within us! Daintily shod, Daintily robed, His witcheries spin us A web of desire. Subtle as fire He cometh among us. The whole sky globed Is on fire with delight, Delight that hath stung us, The passion of night. Night be our mistress! That tress and this tress Weave with thy wind Into curls deep-vined! Passionate bliss! Rapture on rapture! Our hymns recapture The Bromian kiss. Blessèd our souls! Blessèd this even! We reach to the goals Of the starriest heaven. Daphnis, and Atthis, and Chrysis, and Chloe, Mingle, O maidens! Evoe! Evoe!
Dionysis I bring ye wine from above, From the vats of the storied sun; For every one of ye love, And life for every one. Ye shall dance on hill and level; Ye shall sing in hollow and height In the festal mystical revel, The rapturous Bacchanal rite! The rocks and trees are yours, And the waters under the hill, By the might of that which endures, The holy heaven of will! I kindle a flame like a torrent To rush from star to star; Your hair as a comet’s horrent, Ye shall see things as they are! I lift the mask of matter; I open the heart of man; For I am of force to shatter The cast that hideth—Pan! Your loves shall lap up slaughter, And dabbled with roses of blood Each desperate darling daughter Shall swim in the fervid flood. I bring ye laughter and tears, The kisses that foam and bleed, The joys of a million years, The flowers that bear no seed. My life is bitter and sterile, Its flame is a wandering star. Ye shall pass in pleasure and peril Across the mystical bar That is set for wrath and weeping Against the children of earth; But ye in singing and sleeping Shall pass in measure and mirth! I lift my wand and wave you Through hill to hill of delight: My rosy rivers lave you In innermost lustral light I lead you, lord of the maze, In the darkness free of the sun; In spite of the spite that is day’s We are wed, we are wild, we are one!
First Mænad O sweet soul of the waters! Chase me not! What would’st thou!
A Voice as of the Running Brooks Love!
First Mænad Love, love, I give, I give. I yield, I pant, I fall upon thy breast, O sacred soul of water. Kiss, ah kiss, With gentle waves like lips my breast, my two small breasts, Rose flames on ivory seas!
Second Mænad Nay! Nay! O soul Of ivy, clingst thou so for love?
A Voice as of the Rustling of Ivy For love.
Second Mænad Cling not so close! O no! cling closer then! Let thy green coolness twine about my limbs And still the raving blood: or closer yet, And link about my neck, and kill me so!
Third Mænad Soul of the rock! Dost love me?
A Voice as of Falling Rockg I love thee.
Third Mænad Woo me then! Let all the sharp hard spikes of crystal dart, Press hard upon my body! O, I fall, Fall from thy crags, still clinging, clinging so, Into the dark. Oblivion!
A Distant Voice Io Evoe!
[Orpheus enters.
Crowd of Mænads Evoe! Evoe! It is a lion!
Fourth Mænad Lion, O lion, dost thou love me?
Fifth Mænad Thee I love, O tawny king of these deep glades!
Sixth Mænad What wood Were worthy for thy dwelling?
Chorus Come, come, come, O lion, and revel in our band!
Orpheus Alas! I sorrow, seeing ye rejoice.
First Mænad O lion! That is not kind.
Orpheus Too kind. Since all is sorrow, Sorrow implicit in the purest joy, Sorrow the cause of sorrow; evil still Fertile, and sterile love and righteousness. Eurydice, Eurydice!
Second Mænad Drink wine!
Orpheus Ay, mask the grisly head of things that are By drowning sense. Such horror as is hid In life no man dare look upon. Woe! Woe!
Agave Call then reproach upon these maiden rites!
Orpheus Nay! virtue is the devil’s name for vice, And all your righteousness is filthy rags Wherein ye strut, and hide the one base thought. To mask the truth, to worship, to forget; These three are one.
Agave What art thou then? a man?
Orpheus No more.
Agave No longer?
Orpheus Nothing.
Agave What then here Dost thou amid these sacred woods?
Orpheus I weep.
Agave Weep then red wine!
Autonoe Or we will draw thy tears, Red tears of blood.
Agave On, girls! this bitter fool Would stop our revel!
Orpheus Nay! ye bid me cease Weeping.
Agave Then listen! drink this deep full cup, Or here we tear thee limb from limb!
Orpheus Do so! Ay, me! I am Orpheus, poor lost fool of Fate, Orpheus, can charm the wildest to my lyre. Beasts, rocks, obey—ah, Hades, didst thou mock, Alone of all, my songs? Thee I praise not. Audacious woman!
Agave Tear the fool in shreds! Then to the dance!
Orpheus The old Egyptian spell! Stir, then, poor children, if ye can! Ah me! [Sings. Unity uttermost showed, I adore the might of thy breath, Supreme and terrible God Who makest the Gods and death To tremble before thee:— I, I adore thee!
O Hawk of gold with power enwalled, Whose face is like an emerald; Whose crown is indigo as night; Smaragdine snakes about thy brow Twine, and the disc of flaming light Is on thee, seated in the prow
Of the Sun’s bark, enthroned above With lapis-lazuli for love And ruby for enormous force Chosen to seat thee, thee girt round With leopard’s pell, and golden sound Of planets choral in their course! O thou self-formulated sire! Self-master of thy dam’s desire! Thine eyes blaze forth with fiery light; Thine heart a secret sun of flame! I adore the insuperable might: I bow before the unspoken Name.
For I am Yesterday, and I To-day, and I to-morrow, born Now and again, on high, on high Travelling on Dian’s naked horn! I am the Soul that doth create The Gods, and all the Kin of Breath. I come from the sequestered state; My birth is from the House of Death.
Hail! ye twin hawks high pinnacled That watch upon the universe! Ye that the bier of God beheld! That bore it onwards, ministers Of peace within the House of Wrath, Servants of him that cometh forth At dawn with many-coloured lights Mounting from underneath the North, The shrine of the celestial Heights!
He is in me, and I in Him! Mine is the crystal radiance That filleth æther to the brim Wherein all stars and suns may dance. I am the beautiful and glad, Rejoicing in the golden day. I am the spirit silken-clad That fareth on the fiery way. I have escaped from Him, whose eyes Are close at eventide, and wise To drag thee to the House of Wrong:— I am armed! I am armed! I am strong! I am strong! I make my way: opposing horns Of secret foemen push their lust In vain: my song their fury scorns; They sink, they grovel in the dust.
Hail, self-created Lord of Night! Inscrutable and infinite! Let Orpheus journey forth to see The Disk in peace and victory! Let him adore the splendid sight, The radiance of the Heaven of Nu; Soar like a bird, laved by the light, To pierce the far eternal blue!
Hail! Hermes! thou the wands of ill Hast touched with strength, and they are shivered! The way is open unto will! The pregnant Goddess is delivered!
Happy, yea, happy! happy is he That hath looked forth upon the Bier That goeth to the House of Rest! His heart is lit with melody; Peace in his house is master of fear; His holy Name is in the West When the sun sinks, and royal rays Of moonrise flash across the day’s!
I have risen! I have risen! as a mighty hawk of gold! From the golden egg I gather, and my wings the world enfold. I alight in mighty splendour from the thronèd boats of light; Companies of Spirits follow me; adore the Lords of Night. Yea, with gladness did they pæan, bowing low before my car, In my ears their homage echoed from the sunrise to the star. I have risen! I am gathered as a lovely hawk of gold, I the first-born of the Mother in her ecstasy of old. Lo! I come to face the dweller in the sacred snake of Khem; Come to face the Babe and Lion, come to measure force with them! Ah! these locks flow down, a river, as the earth’s before the Sun, As the earth’s before the sunset, and the God and I are One. I who entered in a Fool, gain the God by clean endeavour; I am shaped as men and women, fair for ever and for ever.
(The Mænads stand silent and quiet.)
Orpheus Worship with due rite, orderly attire, The makers of the world, the floating souls Whence fell these crystals we call earth. Praise Might The Limitless; praise Pallas, by whose Wisdom The One became divided. Praise ye Him, Chronos, from whom, the third, is form perceived. Praise ye Poseidon, his productive power, And Juno, secret nature of all things, On which all things are builded: praise ye Love, Idalian Aphrodite, strong as fair, Strong not to loosen Godhead’s crown by deed To blind eyes not a God’s: and praise pure Life, Apollo in his splendour, whom I praise Most, being his, and this song his, and his All my desire and all my life, and all My love, albeit he hath forsaken me. These are One God in many: praise ye Him!
Agave We praise indeed who made the choral world And stars the greatest, and all these the least Flowers at our feet: but also we may praise This Dionysus, lord of life and joy, In whom we may perceive a subtle world Hidden behind this masquerade of things. O sisters, hither, thither!
Orpheus All deceit. Delusive as this world of shadows is, That subtler world is more delusive yet, Involving deeper and still deeper: thought, Desire of life, in that warm atmosphere Spring up and blossom new, rank poisonous flowers, The enemies of peace. Nay! matter’s all, And all is sorrow. Therefore not to be, Not to think, love, know, contemplate, exist; This Not is the one hope.
Agave Believe it not! Here is true joy—the woodland revellings, The smile, the kiss, the laughter leaping up, And music inward, musings multiform, Manifold, multitudinous, involved Each in the deep bliss of the other’s love;— Ay me! my sisters. Thither!
Autonoe Wake the dance!
Mænads Pour luscious wine, cool, sweet, strong wine! Bring life, Life overflowing from the cup!
Orpheus Hush! Hush! I hymn the eternal matter, absolute, Divided, chaos, formless frame of force, Wheels of the luminous reach of space that men Know by the name of Pan.
Mænads Hail! Hail! Pan! Son of Hermes! God of Arcady And all wild woodlands!
Orpheus Neither Son, nor Sire, Nor God: but he is all: all else in him Is hidden: he the secret and the self Shrined central in this orb of eyeless Fate, Phantom, elusive, permanent. In all, In spirit and in matter immanent, He also is the all, and all is ill. Three forms and functions hath the soul; the sea Murmurs their names repeating: Maris call The soul as it engendereth things below; Neptune the soul that contemplateth things Above; and Ocean as itself retracts Itself into itself: choose ye of these! But I hymn Pan. Awake, O lyre, awake! As if it were for the last time, awake! [He sings.
In the spring, in the loud lost places. In the groves of Arcadian green, There are sounds and shadowy faces And strange things dimly seen. Though the face of the springtide as grace is, The sown and the woodland demesne Have a soul caught up in their spaces, Unkenned, and unclean!
It takes up the cry of the wind. Its eyes with weeping are blind. A strong hate whirls it behind As it flees for ever. Mad, with the tokens of Fear; Branded, and sad, without cheer; Year after ghastly year, And it endeth never.
And this is the mystical stranger, The subtle Arcadian God That lurks as for sorrow and danger, Yet rules all the earth with his rod. Abiding in spirit and sense Through the manifold changes of man, This soul is alone and intense And one—He is Pan.
More subtle than mass as ye deem it He abides in the strife that is dust. Than spirit more keen as ye dream it, He is laughter and loathing and lust. He is all. Nature’s agonies scream it; Her joys quire it clear; in the must Of the vat is His shape in the steam. It Is Fear, and Disgust.
For the spirit of all that is, The light in the lover’s kiss, The shame and sorrow and bliss; They are all in Pan; The inmost wheel of the wheels, The feeling of all that feels, The God and the knee that kneels, And the foolish man.
For Pan is the world above And the world that is hidden beneath; He grins from the mask of love; His sword has a jewelled sheath. What boots it a maiden to gird her? Her rape ere the æons began Was sure; in one roar of red murder She breaks: He is Pan.
He is strong to achieve, to forsake her; He is death as it clings to desire, Ah, woe to the Earth! If he wake her, Air, water and spirit and fire Rush in to uproot her and break her:— Yet he is the broken; the pyre, And the flame and the victim; the maker, And master and sire!
And all that is, is force. A fatal and witless course It follows without remorse With never an aim. Caught in the net we strive; We ruin, and think we thrive; And we die—and remain alive:— And Pan is our name!
For the misery catches and winds us Deep, deep in the endless coil; Ourself is the cord that binds us, And ours is the selfsame toil. We are; we are not; yet our date is An age, though each life be a span; And ourself and our state and our fate is The Spirit of Pan.
O wild is the maiden that dances In the dim waned light of the moon! Black stars are her myriad glances: Blue night is the infinite swoon! But in other array advances The car of the holier tune; And our one one chance is in mystical trances;— Thessalian boon!
For swift as the wheels may turn, And fierce as the flames may burn, The spirit of man may discern In the wheel of Will A drag on the wheels of Fate, A water the fires to abate, A soul the soul to make straight. And bid “be still!”
But ye, ye invoke in your city And call on his name on the hill The God who is born without pity, The horrible heart that is chill; The secret corruption of ages Ye cling to, and hold as ye can, And abandon the songs of the sages For Passion—and Pan!
O thou heart of hate and inmost terror! O thou soul of subtle fear and lust! Loathsome shape of infamy, thy mirror Shown as spirit or displayed as dust! O thou worm in every soul of matter Crawling, feasting, rotting; slime of hell! Beat and batter! shear and shatter! Break the egg that hides thee well! Pan! I call thee! Pan! I see thee in thy whirling citadel.
I alone of all men may unveil thee, Show the ghastly soul of all that is Unto them, that they themselves may hail thee, Festering corruption of thy kiss! Thou the soul of God! the soul of demon! Soul of matter, soul of man! Show the gross fools, thine, that think them freemen, What thou art, and what thy heart, And what they are, that they are thee, All creation, whole and part, Thine and thee, near and far:— Come! I call thee, I who can. Pan! I know thee! Pan! I show thee! Burst thy coffin open, Pan!
What have I said? What have I done?
Mænads Pan! Pan! Evoe, Iacche! Pan!
Agave The victim!
Autonoe Rend The sole pure thing in this impure gross lump, The shapeless, formless horror that is us And God—Ah! rend him limb from limb!
Orpheus Apollo! This is the night. This is the end of all. No force detains. No power urges on. I am free! Alas! alas!—Eurydice! (He is torn to pieces. A faint voice—like his—is still heard, ever receding and failing.)
O night! Fade, love! Fade, light! I pass beyond Life’s law. I melt as snow; as ice I thaw; As mist I dissipate: I am borne, I draw Through chasms in the mountains: stormy gusts Of ancient sorrows and forgotten lusts Bear me along: they touch me not: I waste The memory of long lives interlaced Fades in my fading. I disintegrate, Fall into black oblivion of Fate. My being divides: I have forgot my name. I am blown out as a thin subtle flame. I am no more.
A Spirit What is? what chorus swells Through these dark gorges and untrodden dells! What whisper through the forest? Far entwines The low song with the roses and the vines, The high song with the mountains and the pines, The inmost song with secret fibre of light, And in the boiling pools and quorns and chasms Chases the stryges, Death’s devote phantasms, Into a brilliant air wherein they are lost. Deep in the river moans the choral roar, Till the deep murmur of the Lesbian shore Washed of the luminous sea gives answer, while The angry wail of Nature doth beguile The hours, the wrath of Nature reft of one, The sole strong spirit that was Nature’s sun, The orb she circled round, the one thing clean From all her gross machinery, obscene And helpless:—and the lonely mother-cry, The Muse, her hope down-stricken. Magically The full deep chorus stirs the sky; Hark! one voice beyond all Gives love’s own call, Not hers, Eurydice’s, But thine, thou sweet blood-breasted nightingale Waking thy choral wail From Mitylene to remotest seas!
The River Hebrus Was e’er a stream before So sad a burden bore Rolling a melancholy sorrow down from shore to shore?
Calliope O this is bitterness beyond belief. Grief beyond grief. Boots it to weep? I holp him not with force: What should avail—remorse?
River Hebrus Hear upon high the melancholy Antistrophe Matching the strophe’s agony! Tides on a terrible sea!
Calliope Bear, bear the laurelled head Of him I loved, him dead, O Hebrus, ever downward on thy bosom iron-red!
River Hebrus All Nature’s tunes are dull. The beautiful, The harmony of life is null.
Calliope What unto us remains But in these broken strains To hymn with voices jarred the jarred world’s shriek of woe?
O! O!
River Hebrus This discord is an agony Shuddering harsh in me; My waters will empoison the fair fresh-water sea!
Calliope Nay! all is ended now. Cover the beaten brow! Carry the brain of music into the wide Ægean! No priest pronounce thy pæan Ever again, Apollo, Thou false, thou fair, thou hollow! Die to a groan within a shrine! Despair thy force divine! Thou didst achieve this ruin; let the seas Roar o’er thy lost name of Musagetes!
The Lesbian Shore Welcome, O holy head! Welcome, O force not dead!
Reverberating joy of music subtly shed! Welcome, O glorious, O laurelled one! Own offspring of the Sun, The ancient harmony was hardly yet begun. By thee and by thy life Arose the Lesbian maiden. Thou art perished as thy wife; My shores with magic loves and songs of life are laden.
Calliope Weep, weep no more! O loyal Lesbian shore, I hear a murmur sound more sweet than murmur ever bore. Not ocean’s siren spell Soft-sounded in a spiral shell Were quite so exquisite, were all so admirable!
Lesbian Shore Nay! but the agony of the time Rings in the royal rhyme! She hath touched the intimate, and chanced on the sublime.
Calliope Ay! Ay! a woman’s silky tone Makes music for eternity her own, Till all men’s victories in song seem a discordant groan.
Lesbian Shore Upon my cliffs of green, Beneath the azure skies, She stands with looks of fire, Sappho. Her hands between Lies the wild world; she flies From agony to agony of desire.
Calliope Him, Orpheus, him she sings; Loosing the living strings, Till music fledged fares forth sunward on moon-wrought wings.
Lesbian Shore Yea, by the solar name, Orpheus her lips acclaim, The centre and the silence! O! the torrent of fine flame Like hair that shooteth forth To the ensanguine North Whence ran the drunken crew, Bassarids in their wrath.
Sappho Woe is me! the brow of a brazen morning Breaks in blood on water athirst of Hebrus. Sanguine horror starts on her hills tenebrous: Hell hath not heard her!
Dumb and still thy birds, O Apollo, scorning Song; yells drown them, lecherous anthems gabbled, Laughter splashed of Bassarids, blood-be-dabbled, Mad with their murder!
O thou many-coloured immortal maiden, Dawn! O dew, delight of a world! A sorrow Hides your holy faces awhile. To-morrow Comes for your calling?
Still the notes of musical Orpheus, laden Never now of pain or of failing, follow; Follow up the height, or adown the hollow Fairy are falling.
O my hopeless misery mind of longing! O the anguish born in a breast unlovered! Women, wail the face of a God uncovered, Brain dead and breath dumb!
Wail the sense of infinite ardours thronging Fast and fast and faster athwart the heaven, Keen as light and cruel as fire, as levin Swift and as death dumb!
Freedom, rapture, victory, fill the chorus, Dying, ever dying, among the billows; Whispered, ever whispered among the willows:— Pour the libation!
Now springs up a notable age. Adore us Masters now of music above his magic, Lords of change, leaps pastoral up to tragic, Thanks to the Thracian!
Ah, my pain! what desolate female bosoms, Smitten hearts of delicate males, uncover; Grip not life for poet or sage or lover, Feed on derision.
Yea, in these mature me avenger blossoms Swift as swords to sever the subtle ether, Lift the earth, see infinite space beneath her, Swoon at the vision.
This, O Orpheus, this be a golden guerdon Unto thee for gift of amaze and wonder! This thy sorrow, sword of a heart asunder, Beareth a flower.
This the heart of woman—a bitter burden!— Thou has filled with seed—O a seed of madness! Seed of music! seed of a royal sadness!— This be our dower!
Ah! the bitter legacy left of lyre-light! Thou wast Nature’s prophet, a wise magician; Magic fails, and love is a false physician:— Deep our disease is!
Now to us the crouching over the firelight, Eating out for hunger of love our vitals! (Eaten out the hollower for respitals Swift as the breeze is.)
Ay! the golden age is a broken vessel. All the golden waters exhale, evanish. Joy of life and laughter of love we banish: Damned is the will dead.
Now with brass and iron we writhe and wrestle. Now with clay the torrent of fire is tainted. Life apes death: the lily is curled and painted; Gold is regilded.
Master, we lament thee, as awful anguish Seizes on the infinite maze of mortals. See we love that yearns to the golden portals Bound of the grey god.
Love, thy children, laughter and sunlight, languish. Aphrodite, miracle of the flashed foam, Burns with beaten agony in the lashed foam; Down is the day-god.
Ay! this first of Lesbian lamentations Still shall burn from æon to idle æon! (Chorus, epithalamy, ode, and pæan Dumb or dishevelled!)
Still my songs shall murmur across the nations, Gain their meed of misery, praise, and yearning, Smite their stroke on centuries foully burning, Drunk or bedevilled.
Song? No beauty shine in a sphere of music! Me? my voice be dull, be a void, be toneless! Match me, sea! than me thou hast many a moan less, Many a million!
Sun, be broken! Moon, be eclipsed; be dew sick! Ocean flat and poisonous, earth demented! Living souls go shuddering through the tented Air, his pavilion!
Ay; the pectis clangs me a soulless discord:— Let me break my visible heart a-weeping! Loving? Drinking? Misery. Singing, sleeping Touch not my sorrow.
Orpheus, turn the sorrow-chord to the bliss-chord! All may rise the easier that the one set. So our eyes from saddening at the sunset Turn to to-morrow.
Calliope Silence. I hear a voice That biddeth me rejoice. I know the whole wise plan Of fate regarding Man.
The Lesbian Shore It is the sun’s dark bride Nuith, the azure-eyed. No longer Sappho sings her spell; His heart divorced, her heart insatiable. There is deep silence. Earth hath passed To a new kingdom. In a purpose vast Her horoscope is cast.
Nuith Enough. It is ended, the story Of magical æons of song; The sun is gone down in his glory To the Houses of Hate and of Wrong. Would ye see if he rise? In Hesperian skies Ye may look for his rising for long.
The magical æon beginneth Of song in the heart of desire, That smiteth and striveth and sinneth, But burns up the soul of the lyre. There is pain in the note:— In the sorcerer’s throat Is a sword, and his brain is afire!
Long after (to men: but a moment To me in my mansion of rest) Is a sundawn to blaze what the glow meant Seen long after death in the west; A magical æon! Nor love-song nor pæan, But a flame with a silvery crest.
There shall rise a sweet song of the soul Far deeper than love or distress; Beyond mortals and gods shall it roll; It shall find me, and crave, and caress. Ah! me it shall capture In torrents of rapture; It shall flood me, and fill, and possess.
For brighter from age unto age The weary old world shall renew Its life at the lips of the sage, Its love at the lips of the dew. With kisses and tears The return of the years Is sure as the starlight is true.
Yet the drift of the stars is to beauty, To strength, and to infinite pleasure. The toil and the worship and duty Shall turn them to laughter and leisure. Were the world understood Ye would see it was good, A dance to a delicate measure.
Ye fools, interweaving in passion. The lyrical light of the mind! Go on, in your drivelling fashion! Ye shall surely seek long and not find. From without ye may see All the beauty of me, And my lips, that their kisses are kind.
For Eurydice once I lamented; For Orpheus I do not lament: Her days were a span, and demented; His days are for aye, and content. Mere love is as nought To the love that is Thought, And idea is more than event.
O lovers! O poets! O masters Of me, ye may ravish my frown! Aloof from my shocks and disasters! Impatient to kiss me, and crown! I am eager to yield. In the warrior field Ye shall fight me, and fasten me down.
O poets! O masters! O lovers! Sweet souls of the strength of the sun! The couch of eternity covers Our loves, and our dreams are as done. Reality closes Our life into roses; We are infinite space: we are one.
There is one that hath sought me and found me In the heart of the sand and the snow: He hath caught me, and held me, and bound me, In the lands where no flower may grow. His voice is a spell, Hath enchanted me well! I am his, did I will it or no.
But I will it, I will it, I will it! His speck of a soul in its cars Shall lift up immensity! fill it With light of his lyrical bars. His soul shall concentre All space; he shall enter The beautiful land of the stars.
He shall know me eternally wedded To the splendid and subtle of mind; For the pious, the arrogant-headed, He shall know they nor seek me nor find. O afloat in me curled! Cry aloud to the world That I and my kisses are kind!
O lover! O poet! O maiden To me in my magical way! Be thy songs with the wilderness laden! Thy lyre be adrift and astray:— So to me thou shalt cling! So to me thou shalt sing Of the beautiful law of the day!
I forbid thee to weep or to worship; I forbid thee to sing or to write! The Star-Goddess guideth us her ship; The sails belly out with the light. Beautiful head! We will sing on our bed Of the beautiful law of the Night!
We are lulled by the whirr of the stars; We are fanned by the whisper, the wind; We are locked in the unbreakable bars, The love of the spirit and mind. The infinite powers Of rapture are ours; We are one, and our kisses are kind.
EXPLICIT LIBER QUARTUS
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