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- 9
- u80ici1.11hIV
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- 1. I am like a maiden bathing in a clear pool of fresh water.
-
- 2. O my God! I see Thee dark and desirable, rising through the water as a
- golden smoke.
-
- 3. Thou art altogether golden, the hair and the eyebrows and the brilliant
- face; even into the finger-tips and toe-tips Thou art one rosy dream of gold.
-
- 4. Deep into Thine eyes that are golden my soul leaps, like an archangel
- menacing the sun.
-
- 5. My sword passes through and through Thee; crystalline moons ooze out of
- Thy beautiful body that is hidden behind the ovals of Thine eyes.
-
- 6. Deeper, ever deeper. I fall, even as the whole Universe falls down the
- abyss of Years.
-
- 7. For Eternity calls; the Overworld calls; the world of the Word is
- awaiting us.
-
- 8. Be done with speech, O God! Fasten the fangs of the hound Eternity in
- this my throat!
-
- 9. I am like a wounded bird flapping in circles.
-
- 10. Who knows where I shall fall?
-
- 11. O blessèd One! O God! O my devourer!
-
- 12. Let me fall, fall down, fall away, afar, alone!
-
- 13. Let me fall!
-
- 14. Nor is there any rest, Sweet Heart, save in the cradle of royal Bacchus,
- the thigh of the most Holy One.
-
- 15. There rest, under the canopy of night.
-
- 16. Uranus chid Eros; Marsyas chid Olympas; I chid my beautiful lover with
- his sunray mane; shall I not sing?
-
- 17. Shall not mine incantations bring around me the wonderful company of the
- wood-gods, their bodies glistening with the ointment of moonlight and honey
- and myrrh?
-
- 18. Worshipful are ye, O my lovers; let us forward to the dimmest hollow!
-
- 19. There we will feast upon mandrake and upon moly!
-
- 20. There the lovely One shall spread us His holy banquet. In the brown
- cakes of corn we shall taste the food of the world, and be strong.
-
- 21. In the ruddy and awful cup of death we shall drink the blood of the
- world, and be drunken!
- 22. Ohè! the song to Iao, the song to Iao!
-
- 23. Come, let us sing to thee, Iacchus invisible, Iacchus triumphant, Iacchus
- indicible!
-
- 24. Iacchus, O Iacchus, O Iacchus, be near us!
-
- 25. Then was the countenance of all time darkened, and the true light shone
- forth.
-
- 26. There was also a certain cry in an unknown tongue, whose stridency
- troubled the still waters of my soul, so that my mind and my body were healed
- of their disease, self-knowledge.
-
- 27. Yea, an angel troubled the waters.
-
- 28. This was the cry of Him:j IIIOOShBThIO-IIIIAMAMThIBI-II.
-
- 29. Nor did I sing this for a thousand times a night for a thousand nights
- before Thou camest, O my flaming God, and pierced me with Thy spear. Thy
- scarlet robe unfolded the whole heavens, so that the Gods said: All is
- burning: it is the end.
-
- 30. Also Thou didst set Thy lips to the wound and suck out a million eggs.
- And Thy mother sat upon them, and lo! stars and stars and ultimate Things
- whereof stars are the atoms.
-
- 31. Then I perceived Thee, O my God, sitting like a white cat upon the
- trellis-work of the arbour; and the hum of the spinning worlds was but Thy
- pleasure.
-
- 32. O white cat, the sparks fly from Thy fur! Thou dost crackle with
- splitting the worlds.
-
- 33. I have seen more of Thee in the white cat than I saw in the Vision of
- aeons.
-
- 34. In the boat of Ra did I travel, but I never found upon the visible
- Universe any being like unto Thee!
-
- 35. Thou wast like a winged white horse, and I raced Thee through eternity
- against the Lord of the Gods.
-
- 36. So still we race!
-
- 37. Thou wast like a flake of snow falling in the pine-clad woods.
-
- 38. In a moment Thou wast lost in a wilderness of the like and the unlike.
-
- 39. But I beheld the beautiful God at the back of the blizzard and Thou wast
- He!
-
- 40. Also I read in a great book.
-
- 41. On ancient skin was written in letters of gold: Verbum fit Verbum.
-
- 42. Also Vitriol and the hierophant's name
- V.V.V.V.V.
-
- 43. All this wheeled in fire, in star-fire, rare and far and utterly lonely
- even as Thou and I, O desolate soul my God!
-
- 44. Yea, and the writing
-
- It is well.
-
-
-
- This is the voice which shook the earth.
-
- 45. Eight times he cried aloud, and by eight and by eight shall I count Thy
- favours, Oh Thou Elevenfold God 418!
-
- 46. Yea, and by many more; by the ten in the twenty-two directions; even as
- the perpendicular of the Pyramid so shall Thy favours be.
-
- 47. If I number them, they are One.
-
- 48. Excellent is Thy love, Oh Lord! Thou art revealed by the darkness, and
- he who gropeth in the horror of the groves shall haply catch Thee, even as a
- snake that seizeth on a little singing-bird.
-
- 49. I have caught Thee, O my soft thrush; I am like a hawk of mother-of-
- emerald; I catch Thee by instinct, though my eyes fail from Thy glory.
-
- 50. Yet they are but foolish folk yonder. I see them on the yellow sand, all
- clad in Tyrian purple.
-
- 51. They draw their shining God unto the land in nets; they build a fire to
- the Lord of Fire, and cry unhallowed words, even the dreadful curse Amri
- maratza, maratza, atman deona lastadza maratza maritza marapn!
-
- 52. Then do they cook the shining god, and gulp him whole.
-
- 53. These are evil folk, O beautiful boy! let us pass on to the Otherworld.
-
- 54. Let us make ourselves into a pleasant bait, into a seductive shape!
-
- 55. I will be like a splendid naked woman with ivory breasts and golden
- nipples; my whole body shall be like the milk of the stars. I will be
- lustrous and Greek, a courtesan of Delos, of the unstable Isle.
-
- 56. Thou shalt be like a little red worm on a hook.
-