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[The Golden Rose is a cycle of poems by Aleister Crowley meant to celebrate his love affair with Jeanne Foster.]
The Golden Rose
I
THE INITIATION
I Exordium
Spring and the sempiternal sun! Life and love for everyone! Sap exulting in leaf and tree! — What do you bring me? Have I not worn the winter out, Victor in many a bitter bout? Have I not come to the end of the quarrel, Earning bay and myrtle and laurel? Twined on my brow were the three, in one, When the good gods gave me Hilarion!
II The Alchemist
I asked you for a name, Hilarion, You answered: The White Lion of the Sun, Seeing my soul, serene and radiant, Love limitless and Will determinant, Fearless and fiery, set among the stars, Vishnu, the last of mine own avatars.
But I was bound; some sorcery had frozen The blood of Time’s elect, the children chosen To people the old earth; and I was bound. You came, Red Eagle of the Moon, you found A mystery, a mask. The gods dissembled. You came; you looked at me. You never trembled: With one strong kiss you caught me. In that flame The cord was shrivelled. Like a lion I came Forth from the caverns, puissant from the prison, My strength assurgent, royal, rearisen, Winged with your love, the triumph of your tune, Hilarion, Red Eagle of the Moon!
Behold, the Elixir bubbles! Opal glows The first ebullience of the Golden Rose! We shall attain the red stone beyond price, The medicine of all mortal maladies! All shall dissolve in the devine distilment: The faery fire shall fashion its fulfilment, Mankind, the pearl of rose — what light upstarts? The blush and shimmer of our own pure hearts.
For in the volume of the Book of Fate God wrote before He turned Him to create That you and I were one, our Will should give (It was the will to love, and not to live!) The greatest gift to Earth. So here we lie And love, crowned colleagues of Eternity. . . . You freed the lost White Lion of the Sun, Red Eagle of the Moon, Hilarion.
III The Golden Rose
Deciduous moonbeams, poison-flowers Perverse, profane, that haunts the hours When under thwarted groves of yew The hates of Hectate hiss through Her nightshade garden! In that light Obscure thrive wizard aconite And foxglove — in the gloom-spell lithe Lewd vipers curl, black adders writhe. . . . Oh ye, my loves — the serpent scroll! — Sting, never satisfy, the soul! Ghosts of true passion that excite Evasive echoes of delight. . . . I am a saint with snakeskin shod Suddenly in the garden of God! The happy laughter of my love Is all about me and above, Where, watered by a faery fount, Serene upon the sacred mount, Stands, planted by the holy hand Of the One Lord of sea and land, Trained on the royal and ruby rod, My manhood — God alive in God — The Flower — the soul that is the sun — My golden rose, Hilarion!
IV The Soul's Rebirth
Moon-patches in the winter woods, Monk-devils lurking in black hoods, Nun-witches pallid and aghast, Awry, my portents of the past! Twitching my soul with lank and lewd Limbs in each twisted attitude, Deformed, degenerate, distorted, Amorphous, abject, and aborted, They haunt me, the gaunt ghouls of vice, Tingling obscenities of ice.
But this is spring; the lark’s astir! Spring! the woods wake to welcome her. Here are the cowslips, violets, pansies, Snowdrops, a thousand daring fancies, Delight of dew, the grass impearled, Wisdom and wonder in the world Begotten of the saviour sun, Soul-sisters to Hilarion!
V The Chapel of the Graal
I hold thee sacred. In the wood Of life I sought for solitude. Deeper and darker, the night fledged Its bat’s wings o’er the razor-edged Serrated range of hills that hid The sunset like a coffin-lid.
The path wound narrow and rough; the air Hung stifling. What ill dream lurks there By yonder yew? What demons stalk Behind that sinister cypress-walk? Almost this heart, that never trembled, Forswore to fear, and so — dissembled!
I saw the chapel. One pale ray Supplanted by the forgotten day. I sought it. There I entered in, Laid down the burden of my sin. . . .
Then, as I knelt, the altar lit Without an acolyte, by wit Of what glib gramarye who knows? Then came the Veil, gossamer rose, Amid the candles; in the gloom Stole forth an infinite perfume Ineffable. A solemn pause Of holy awe; the Veil withdraws In musical concerted curves, Rises, unfolds, descends and swerves, Then opens. In the centre stands An angel, bearing in his hands Of fairy fire that fierce and fond Vial of dove-kissed diamond, The Holy Grail. The blood was dim.
I heard an harp; I heard an hymn: As in a trance my body obeyed The unguessed summons. Unafraid, With my lance-point I touched the rim Of God’s own cup. The blood was dim.
The music swelled. I lifted up The Lance; I plunged it in the Cup. The red Blood glowed, a sudden sun That hushed the hidden orison With its crowned chorus of delight. Where was the chapel? Where the night? Where the dread wood? All life was fire, All love delight, all death desire. There was none other thing at all But that one cosmic festival, The marriage of the Lance that stood Stark in the Cup of the Sun’s blood. . . . Glory to God, that Three are One, He, Thou, and I, Hilarion!
VI Sekhet (I)
Eatest thou me, O Sekhet, cat of the Sun? O thou that hast eaten up the Apep-snake! O thou that hast passed the pylons one by one Till the nineteenth God came wallowing in thy wake! Thou hast whispered me the wonder unknown of them That I am Amoun, and I am Mentu, that I am Khem!
Thou hast eaten the snake, O Sekhet, cat of the Sun! Thou hast led me about the earth in a wizard walk; Thou hast loved me at every pylon, one by one, Thou hast — hast thou armed me, Sekhet, against the hawk? I am winged and erect and naked for thee, my Lord. Have I any shield, have I any helm, have I any sword?
Thou hast eaten the snake, O Sekhet, cat of the Sun! Shall I be strong to strike at the black hawk’s throat? Shall we tread on the Sebek-crocodiles, one by one? On the Nile, the Nile of the Gods, shall we sail in our boat? Yea, we are strong, we are strong, we shall conquer them! For I am Amoun, for I am Mentu, for I am Khem!
VII The Poet Reborn
O that the false and fickle moon Might fall into the faded West; That all her mad and magick tune Might sink to rest, might sink to rest! Too long, too loud, my perverse breath Awoke the mocking pipes of Pan: An end to darkness and to death! Apollo’s music makes a man! Encompass me! I bear the lance! My lightnings blaze upon mine helm! Mine eagles scream; my stallions prance, Galloping through the radiant realm. Beside me leaps the panther sky Where once my dizzy spirit swam; My horn is lifted up on high; Before me burns mine oriflamme! O bear me singing to the Sun, God’s charioteer, Hilarion!
VIII Triumph
I have walked warily long enough In the valley of the Shadow of Life, Distrusting the false moons of Love, Many a mistress — never a wife! I have gone armed with spear and shield, Horsed on the stallion of the sun; I slew false knights on many a field — Crown me at last, Hilarion!
I have walked masterfully enough In the valley of the Shadow of Death: Now on mine eyes the sun of Love — True Love — breathes once the Kiss of Breath. I am come through the gate of God Clothed in the mantle of the Sun; In thine abyss, in thine abode, Hold me at last, Hilarion!
IX The Consumption of the Word
O living flame wherein we move Thrilling the universe with love! O sun of music that upstarts, Hymn hymeneal in our hearts! O ambience of the æthyr drawn Round us like dewfall on the dawn! O limitless, O lordly light Wherein we fledge us for the flight To that unutterable bourn Whose silence lies behind the morn, Bear up my soul! Delight dissolves My being; ecstasy revolves In dizzy wheels. My life expands Beyond its bounds; it understands How selfhood burns, a ruby cross, Finds greater gain in its own loss, Consumes its substance in the throes That bring to birth the Golden Rose. . . . O thou blood-breasted Pelican, Bearer and nourisher of man! O eagle that uproaring springs Into the æthyr on wide wings, And, gazing, sucks the substance of That orb whose ornament is love, Grows one with that most excellent Sphere by the subtle sacrament Of the mute music of its thought, And so, in rapture clothed and caught, Melts, mighty martyr, in the sun, So I in thee, Hilarion!
X Love Creator
O æthyr whereupon God wove Tissue of Light, and broidered Love! O fire, the strength of the Sun’s sphere, Life of mankind as of the year! O boundless air, O all-caressing Infinite Liberty of Blessing! Hear, hear, O hear me! I am borne Upon far space, the babe-rose morn That is not bound by cyclic fate To noon and night. Alert, elate, The self of youth, the soul of pleasure, Hilarion brims the bubbling measure, That under joy’s dissolving foam Hideth her vintage honeycomb Of love and peace. O dulcet dome Of life! O glory radiant Of the Sun’s spirit, ministrant To choral ambience that rolls Clouds of rose-capture in our souls! Thrilled through by that pure light’s swift stress, Purity, passion, and holiness, Dissolving every gross link, curled About the wisdom of the world, Assume as to their own extreme, A single star of infinite beam That shall in its own turn unfold A paradise of skies unrolled With green and gracious planets, spun On looms of love, Hilarion!
XI Knight-Errant
I came beneath the holy hill Whence jets the spring of Life-in-Youth; Upon its summit flowers still The golden rose of Love-in-Truth. My lips, that desert suns devoured, Were moist and merry at the draught; And in that dew of sunlight showered I stood and shook myself, and laughed. Lightly I leapt upon the slope To gain the golden rose above; Outpacing faith, outsoaring hope, I had no rival left but love. . . . Mine arms are stretched to North and South, A scarlet cross, a soldier sun; The rose is music on my mouth, Holiness to Hilarion! I mark the bounds of space and time; I suck salvation from the sod; I point the way for man to climb Up to his consummation, God.
XII In the Red Room of Rose Croix
The bleeding gate of God unveils its rose; The cavernous West swallows the dragon Sun; Earth’s darkness broods on dissolution, A mother-vulture, nested on Repose. Ah then! what grace within our girdle glows, What crimson web of will-work, wizard-spun To garb thy glee-girt heart, Hilarion. An Alpenbluehn on our star-crested snows!
O scarlet flower, smear honey on the thigh Of this thy bee, that sucks thy sweetness dry! O bower of sunset, bring me to thy sleep Wherein move dreams stained purple with perfumes, Whose birds of paradise, on Punic plumes, Declare dooms undecipherably deep!
XIII “Love—Lies—Bleeding”
Curled on itself for love of its own mould, The siren shell lies open to the globe Of Godhead that rays forth with purple probe Light of fierce force, a galaxy of gold; And by the spell whereon his fingers fold The murex blood beams oozing from the lobe Whose delicate blushes modestly disrobe The virgin Venus that her nymphs uphold!
The sand is still like star-dust in my hair; The sea is still like slumber in my brain; The sun still burns in my face — and on the air (While in the Rose the crimson Thorn makes merry) Come nightingales — and bells — and through their strain The vision of the towers of Glastonbury!
XIV The Vision of the Eucharist
I stood upon the mountain at the dawn; The snows were iridescent at my feet; My soul leapt forth immaculate to greet The sunrise; thence, all life and sense were drawn Into the vision. Limpid on the lawn The fount of Godhead flowed — how subtly sweet That distillation of the Paraclete! I drank; the angel flowered in the faun.
Transfigured from the struggle to success, I was abolished in mine happiness. I find no word — in all my words! — but one. Supreme arcanum of the Rose and Rood, Sublime acceptance of the Greatest Good, Only one word — thy name — Hilarion!
XV The Soul's Rest
My soul, thou hast attained! No more the irk Of earth has power to stir thee from thy station! Master, immutable in meditation, Thou art resolved to thine appointed Work. Even as the Pole-Star stands, thou gazest on The Universe of Change, the Sphere of Sorrow, Nor knowest yesterday, nor yet to-morrow: To-day is all — and all’s Hilarion.
She changeth not, conterminous with God, Immune from person, place, or period. Nor is she any other thing than thou. For in her love’s predestined usurpature, Perfection superadded unto Nature, The soul knight-errant has redeemed his vow.
XVI An Answer to Hilarion's Vision
Heal thou my spirit, Sister of the Sun! Sore wounded by the tusks of the boar Life, Hurt by my own spear in the sacred strife, From five great gashes see the black blood run! Mocked in my purple, scourged and spat upon, Hither I bore my cross — the Hill uprears Its skull-dome to the storm. They are not tears That clot upon my cheek, Hilarion!
I gave mine spirit up into thine hands. Still on that mountain of the Lord there stands My crucifix. Four suns revolving roll About my central sphere of radiance — Oh miracle of thy one golden glance, And honey of thy kisses in my soul!
XVII The Riddle of the Eucharist
Hilarion laughed — the cloud involves Ixion — But turned her tender mockery with a kiss: “What thing is sweeter than the honey is, And what thing that is stronger than the lion?” Venus is chaste, Uranian and Gaian, Diana warm, the balances of bliss. Swoon deep, mine heart, in tideless ecstasies! Lift up thine eyes, my soul, and look on Zion!
I dined with Venus; and I supped with Dian. “The cup-boy gave of the right sweet Chian.” We baked our cakes upon a corn griddle. One sweetmeat served our turn for corn and wine. O sons and daughters of the Philistine, Plot with my heifer, ere ye ree my riddle!
XVIII The Priestess of the Graal
The scarlet velvet clasped with star sapphires Hangs like the sunset from the virgin throat Upon the golden armour. Melilot Upon the waters mad with phallic fires Of day, the strong exultant face aspires The spiritual breath. The firm hands dote Upon the cloven chalice — See there smote Therein The Substance, sum of God’s desires.
Chalcedony and coral and chrysoprase! Quintessence of the life of moon and sun Ablaze, abloom, ablush, Hilarion, Within the compass of thy crimson Vase! Lo! on my knees I crave the Sacrament. . . . Lo! in my being buds the World’s Event!
XIX The Oriel of the Sanctuary
Lost in the light, our souls, one soul, assume The very vesture of Omnipotence. Afloat in that æthereal ambience Whose taste is Life, and Love its pure perfume. All sense absorbed, withdrawn within the womb Of God, authentic shrine of immanence Where, sacrifice complete, the curled incense Springs from the altar, beatific bloom!
Unfold, O Golden Rose, thy blazoned bud! Wave upon wave of glory, flame thy flood Of force, thy guerdon of thy God, the Sun! Enfold me and the world, an aureole All-girdling, single-centred on my soul That is thy soul and God’s, Hilarion!
XX Love is One
I love God only when I love thee most. Censing the altar with the whispered shower Of worship, I approach the holiest hour When in the monstrance burns the blessed Host. Landed on life’s chryselephantine coast, I make the godly gesture of pure power. The silence shrouds me like a folded flower When all life lapses in the Holy Ghost.
How could I love God if I loved not thee, Or love thee if I were not lost in God? Could there be three unless those Three were One? There is no shore to the celestial sea; There is no pylon to the last abode, The temple of our truth, Hilarion!
XXI The Ceremony of the Equinox
I flung aloft the plunging oriflamme; And at the signal from the cloudless cliffs Of consciousness she dived. The thousand “ifs” Of reason perished in one clear “I am” As down the whirl of space Hilarion I swam, And in her soul God scrawled stern hieroglyphs — Athena lashing sphynxes, hippogriffs, And dragons to — the marriage of the Lamb!
Then all the universe revolted, involved, Dissolved within the soul, and so resolved Into one pearl, winged, throated as a bird! The lips, beloved of God, in blinding bliss Moved to a murmur carven like a kiss “Star-clusters” — the incalculable Word.
XXII A Riddle
How came it that you veiled your naked splendour In flesh so amber rich, so amber rare, Hilarion? For æthyr, fire and air No grosser elements, in sage surrender Woven, conspired to clothe thee, lithe and tender, Supple and passionate, a web of air Through which the essential glory flames so fair That — O, my soul, thou canst not comprehend her!
Was it that only so this soul might pass Beyond its bonds? That in the wizard’s glass Creation, it might learn to look upon The face of its creator, eye to eye, — For he that gazeth upon God shall die — I see thee and I live, Hilarion!
II
LOVE
I
Stars in a wind when druids dance Are the joys that laugh in her golden glance; Fires of furious amber and jet When the eyes for a moment’s muse beget The blaze of ecstasy, surely set Like suns in a king-god’s coronet! Flames that flicker and dive and dance In the whole soul’s mystic radiance. For she is a living and burning sun, The love of my life, Hilarion; And her holy thoughts and her sudden smiles Are the glowing gases, a million miles That roar in space, archangels shod With the passionate purities of God.
II
The long firm lip, with its filmy down Of electric gold, is the throne and crown Of love; how it tempts, how it trembles and twists Like the horse of a strong knight in the lists! It rears and curvets, it paws and prances At the light of my eyes, the burnished lances! Mighty and musical, eager and strong, It whirls the soul of my soul along To the maddening charge, to the shattering shock Where the gates of glory and fame unlock And the warrior gallops with spear held high To the inmost shrine of victory.
III The Rape of Hilarion
Is not that globe of beaten gold The sun? Gorilla grip, enfold This ravished rapture that now revels To know this dauntlessness the devil’s! Hold, hold the moment! Catch the breath In love that dreams delight is death! The sword is master of the shield; The Sabines to the Romans yield; The maid gasps once, and fronts the fate That gave Diana Pan for mate. Moon-dreams dissolve; the sure strong sun Burns through thy veils, Hilarion!
IV The Spell-Breaker
Thou of the moon-lit glade fair fawn, Startled by stout unbashful dawn, Shakest thy dappled flanks, to dart Into some virgin forest-heart Where safety lies. Apollo laughs, His great gaze grim. His ardour quaffs The nectar of expectancy; And, ere the deep dell swallows thee, For all thy swiftness and thy craft, His bow lets loose a sudden shaft Home to thy breast — oh glad disguise Of all God’s golden comedies! No stricken fawn laments and dies Within the woodland sanctuaries. Thou wast thy slayer’s sister-sprite Ensorcelled by some troglodyte With spells of evil augury; The arrow only set thee free! Thou art the daughter of Escape Risen in thine authentic shape, Child of the sky, the virgin sun, And mine own bride, Hilarion!
V Hymn (Translated from Baudelaire)
Most dear, most fair, Hilarion, That fillst mine heart with light and glee, Angel, immortal eidolon, All hail in immortality!
She permeates my life like air Intoxicated with its brine, And to my thirsty soul doth bear Deep draughts of the eternal wine.
Exhaustless censer that makes sly The air of some dim-lit recess, Censer that smoulders secretly To fill the night with wantonness,
Love incorruptible, my works Are void; thy truth is over art. Musk-grain invisible that lurks In mine eternity’s inmost heart!
Most pure, most fair, Hilarion, That fillst my life with health and glee, Angel, immortal eidolon, All hail in immortality!
VI Ixion
My soul is weak with happiness And wonder. As a sorceress Might, in despair of God and man, Offer her virgin vows to Pan, And find the god embracing her Not Pan, but very Jupiter, So I, my heart a coal of fire, My brain gone dizzy with desire, Thinking her woman, chant her charms, And take her naked in my arms, When rapture rebel against rape, She expands, o super human shape, White amaranth, immortal-browed, To Juno’s self, to cast a cloud About her. Oh thou canst not touch Pure Beauty! Loving overmuch Is to exceed, to fail! So nice We pause us on the precipice Of Being that one look’s enough To fashion Loveliness from love; And Loveliness is fain to flit When love would grasp and handle it.
She lies there naked, breast and thigh, A dawn-stained dream of ivory That Titian had not dared to draw. I gaze; immeasurable awe Clutches my soul; such beauty lies Beyond earth’s pole, in Paradise. And my soul faints, adoring her. She lies upon the silver fur, Gleaming, a goddess. Virginal, Intact, intangible! I call On Venus: “Queen of many a shrine, But nowhere worshipped as in mine, Here, where incarnate Beauty moves Incarnadine, the whole soul loves, And the whole soul despairs. Distress Devours it, lost in Loveliness. . . . God in his heaven hungers still To love the wastrels of his will; So did the Father deign to don The shape of eagle, bull and swan — Thou to my succour!” Venus wept Then from those tears of joy there crept A mist, a cloud, that hid the sun, Night swallowed up Hilarion. Ah! then, the blinding beauty dimmed; The wonder-womanhood dislimned, Took shape; the sacred perfume stole Like opium on my swooning soul. The touch of her, as lightning falls Sheeted with flame on arsenals, Suddenly mingled life and death. I was engirdled with her breath; Her kisses drained my sense. She gripped My love in langours velvet-lipped, Whose vehemence was shod with steel. Life scintillates, a whirling wheel; Earth spins beneath, or heavens above: Our Star is fixed, a sun of love, About whose globe our senses whirl. Pageants of passion pass, unfurl Their blazing banners as we twist The rapture of our Eucharist. Drink, drink, thou God! For Thee we poured The vintage. Love’s the overlord. . . . I only hear her broken breath; I only see the face of death; And my soul helmed and winged and shod Bearing his glory back to God! The suave swoon sucks me to the sun Upon thy breast, Hilarion!
VII
Where my Love delights to move All things bow themselves to love. Lips with smiles unconscious bud; Hearts pulse fast with gladder blood; All the world’s ablush with youth As a token of her truth. What must then my blessing be? She delights to move to me!
Where she walks, the flowers flame forth, Stones grow clear as diamond; Clouds go dancing, goats of Pan; Winds make air Æolian; Earth and heaven conspire to bless Her unconscious loveliness. What must then my blessing be? She delights to walk with me!
Where she lives and loves, her charm Holds the universe from harm. Sullen envy turns to praise; Malice softens in her rays; Hearts of triple brass unfold And discover they are gold. What must then my blessing be? For she loves, and lives for, me.
Every morning I awaken To that ecstasy unslaken. In the east I greet the sun With the master-orison: “Praise and worship and thanksgiving, O my Lord, that we are living; Earth, within Thy life to move; I, in the orbit of her love!”
VIII
I have ransacked heaven and earth, Hilarion, for gramarye Of words to witness to thy worth. For incense-clouds of poesy I have ransacked heaven and earth.
God came, and Light and Love and Life; The mystic Rose flowered fair and fain; All skies ensphered the worshipped wife; All failed in fragrance; all in vain God came, and Light and Love and Life.
Jewels and snows and flowers and streams Lent flashing beauties to my verse; They are but phantoms fed on dreams To thy reality — I curse Jewels and snows and flowers and streams.
I sought for fancy’s witch-device; Arabian fable, Indian hymn, Chinese design and Persian spice — Besides thy truth how ghostly dim Is fancy’s bodiless witch-device.
I love the legends of the past: Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome, The Celtic rune, the saga blast — Thou art the sea, and thy the foam, The lovely legends of the past.
In the heart’s wordless exaltation, The silence of the depth of things, There only sobs mine adoration; There only may I wave my wings — Silence, and love, and exaltation.
IX Le Sacrament
Sacrons l’amour, o fille d’Aphrodite. La nuit engloutisse l’astre du jour, Dresse le tabernacle de nos rites: — Sacrons l’amour!
Le feu subtil devore cour et tour; Le temple brulé. Dieu l’hermaphrodite D’engage ses ailes; son âme court
Aux cieux flamboyants; que ma bouches excite Le dernier spasme, Jehane, très-lourd, Très-long — versòns, versòns l’eau bénite — Sacrons l’amour!
X Sekhet (II)
Shall it be paws or claws to-day, Jehane, your lover-lion play? Sweetness of torment bring completeness To love, or torment sharpen sweetness?
Breast against bosom, shall I feel The lure of velvet or of steel? Will it be fire or water flies From the wild opal of your eyes?
Will you express your spirit-stress By laughter or by holiness? I care not — either serves our play — If it be claws or paws to-day.
XI Love Whole
I love the foam, I love the flame, I love the splendour and the shame, The many-coloured magick veils, Thine armour of enchanted scales, Thy soul of subtlety and sadness, Thy mood of merriness and madness, Thy gait of gaiety and gladness. See on this ball of darkling dust The unjust mingling with the just! Evil and good go hand in hand, And ocean always loves the land: Then, art not thou mine universe, All bale, all bliss, all chrism, all curse? Wert thou not all these things to me, Yes, and more also, couldst thou be My soul, that in itself conceives All things, my mind, that wanton weaves All things, my body, that endures, Enjoys, loves, hates, repels, allures, All things? Thou, being thou, also art All things to me, my brain, my heart, No partial planet, but my sun, And my sun’s soul, Hilarion!
XII Lent
Thou pulse of purple in God’s heart Monotonous and musical, Hilarion, to live apart Is not to live at all.
Together we may work and play, Always thy mood a match for mine; Apart, ghoul-night haunts phantom-day; We only pule and pine.
Love twists his tendrils on our limbs. Now Carnival is turned to Lent, We that harped holy and happy hymns Awake the lute’s lament.
O love, endure the iron hours. “Love under Will” shall bear us on To Easter and the world of flowers — Our world, Hilarion.
Portland, Oregon
XIII Restraint
The bond of soul was always adamant; The bond of spirit from the first was steel; The bond of flesh grows every moment stronger; Absence and presence now conspire to enchant My trebling fortitude; to-night I feel I cannot live without you any longer.
Always you are with me, I know. To-night I need the bodily presence also. Sleep May bring me that; have you not often crept Into my arms and drenched me with delight Intolerably intense, Phlegethon-deep, And ravished me with rapture while I slept?
Then, come to-night. But let those vows rehearse Not only knowledge, will and silence. Let Our darling hurl its foot to hardihood, And, spurning with its heel the universe, Do what we will. We may be patient yet Awhile; we need not strike; we know we could.
XIV Love and Laughter
My love is like a mountain stream Alive and sparkling in the sun — The tossing spray, the foam and gleam, A rainbow ray, Hilarion! But in its deeps the currents run So strong and pure, so cool and sweet — The honied heart of snows unwon By oread art of faery feet!
All grace, all gaiety, all gladness, The laughing face an opal fire! Mockery mingling mirth and madness Teasing or tingling to desire! And all the while to love’s own lyre Her heart sings, tremulous and tender; Purity, passion, that respire Firmly to fashion subtler splendour!
Now love shall wet the lips of laughter, And laughter brim the bowl of love. Music of mirth before and after; Envy of earth about, above! Let all the world be drunken of The vatted vintage of the Sun! Our Word, in Art, wing forth, the Dove For God’s own heart, Hilarion!
XV Love in Absence
As a mad elephant with swollen forehead Under the fires and furies of the spring With tearing tusks, tumultuous and torrid, Crashes throughout the jungle trumpeting; So I, my godhead’s gonfalon uprearing, Rage through the city, senseless of the sun — Oh what can save me but the reappearing Of thy calm holiness, Hilarion? Cumæan calm, that answers to Apollo! Cithæron, not to Dionysus dumb! Hilarion, the heart of heaven is hollow, Aching and groaning till our kingdom come! The mountain echoes dithyrambs prophetic; The cave-gust whirls the leaves oracular; Shrill shrieks the anguish of the entranced ascetic Bound on the orbit of the accursèd star. Come thou, the limbs of love, the gait of gladness, Still every storm of spirit or of sense, Satyr salacity and Mænad madness Tune to day’s symphony the night’s offence. Come thou, the flesh and frenzy of the sun, Feed on my frenzied flesh, Hilarion!
XVI Dawn
Sleep, with a last long kiss, Smiles tenderly and vanishes. Mine eyelids open to the gold, Hilarion’s hair in ripples rolled. (O gilded morning clouds of Greece!) Like the sun’s self amid the fleece, Her face glows. All the dreams of youth, Lighted by love and thrilled by truth, Flicker upon the calm wide brow, Now playmates of the eyelids, now Dancing coquettes the mouth that move Into all overtures to love. The Atlantic twinkles in the sun — Awake, awake, Hilarion!
XVII Love and Time
The æons, assembling About and above Thy tender trembling Lips a-twitter with love, In solemn session Announce and acclaim The perfect possession — Peace, a passion aflame!
The spring, unfolding Blossom and bud, Revels, beholding Blushes — bowers of blood! Beauty assurgent Under the whips Of ardent and urgent Lovers, lyrical lips!
The summer, upleaping, Thrills with our mirth, Royally reaping Joy, oh joy, to the earth! All that wast mine is Thine, at a nod — Deep in the shrine is Holy, hidden, the God
Autumn, assuring Earth of her fruit, Mellows, maturing Love on lordlier lute. Thou that was maiden, Thou that art wife. Wake! thou art laden Now, with treasure of life!
Winter, congealing The life of the year, Smiles for us, sealing Sure the soul of our sphere. Girdled and crowned with Love, we are shod With songs that resound with Harps whose measure is God.
The æons, assembling About and above Thy tender trembling Lips a-twitter with love, In solemn session Announce and acclaim The perfect possession — Peace, a passion aflame!
XVIII Song
The night wind from the lake Laughs softly in the trees; Come forth beneath the stars, And let us pluck heart’s ease! I will begem your tresses: — Coruscations of caresses.
Come forth beneath the stars, And take our fill of love! They are like tender eyes Of the great Gods above Lonely among the abysses, Taking pleasure in our kisses.
XIX
Love is the only thing Valid in life. Were we not one In the soul of the sun, Life were a lonely thing, Wonderful wife. Love is the only thing Valid in life.
Love makes humanity Master of death. Fools were the sages Of passionless ages. “Vanity, vanity!” Solomon saith: — Love makes humanity Master of death.
XX
I know you love me, when you turn to me Your eyes of agate and of porphyry; For then the glitter of the lion glance Softens to rapture and to radiance. As I have seen — some tropic horizon — The vapours of the sea half veil the sun; So all their glory trembles to express Its longing for my look’s twin loveliness!
I know you love me, when you turn to me Your lips of savour and of sorcery. For then their firmness falters, as you hope And fear the next half-second’s horoscope. As I have seen the palms, asleep at noon, Stir them uneasily, prescient of typhoon, So all their glory trembles to express Their longing for my mouth’s twin loveliness!
I know you love me, when you give to me Your body of myrrh and gold and ivory; For then its boldness suddenly transforms Shudders with ecstasy of its own storms. As I have seen in trance some strong still star Catch to its breast a comet from afar; And blaze — its glory trembles to express Its longing for my soul’s twin loveliness!
XXI Love at Easter
Now on the moorlands breeds the plover, And in the woods the violets bud. The world’s ablaze with new green blood. The dark night of the soul is over: Hilarion has found her lover. She spreads her wings upon the flood Of sunlight, while the pale stars scud, And soars, till only God’s above her.
Eagle and dove, Hilarion, Steadfast to gaze upon the sun! Spirit of some supreme event That is the mystery of Time And Life — O crown of Love’s sublime, And secret of His sacrament.
XXII
The hour that we are free, Hilarion, Of all the tangle of our fate’s tarred rope, Come, let us cast an holier horoscope! Come, let us seek an happier horizon!
Come, let us make ourselves an orizon That we may chant it on the orient slope Of Alps, and hymn our occidental hope To shipless seas surrendered to the sun!
Let us not worry with the worn out world! Find a new Eden somewhere flower-furled! There are Blest Islands far amid the foam, Green groves, shores coraline, seas iris-hued, Circled with stars and crowned with solitude, That call us, softly call us, call us home.
XXIII The Lotus and the Rose
Heaven has no heart or holiness to hold Its lamp before my love; her saintship smiles Like lotus-buds in the Enchanted Isles Afloat on lakes of efflorescent gold. Radiant, raptured, that through dawn unfold Infinite whiteness. Men, the Sun’s exiles On earth, divine her by no wizard wiles; Nor can the heart conceive, nor eye behold.
Joined in the Mystery of Godliness, Evoe! answering the sacred stress, Hilarion plunges in a plumed pavane. A song of scarlet thrills the candid blossom Now, and ablush upon her maiden bosom Earth bears for me the Golden Rose — Jehane.
XXIV
The best and worst of life is — there’s an end. So, does it matter, the long day’s rebuff, The scorn of simpletons that know not love, The ample foe, the insufficient friend?
I love mankind, the cheery mongrel blend, The coarse, the greedy, the obtuse, the rough. For them my tolerance is suave enough; But — keep me from the people that pretend!
From Poetry Societies, Art Schools, The pimping prudes, the mincing flatulent fools, Deliver me, Good Lord! I need the Sun, The Sea, the Wind, the Earth — a hut’s brown thatch, Old books, old wine, that mine own soul may match The truth and beauty of Hilarion.
XXV The Flaw
You lay upon the couch. I leaned and fed Upon your beauty as a flower feeds On sun and shower, and takes what life it needs. So my soul pastured at the fountainhead Of Love. And in my mood of muse I said: “Behold, my soul, what shaft of sorrow speeds From Phœbus, rankling, till the whole heart bleeds. O fatal Flaw. I would that I were dead!”
Life had inured me to imperfect things. Now, when the great love of the King of Kings Puts all perfections in my arms at once, I must believe that I am mad. One flaw In love or beauty satisfies the law — But there is no flaw in Hilarion’s.
XXVI
(1) She does not walk upon the earth; she floats, A fleece of glory, nebulous and chaste, So far she seems, and yet so golden graced. Each sparkle being a sun, that reason dotes, The soul expands; its midges and its motes Transfigured, as their darkness is embraced By that mild, mighty ray through heaven’s waste That leads the chorus of their thousand throats.
She does not walk upon the earth; her lightness Bears up that pilgrim through the hours of brightness. Her wings inflame its speed; her eyes control Its motion. Who may doubt of things hereafter, Seeing them lively with her lovely laughter, Serene with her security of soul?
(2) Her hair is gold, so spider-silky soft ’Tis like a shower of sparks in kindled steel, A spate of stars, a winged and wanton wheel Of gods that dance for pleasure of God; and oft Into their own proud passion, darkness doffed As swift and sure as sunrise, I may feel (As round my spirit all its senses reel) These plumes of glory whirl my soul aloft.
The arches of the orgies of her eyes Are broad and heavy and black; Nirvana lies Holy and hidden in the Father’s fastness. So, in one soul-sight of her face, I see The inmost secret of Infinity Expanded in the universal Vastness.
(3) Her brow is brave and clear and cogent. Time Holds not for her a secret or a threat Her soul’s beatitude is sure, being set On cliffs no tidal waves of doubt may climb. For in that mind seraphic and sublime Knowledge took Faith in marriage, to beget Twin babes, that men call Peace and Silence yet, Since names are complex and the Truth’s a prime.
Her thoughts are like the drops of dew that stand On God’s brow when he seeks to understand Himself, each agony of truth impearled With seven sacred rays, for every one Drops through the æthyr, and becomes a sun, A flaming and incalculable world!
(4) Her eyes are wells in autumn woods aglow With clouds of crimson gladdening their green. Within the blackness, depth and silence screen More secrets than their lampless lustres show. And all about them shines the sacred snow Of poppy-meadows fringed with feathery sheen Of aspens on rose-gilded banks that grow, With gentian rivulets blue-veined between.
The innocence and wonder of a child; The sanctity and softness of a saint; The ecstasy and wisdom of a god; These dwell there. Then they turned to me and smiled; So the six marvels melted, pale and faint, In One, the seventh, Love, their period.
(5) Her nostrils quiver with their tense, taut will, Like stag-hounds straining at the leash. Undaunted The mastered madness of her soul’s flag, flaunted Far, shakes her earth, yet holds her heaven still. The lightnings of her passion kindle and thrill The clouds of matter, till the world’s enchaunted To tremble to her tune, and life walks haunted By dreams like wine that strong archangels spill.
Because thy purpose, supple as intense, Is one at heart with God’s omniscience, Omnipotence itself is in thy breath. Thy will is woven in the eternal loom, And thou hast set thy seal upon the tomb Where thou hast laid the hallucination, death.
(6) Her mouth is supple as a mountain ash, And as a forest oak is stubborn strong. Was ever lip so tremulous and long, A snake to strike, a meteor to flash, The thunder of the ages in its thong, Master of music, suzerain of song, So richly reticent, so royally rash!
Was ever such a mouth, so quick, so curled, So laughing and so tender, in the world? Was ever mouth so fierce and yet so fine? Why was it made so scarlet, so elate, So mobile, so intense, so passionate? By him that made it, it was made for mine!
(7) Her body is a towering tiger-tune Of music. All its lines are fine but bold, Rose-blushing porcelain, lacquer of pale gold, A pearl pagoda in the harvest moon — Male strength and female softness, plenilune Of molten midnight in the star-stabbed wold — Honey to taste, hermaphrodite to hold, Scented like worship, jubilant as June!
There is the shrine to hold the image of The god fire-fashioned by the hands of Love! There, in the secret channels of the mountains, Brood goddesses, supreme on mortal strife, To award the arbitrament, immortal life, Feeding with fire the everlasting fountains.
XXVII
The preening peacocks plucked the gilded corn From the blond body of the Queen of Rome. But thou hast hailed from their celestial home The very rainbows, rain-begot, sky-born, Plumed from the proud pavilion of the morn! Denizens of the Dionysan dome Harvest their hearts upon thine honeycomb, Hilarion! — oh, phantasy’s forlorn!
Peacocks and gold and ivory of Tyre! But thou — a spasm of spagyric fire, Auroral, austral! That transmuted me, Even me, to very God, because no less Were capable to lap thy loveliness In the austere arc of Eternity.
XXVIII At Far Rockaway
As on the sand we lie, the sun’s kiss aches, (O sun-browned shoulders! O wave-beaten thighs!) And virgin eyes make love to virgin eyes So pure and proud and velvet, crimson flakes Flaming in olive, as our thoughts like snakes Royally kindle, in the sanctuaries Of soul, where all time’s degradation dies — Eternity, whose name is love, awakes.
O lyric laugh of languor! I can hear Hilarion echoed by the spinning sphere — Love satisfied, and pure, and sanctity Melted in sunlight to that quintessential Rapture of radiance whose pure potential Rouses for rival the loud-roaring sea.
Far Rockaway, New York
XXIX The Lion's Grip
All day we watched the Atlantic, comb and crest, Beneath the hyacinth whose golden eye Poured on the sand his radiant archery. And burnt us with his passion, back and breast; Or, far amid the foam, our limbs addressed Their ardour to the breakers. Let us lie Thus ever, cradled in Eternity, Lyric and languid, passionate and possessed!
O when the night fell, and the full moon leapt Over the sea, we sacrificed, and slept. It was the first time that we woke alone Together, eye to eye and lip to lip. . . . Nay! in the Seven Points of Fellowship! Behold! God bowed Himself upon His throne.
XXX The Slackened Lyre
The burden of the fullness of my pleasure Broods on my soul, for I have need to sing; And ere the first dove flutters pearly wing, Ere the first maid’s feet point them for the measure. Ere the first sunray gilds the Rheingold treasure, Ere the first arrow shudders from the string, Comes the black Boyg my soul ensorcelling. The lyre’s unequal to the plectron’s pressure.
Not all the harps of heaven itself should serve, Or all the flutes of Arcady. The nerve Of Pan (great Pan!) was broken by the Moon. And I who am not Pan, Hilarion, Swallowed in thy sarcophagus, o sun, Loving, can love; but would I sing, I swoon.
XXXI The Silence of Perfection
I thrill to the lips with joy; I cannot sing. The trembling of delight is edged with sobs, And, though the heart tempestuously throbs, There is no music on that pulse awing. The god sets fiery fingers to the string; The lyre is mute. What black enchanter robs Amfortas? oh, what master of the mobs Of malice, mortal to Monsalvat’s king?
Nay, but we breathe in æthyr beyond bound, Not in gross air that bears the burden, sound! There is no come-and-go in all our gladness. We are let loose from things reverberate. Could Æschylus have fretted without Fate? Or Shakespeare sung without the soul of sadness?
XXXII Mors Justi
“Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his!” Numbers 23:10
I would that one day in our long-held trance (When soul from soul by soul is sublimated, Twins to one father dearly dedicated) We winged no more the emerald expanse, No more reveiled in flesh our radiance! O let our angels fold upon our fated Faces their wings of sapphire, star-serrated — Yet in the Graal still bleed the languid Lance!
O quiver of all grace! O arrow of awe! Let God’s kiss strangle the last breath we draw, Our spirits one within His marchless mind; Caught up within the opal veil of sense To the orgasm of omniscience — O music of the murmur of the wind!
XXXIII The Voice of Hilarion
You spoke, Hilarion; I could not hear! This was no human voice; it filled and flooded This heart with symphonies of song unstudied, A maze of music in the amazèd ear. There are some spirits of the sun’s own sphere Whose song is silence. Roses may be budded From God’s own heart, so bountifully blooded That sight swoons, trembling forth into a tear.
You spoke, Hilarion! What else could call My spirit from its somber festival Of sense? What else could draw me like the tide That sun and moon evoke to ampler surge? Only one shepherd calls Diana bride. Only one Pantagruel loved Panurge.
XXXIV
O Father Time, thou eater of thy sons, In every laugh of love dost hide a sigh! There is an end of beauty by and by, Even of beauty like Hilarion’s. In brittle arteries the thin blood runs, Shrunk is the skin, and lustreless the eye. Gives God no pause to this cold cruelty, No exorcism against thy malisons?
Nay, Father, not from me (of all living) Shalt thou have aught of answer but thanksgiving! For on mine heart thou hast not laid thine hand. And, more than this, thine hours approve the adventure Of Love, and seal the bond of His indenture. I thank thee, Father. For I understand.
XXXV
(1) The half-moon stood among her stars, and glanced Her pallid greens and purples overwave To the lonely sands. Like hermits gaunt and grave Hilarion stood with me entwined, entranced. What obscure stirrings of the soul enhanced That silence? Are they only dreams that lave With light the groins of memory’s architrave? Or new desires in dawning eyes that danced?
Not for the first time stood we thus and kissed. In the scrolled archives of the Gods exist Moon, stars, sea, sand upon the palimpsest; And, dim beneath the arabesque thereof, Cuneiform characters of Love, Writ before earth bore water on her breast!
(2) Primæval promptings stirred us as we stood. I seemed to search the murk-mute horizons For warning; in my hand an axe of bronze Was gripped; I tossed my head, and scented food; The girl beside me stark hot womanhood To skin my spoils, to cook, to bear me sons — Oh, all earth’s history was Hilarion’s And all her history my beatitude. She suffered; memory stabbed; I read her thought, That all man’s progress is a mask, an ort; We toy with trifles; yonder grins the grave. Her teeth set as her nostrils snuffed the air: “Would he would twist his knuckles in my hair, Club me, and drag me bleeding to his cave!”
XXXVI The Boy Who Took The Wrong Turning
I have misgivings! I was ill-advised A quarter of a century ago Since when I have stood silent and aglow Gazing on God — the one reward I prized.
Ah! had my soul more subtly analyzed Its needs, this coldness would not grip it so. Now that the great news comes — and all may know That poetry is to be patronized!
I stand with Homer’s and with Milton’s blindness, With Shakespeare in his years of love’s unkindness, With Dante and with Byron and with Blake — Had I been wiser, I might now be sitting At tea with Boston’s Beauties; Fortune fitting, I might have been allowed to hand the cake.
XXXVII
This poem is unfortunately, no longer extant.
XXXVIII The Snake Ananta. An Indian Fable.
Beyond the utmost galaxies Where space itself begins to fail, Coiled in inextricable bliss The snake Ananta eats his tail. The stars dissolve; the æthyrs quake: It does not matter to that snake!
I quite admit that it is hard That money is so very tight; ’Twas rotten luck that she was barred By fate from coming round last night. My brother, smooth your ruffled hair! The snake Ananta does not care.
The wisest man that ever drew The breath of life upon this planet, Wishing to comfort me and you, Graved deep upon the living granite Within the caves of Elephanta: “When worried, contemplate Ananta!”
XXXIX La Nuit Blanche
(1) Day passed and night fell, and I might not win you To make the Transmutation. Ill befall Its name in heaven! The night’s an angry pall On an unquiet ghost. Soul flames and sinew Cries for the mighty medicine that is in you To soothe this midnight madness, grief and gall Of the one part whose ache, affecting all, Rages relentlessly. The hours continue.
Oh, but be pitiful, and swift, and come Winged with wise wantoness! You made me dumb; You made me patient; then you took the task Upon yourself; your passion must divine The morning star before the dawn of mine, And your love answer me before I ask.
(2) I swore to God, the hour I mastered you, I would not be the master. Love dictated His own surrender. I have abdicated The throne I won. I am too proud to sue Where I might utter Fiat. Be then true To that fine service, make your measure mated To mine, lest, in the balance overweighted, Your love, found light, leave mine to pay its due.
You could not bear the shame, should God decree That I loved you better than you loved me. Then, play the augur, learn to presage pain, Watch, as I watch, the wizard weather-glass, Close fast my lips before they breathe Alas! And nurse me most when I do not complain!
XL
I look into the green eyes of my cat; (How fascination crackles in her fur!) Their crimson sparks like snakes of Lucifer Startle the heaven their laughter murmurs at. Like green and purple grapes they splash the vat Of Time, and wine comes oozing; like a spur Struck in his dragon by some sorcerer, Her look bleeds rapture, rosy and aureate.
How fascination crackles in her fur! How arched her back! How puritan her purr! Now she hints this, and now she threatens that! Modest and impudent, the game’s astir; She pounces, and I take my will of her. . . . I look into the green eyes of my cat.
XLI Concerto
Sforzando — rallentando — runs the story. Scherzo — vivace — diminuendo — forte — Staccato — allegretto — chè importe? Arpeggio snatched from fugue, memento mori. (Not Solomon found this, for all his glory — Chè l’Arte è lunga, chè la vita è corte.) Con molto brio — largo — è la morte. You register all this for “con amore”?
“God made the passion, Satan the technique.” Yet — can the amateur match Kubelik? Ysaye’s first scrapings surely sounded tinny. Look, there’s the dawn: it must be half-past four. Will you run through your Devil’s Trill once more, Humbug? My rude, untutored Paganini!
XLII
This between sleep and wake. She lay supine, As she lies often, on the silver fur; But Titan were the golden limbs of her, The Earth herself scarce spacious for that shrine, The Sun himself, enormous libertine, Scarce ample for her love. Her mouth of myrrh A square of scarlet, wooed me, livelier Than sunset’s cardinal incarnadine.
Was this a dream? Or did the veil dispart A moment, and God shew thee as thou art? Live we not always on creation’s crest? And art thou not in truth the sun’s fierce force, Cosmic and elemental in thy course, The Hathor of the Mountain of the West?
XLIII At Big Trees, Santa Cruz
Night fell. I travelled through the cloven chasm To where the redwood’s cloistered giant grove Sprang gothic and priapic; wonder wove God’s glory, gathered in the Titan spasm Nature’s parturient anguish. Murk phantasm Moving I seemed! I found the treasure trove Of fire, and consecrated all to love, Smiting my soul within the protoplasm.
Within that temple of the midnight sun I cried all night upon Hilarion! All night I willed, I loved, I wrought the spell That Merlin muttered low in Broceliuande, Till over Santa Cruz the day-star dawned. God should have heard me, had I cried from Hell!
Santa Cruz
XLIV
I ran upon the ridges of the hills That from the North-guard watch Los Angeles. Now. I lift up my priestly hands to bless The Sun, from whose emblazoned cup God spills The wine to comfort all earth’s infinite ills. The cordial of man’s heart, whose dour distress Heals only in immaculate silences According as he knows, and loves, and wills.
Ay! thought is grown a geyser-gush of flame Since those two hours this morning when you came, When. like a comet swirling to its sun, You strangled me in your Astarte stress, And wove me into serpent silences Upon your body’s loom, Hilarion!
Los Angeles
XLV
Like fiery serpents leaping in the light, My thoughts around your heart! They coruscate, Foam into star-clouds, laugh irradiate Kisses, and, Dionysiac with delight, Dancing before that shrine of love sun-bright, Cleave to its maidenhood immaculate. . . . My love burns up my mind! Those thoughts create Only that one flame’s fulgour through time’s night.
So, in the centre, all’s a crested cone, A single and intolerable fountain Of fire, a mystical and secret mountain. Its base is broader than the Zodiac zone; Its radix is the immeasurable rod; Its summit is identical with God.
XLVI
I lie beneath the cliffs of the canyon. Down the long trail I flitted like a swallow, Daring the very elements to follow, Nor paused to mark the crags I leapt upon. Now, lying in the sun, my soul’s a swan, Soars through the boundless blue to greet Apollo: I call my love by name. Remote and hollow The rocks re-echo me: “Hilarion!”
How pure and beautiful the body is Lapped in fatigue’s caressing ecstasies! For then the soul is free to leap above it, To soar, to dive, to seek and find his mate In the dominion of the uncreate, And lastly — to return to it, and love it!
Grand Canyon
XLVII
Our week has seven golden days in it. Monday’s a languor, nature’s meet amends; Tuesday we kiss — and quarrel — and make friends; Wednesday’s a web of worship and of wit. Thursday — what beacon memories relit! Friday — delight with expectation blends. Saturday’s glad because the week’s work ends; Sunday dissolves us in Love’s infinite.
O single master of the sevenfold stress That didst build nature upon nothingness, Beyond the bonds of time our sphere rolls free. Set in the sapphire of the skies, our star Glows individual, like the nenuphar That holds the jewel immortality.
XLVIII Song
Love in the soul Is a spring in the sand; We, being whole, We understand. Doubtful and dark loves Shadow not these loves — Love as the lark loves! Love as the breeze loves!
Thought never tainted Our simple surrender, Sane as the sainted Sun in his splendour. Wicked and wild loves Are not of our loves — Love as a child loves! Love as a flower loves!
Innocent surely Of earth and its guilt; Frankly and purely “Do as thou wilt!” Customs but bar loves; Fashions but blight loves. Love as a star loves! Love as the light loves!
III
DOUBT
I Hilarion Jealous
If from the fulgour of thy spirit’s glow It should be possible for mine to swerve, Desert its gilded tabernacle, serve Another god, Hilarion, I should go Back to Himâla’s sanctuary snow, Where I might watch the great Sun’s condor curve — So still the sense, so neutralize the nerve! I might do that. Another woman, no.
It is not possible, Hilarion. Come all the fates and furies, one by one, To drench my life with torture — it will pass, And I still keep thee as thou art, enshrined Safe in the soul, and mirrored in the mind — Then let the body minister the Mass!
II
A thousand terrors haunt my pilgrimage Through time — stark spectres false and fugitive! Some shameful — too ignoble to forgive — Some, orts of life’s ambiguous heritage! But here’s the thought to daunt the master-mage: “So fair a flower must be too sensitive To sun and shower and shelter — can it live Amid the airs of this untempered age?”
My soul, throw back the hood of thy distress! Look fearless on her delicate loveliness! Know how the Wisdom of the Holy One Made fineness force! Here stalks Hilarion: — The paces of an amorous lioness, The stealth and strength shut in the serpent sun!
III
Elusive! bury here your head! I want no waking dream, But an honest meal of sound brown bread With plenty of Devonshire cream.
Cloke me this bosom with your hair; Let your heart beat to mine! I cannot drink the phantom air; I need the strong rough wine.
You deck your love with wit and grace — A miracle of His art! But see that the flower that gilds your face Have root in a true pure heart!
Fantastic laughter suits our youth, Bright bubbles on life’s bowl. But I must know as the deepest truth; You love me, body and soul.
IV
Hilarion, all this beauty, it may be, Is but mine own soul’s treasure-house, locked fast So long, that streams and sparkles forth at last, The ransom of the starlight on the sea! At least it was your hand that turned the key.
It may be that this vision of the Sun Was but an idle dream of your devising. But I have seen him, splendid at his rising, Know him and live in him, Hilarion! Your blindness would not make his daggers dun!
Who reads the hieratic of the scroll? It may be after all that you are just Hypocrisy and vanity and lust, A common woman with a sordid soul. What would it matter? You have made me whole.
And I being whole would work that will on you, Create you in the image I made of you, Stretch out the large limbs of my soul to love you, As God wrought darkness into blinding blue, Truth kissing falseness into triple true.
You know Love has his moods of gracious guile; The serpent may discuss you with the dove; There’s one that listens, laughs, and knows you Love. Horus stands fast upon the crocodile; This mask but hides the sunlight of a smile!
Then — keep the floodgates open with your kiss! Still wing with me the trackless fields of air! Still shower on me the petals of your hair Perfumed with myrrh or musk or ambergris: — Lucretia, Lalage, Semiramis!
V
This poem is unfortunately, no longer extant.
VI The Argument
When I take my morphine I recover My wits; then Satan slyly says: “O unsophisticated lover, Look forth on heaven’s galaxies!
“Even upon this speck of grit There are nine hundred million women. One tenth per cent would suit you. It Appears a fair-sized pond to swim in!
“Milk’s milk — no need to name the cow. ‘Unique’ is clearly a misnomer. Love her — as only you know how! But don’t stand any nonsense from her!”
In pain I strain my brain. In vain! Above my intellectual level! If I had only some cocaine To help me argue with the devil!
VII The Ordeal
Hilarion went away without a word. In that dark moment all the thrones and powers And principalities of Satan stirred
Malignity’s last strength. The luckless hours Fell on me fainting. Only the redoubt Of soul availed of all my tumbling towers.
But the strong certainty therein held out. Even when the heart stopped beating. I endured The torment of unutterable doubt
All through the day. O victory assured Of the soul’s saintship! As I prayed, there fell Upon me peace, beatitude assured
In martyr climax. The black hosts of hell Drew back dismayed, and on my path I trod Still sick, still shaken, yet aware as well
Of my love’s truth — nor place nor period Might answer me, for that was rooted fast In the last certainty that men call God.
Night came at last — at last — night came at last. I did prepare me to invoke. I drew The circle and the triangle. I passed
From earth to heaven. The black sphere to the blue! On, on I sped through death to life, and still The anguish of the heart sped with me too.
Then came the expected voice: “Have all thy will!” What would the heart say? ’Twas for him I spoke! Ah, but consider! Then the live soul’s thrill
Took me, and thus triumphant I invoke The Father: “Let it be, then, that I dreamt, And this, the lightning-flash to blast the oak
“Of my heart’s grove, be waking; the attempt Of life to vindicate itself, a lie; the one I loved, and love, not the one soul exempt
“From evil that I thought; Hilarion A master-devil, primate of the Pit, Sent to blot out the being of the Sun,
“A laughing fiend, a super subtle wit, Dowered with damnation to exalt me first That she might cast me down to infinite
“Hell, rank me chief of fools, supremely cursed With the whole malice of Hell’s malison — Assume all this — make certain of the worst —
“Then, may I have my will? I will have none, But only answer, with uplifted heart, ‘I thank Thee, Father, for Hilarion!’ ”
On that I slept. Before the dazzling dart Of day shot up from the almighty brow Upon the ocean, God’s archangels part
Mine eyelids. I awake. I do not know Myself, or earth. There is a bliss beyond. So, as one sees a magic mirror glow
At the swift stroke of an enchanter’s wand, There was a cube — yet boundless — of pure flame Blue-white and limpid as a diamond,
That had nor ray nor texture. It became; It was; it is. There are no lights above, No forms within. And my soul knew its name,
Whereof the echo upon earth is Love. This is no love that has its substance in Desire, or hath its birth or being of
Attachment; lieth utterly within Itself, includeth all, and seeketh none; Immune from sorrow, innocent of sin,
It hath the self-existence of the Sun. Therefore I knew the mystery concealed So sweetly in the name Hilarion.
The last great glory of the soul revealed Itself, and love and anguish pass beyond Their finite stress; they conquer as they yield,
And the live strings of the whole lyre respond To incorruptible harmonies above, Pure love without an object, diamond
For hardness and for brilliancy, a dove For softness and for holiness, a sun For all-sufficient selfhood — being Love.
I could not even think of many or one: This had abolished all. The state subsists Beyond the name and form “Hilarion”
In that which, rising o’er the mere mind’s mists, The mere heart’s clouds, perfection comes to birth, Abides the child-god, Silence, that exists
Rose-red upon the lotus of the Earth In the blue ocean of the sky! Come, borrow The Buddha’s word of melody and mirth:
“The devil’s yesterday is God’s to-morow; The end of passion is the end of sorrow.”
I left the smokeless altar. At the door Of mine own chamber there were two joys more; The first kiss of the maiden morning sun, And — a love-greeting from Hilarion.
VIII
When doubt laid siege to your heart, when fear blew bitter and arid Our life seemed hung by an hair, and you thought our love miscarried, What was your cry in the waste, to the grey skies what did you murmur? Heart of ruby and gold, you only beat the firmer! What a fuchsia flower of your mouth its passionate pistils thrusting! “I refuse to do anything, but keep on loving and trusting.”
This you have taught to me, the noblest, mightiest magick In every ordeal of life — tortured, terrible, tragic! This is the royal spell; this is the Word of the Master Potent in sorrow and storm, dominant over disaster, Like the Sun through the heart of the Night his sacred lance upthrusting: “I refuse to do anything but keep on loving and trusting.”
IX The Golden Head
I often think that too much fuss Is always being made about it. It’s really quite ridiculous; In Turkey one gets on without it.
One’s own experience sneering smiles To find one’s folly get beyond one; I’ve travelled these ten-thousand miles To keep a ticket on that blonde one.
There’s twenty thousand spick and span In Montparnasse’s streets and Chelsea’s; And yet I’m such a baby, Jeanne, It’s yours I want and no one else’s.
IV
THE SUN LIFE
I
I saw you waiting as my train ran past. You stood beside your gaoler, firm and pale. Fate had no force to make your courage quail. As if you were God’s mountains, you stood fast Expecting that archangel trump at last To rend the pillars of the world, unveil The fastness of silence, end the tale Of tyranny — the ordeal of the past.
God saw us, and had pity. For I heard And you heard, the white whisper of His word: “Courage and patience, children. I amend The matter in My wisdom, at My time. Stand you erect, indomitable, sublime, Loving and trusting. Listen for The End!”
II
I found a hill above the Golden Gate, A place of pines and sodden undergrowth Where sunlight languished. All my heart was loth To stir my feet, lorn of my maiden mate. Now, fancy, trace the characters of fate! Inscribe in Gothic gramarye the oath Of music and of magick and of troth — Idol incarnate and immaculate!
Not though the leaves of life rank and dead, Not though no day-star opens overhead Shall our love ever fail of life or light, Thy sunlight all-sufficient to transmute My seed, in darkness, into flower and fruit — Hilarion, you come to me to-night!
III
Set me, o sister Sekhet, in thy station! Bear me above the heavens in thy bark From dusk to dawn, and so from dawn to dark Unveil the secret laws of thy creation: Love without purpose or premeditation, Life the full orb, no death-subtended arc, Light without limit, the spagyric spark That has no climax to its coruscation.
Teach me to live and love as thou dost, shining Sphere of all-radiance, in mine entwining The serpent rays that are the Lion’s mane! O sister Sekhet, set me in thy station! Unveil the mysteries of thy creation! — For thee, the mysteries of mine remain.
IV
So much of soot there is of every man In this soft-sea-coal age calamitous — Ignoble, futile, and ridiculous Is the best half of all the best man can. And when mine image in my mind I scan By thy pure light — oh venture hazardous! — It seems that I am scarce a calamus In the rude fingers of primæval Pan.
But thou hast cradled me in love and trust, Called me thy mate, made diamond of my dust, Persuaded me of godhead, so enticed My soul that I can never more let fade The flower-ideal that thy magick made, Looking to me as a nun looks to Christ.
V
Je suis fou. Plus de doute. Je suis fou. J’ai un vin, de Dieu le plus noble don, Et je mábrutis d’un sale poison. J’ai un colombe rose, doré, doux Comme le sein d’Astarte, et l’hibou Affreux me prend; je chasse Cupidon Du jardin; et je cherche les cochons. Puissé-je me contempler sans dégoût?
Si. Le miracle de ta grace berce Sa gloire au sein de mon âme perverse. Si jétais déjà Dieu, Jehane, à quoi Travaillerais-tu? Quel gouffre m’availe! Tes baisers passionnés et virginales Me rendront pur, et sain — digne de toi!
VI HILARION’S WISH
That primal, that creative will of ours, Born of the sun, begotten from beyond, Hath sealed itself in dew like diamond To fill the golden goblets of the flowers With quintessential life, distilled its powers Into our bodies, an enchanter’s wand To build new beauty, to begem the bond That holds our heaven captive to the hours.
We shall not age; our fountain faileth never; We shall be fair for ever and for ever, Walking the Earth, not exiles — avatars! Living and dying but recurrent phrases In one strong symphony that pours its praises Like light upon the ocean of the stars.
VII
Tu es le cygne des mares d’antan Où les oiseaux de nuit se sont noyés. Les eaux ignobles de ces vieux marais Du passé, qui é talent leur puant Et sinistre miasme malfaisant, N’ont pas de reflet que leur feux-follets. Tu les ignores. Tes yeux sont fixés Sur le soleil fleuri et fulgurant.
Tes yeux sont ivres de son baiser d’or; Tes ailes l’embrasent de leur essor; Ton cœur s’allume à son extasé bleu. O cygne! O fleur! O soleil de mon âme! C’est moi ton maître; tombe! Tu te pâmes Sur mon cœur. Tu te noyes dans mon feu.
VIII
“You must be good; for I can only come To God through you.” You said the words to woo me? That you should seek your own soul’s splendour through me! It is through you I hold my halidom. My shrine was dark, mine oracles were dumb, Till you brought God in light and music to me. Your purity and passion yet renew me Hourly; your peace is my Palladium!
These are the illusions of our love and youth? Nay, but the keystone of the Arch of Truth! God meeting God as sun encountering sun Loses himself, dissolves himself, a blaze Of holy awe, of love, of passionate praise — — Seal up the mystery, Hilarion!
IX
Hilarion, soul-sister, wonder-wife, I love but little (need your love forgive?) By sense, for all time’s flowers are fugitive, And Space holds poised the inexorable knife. But Spirit smiles upon the stress and strife Of those bright dewdrops, trembling on its sieve. I love you little for the life I live: — I love you for the beauty of your life.
Your health, your happiness, Hilarion, These are but planets swinging round the sun Of holiness; if mine own soul may win you, It is because it finds its being mated With that incarnate God and uncreated That is itself immaculate within you.
X
“The aqueduct of Time runs red with tears; The wilderness of Space extends for ever; Failure consumes the entrails of Endeavour; Hope drowns in the slow whirlpool of the years. Fast on us fainting flock our vulture fears; One after one the strands of Life dissever; The oracles are silent, or say ‘Never.’ ” — O purblind eyes! O mandrake-maddened ears!
I will not live on earth, Hilarion! I will be soul and substance of the Sun, Kindled by thee in thy devine indulgence To timely ecstasy, to spaceless session; For Love has stamped on our sublime confession His signet of ineffable effulgence.
V
THE BABE
I The World's Hope
Manhattan swoons in heat; the dusty sky Is gilt with Arabesque embroidery Over the Hudson; to the south the giant Ungainly buildings strut, stark and defiant. Below us, half a thousand feet, the ways Bear their strange freight of souls. Through heat and haze We sense the scent of vows exchanged in vain, Wishes deformed, hopes thwarted, prose and pain For poesy and pleasure, greed and groan For generosity and glee, the stone Of wealth dropt smashing on the common weal, Women obliged to whore, and men to steal, The great plain purpose of the Sun wrung wry! Hilarion drew me to her, eye to eye. I saw her face grow infinitely tender, Lit from within by solemn souls of splendour; And in that mirror luminous with youth I read this lyric of triumphant truth, The great glad answer to the sovereign Sun Born in thy secret shrine, Hilarion!
New York City
II
Beloved, I am jealous of the fruit That ripens from the seed I sowed within you: Love is too transitory to transmute All life to Gold. But if it could continue! I am the slave of fluctuance and stress; I only hover like an hawk above you: I envy him his honey happiness To lie nine months beneath your heart, and love you!
He lies close curled within the sacred flood Sealed and serene, the universe apart; He draws his whole life from your pulse of blood He trembles with each harp-string of your heart. You, only you, are all in all to him, As you are all in all to God above you; Me also! — But — to watch the world grow dim, To lie nine months beneath your heart, and love you!
III
Hilarion, it may be that I shall die Even in the April of our love’s young bloom. Pile neither flowers nor marble on my tomb! Wear not for me the weed of melancholy! Keep but mine image in thy memory To stamp it on that hope of ours, of whom Thou hast even now the earnest in thy womb. . . . Not merely mine; it may be it is I!
For by the Will to which my life has striven, And by the grace that the High Gods have given, It may be Time shall make the marvel plain: That thou shalt know, when at the appointed hour You smile upon each other, flower to flower, That I in him through thee am born again!
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