THE WORKS OF ALEISTER CROWLEY Vol. III, part 3 of 3 ASCII VERSION November 21, 1993 e.v. key entry by Bill Heidrick, T.G. of O.T.O. February 1, 1994 e.v. proofed and conformed to the "Essay Competition Copy" edition of 1907 e.v. by Bill Heidrick T.G. of O.T.O. File 3 of 3. Copyright (c) O.T.O. O.T.O. P.O.Box 430 Fairfax, CA 94978 USA (415) 454-5176 ---- Messages only. This work was originally published in two parallel columns. Where such columns are found in the original, they have been rendered as a single text with "A" or "B" added to the page number at the end of each column: A = end page left column. B = end page right column. On many pages a prefatory paragraph or a concluding group of sentences is full across the page. These instances are noted in curly brackets. Pages in the original are marked thus at the bottom: {page number} or {page number A} and {page number B}. 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Not for "share-ware" distribution or inclusion in any commercial enterprise. ************************************************************************ LIBER SECUNDUS VEL AMORIS TO MARY BEATON WHOM I LAMENT "The Kabbalists say that when a man falls in love with a female elemental -- undine, sylph, gnome, or salamandrine, as the case may be -- she becomes immortal with him, or otherwise he dies with her. . . . The love of the magus for such beings is insensate, and may destroy him." -- "Eliphaz Levi." "Orpheus for the love he bare to his wife, snatcht, as it were, from him by untimely Death, resolved to go down to hell with his harp, to try if he might obtain her of the infernal power." -- "The Wisdom of the Ancients." {Columns resume} ORPHEUS, FINDING EURYDICE DEAD, STUNG BY A SERPENT, LAMENTS OVER HER. COME back, come back, come back, Eurydice! Come back to me! Lie not so quiet, draw some faint sharp breath! It is not death: It cannot, must not be, Eurydice. Come back to me! Let me as yet lament not! Let me stoop! -- Those eyelids droop Not with mere death, but dreams, Eurydice! Come back to me! O you that were my lover and my wife! Come back to life! Come back, breathe softly from the breast of gold These arms enfold. Give me your lips and kiss me once! O wife, Come back to life! Nay, let the wind but stir the silky hair, (God's lesser air, Not his full blossom of woman's breath!) O wife, Come back to life! {158A} Stir once, move once, rise once, Eurydice! Be good to me! Rise once. -- O sleep not! Listen! Is not all Nature my thrall? Once only: be not dead, Eurydice! Be good to me! I love you -- be not dead! -- rise up and say "I feigned, I lay Thus so you kissed me" -- O Eurydice, Be good to me! There is not one sweet sigh of all the old sighs -- Open your eyes! Not one warm breath of the young breast: no sleep Could be so deep. The last pale lotus opens to the skies. Open your eyes! Lift the blue eyelids under the deep lashes Till one light flashes! Wake with one supreme sigh like the old sighs! Open your eyes! I cannot leave you so, Eurydice. Come back to me! Just in the triumph, in love's utmost hour, Life's queenliest flower -- {158B} All shattered, overblown. Eurydice, Come back to me! I cannot have you dead, and live: let death Strangle my breath Now as I kiss you still -- Eurydice! Come back to me! Fling down the foolish lyre, the witless power! Cast the dead laurel in the dust! The flower Of all the world is marred, the day's desire Distorted in the eclipse, the sun's dead hour. Let me fall down beside thee! Let me take The kisses that thou canst not give, and slake Despair in purposeless caresses, dire Shames fang-wise fastened of the eternal snake. Is there no warmth where beauty is so bright? No soul still flickering the the lambent light Still shed from all the body's excellence? No lamp unchidden of the utter night? Cannot my life be molten into thee, Or thy death fall with rosier arms on me, Or soul with soul commingle without sense, As the sun's rays strike deep into the sea? O beauty of all beauty -- central flower Of all the blossoms in the summer's bower! Fades not all nature in thy fall? the sun Not darken in the miserable hour? I hate all Nature's mockery of life. The laugh is grown a grin; the gentle strife Of birds and waves and winds at play is grown A curse, a cruelty. My wife! my wife! I am broken, I cannot sleep, I cannot die. Pain, pain for ever! Nature is a lie, The gods a lie. Myself? but I am found Sole serious in the hateful comedy. Blackness, all blackness! How I hate the earth, The curse that brought my being into birth. I, loving more her loveliness, am bound And broken -- thrice more bitter for my mirth! {159A} Song, was it song I trusted in? Or thou, Apollo, was it thou didst bind my brow With laurel for a poison-wreath of hell To sear my brain and blast my being now? A band of most corroding poison wound Dissolving with its venom the profound Deep of my spirit with its terrible Sense without speech and horror without sound. A devil intertwining in my heart Its cold and hideous lust, a twiforked dart Even from the fatherly and healing hand -- The double death without a counterpart In hell's own deepest pit, far, far below Phlegethon's flame and Styx's stifling flow, Far below Tartarus, below the land Thrust lowest in the devilish vertigo. If I could weep or slumber or forget! If love once left me, with his eyelids wet With tender memory of his own despair Or frozen to a statue of regret! If but the chilling agony, that turns To bitter fever-heat that stings and burns Would freeze me, or destroy me, or impair My sense, that it should feel not how it yearns! Or if this pain were only pain, and not A deadness deeper than all pain, a spot And central core of agony in me, One heart-worm, one plague-leprosy, one blot Of death, one anguish deeper than control? -- Then were I fit to gain the Olympian goal And fling forth fiery wailings to the sea, And tune the sun's ray to my smitten soul! How should I sing who cannot even see? Grope through a mist of changless misery. An age-long pain -- no time in wretchedness! -- As of an hammer annihilating me {159B} With swift hard rhythm, the remorseless clang; Or as a serpent loosening his fang To bite more deeply -- this inane distress More than despair or death's detested pang. I live -- that shames me! I am not a man. Nothing can I to sharpen or to span My throat with iron fingers, or my sword In my heart's acid where the blood began Long since to leap, and now drops deadly slow, Clotted with salt and sulphur and strong woe. I shall not die: the first sight of the sward Stained with the spectral corpse had stung me so, Not stabbed me, since I saw her and survive. I shall not die -- Ah! shall I be alive? This hath no part in either: bale and bliss Forget me, careless if I rot or thrive. Heaven forgot me -- or she were not dead! And Hades -- or I should not raise my head Now, and look wildly where I used to kiss, Gaze on the form whence all but form has fled! I am alone in all the universe, Changed to the shape and image of a curse, Muffled in self-conflusing, and my brain Wakes not nor sleeps: its destiny is worse. It thinks not, knows not, acts not, nor appeals, But hangs, remembers: it abides and feels As if God's vulture clung to it amain, And furies fixed with fiery darts and wheels Their horror, thought-exceeding, manifold, Vertiginous within me -- and the cold Of Styx splashed on me, making me immortal, Invulnerable in its bitter mould; Leaving its own ice, penetrating streams, Grim streaks, and dismal drops, abysmal beams Thrown from the gulph through the place and portal, Each drop o'erladen with a curse that steams {160A} Unnatural in the coldness: let me be Alone, inviolate of eternity! Let all the winds of air leave me, nor fan: Nor wash me all the waves of all the sea! Let all the sun's light and the moon's be blind, And all the stars be lampless to my mind, Until I see the destiny of man And span the cruelty that lurks behind Its beauty, and its glory, and its splendour! -- The girl-babe's face looks up to the mother tender, Looks for a kiss in dumb desire, and finds Her Jaws closed trap-like to expunge and end her! Let all the life and dream and death be done, And all the love and hate be woven in one, All things be broken of the winter winds, No soul stand up and look upon the sun! Save only mine! -- that my voice may confound The universe, and spell the mighty sound To shake all heaven and earth, to mingle hell In chaos, in some limitless profound; That it may tear Olympus from its place, Mix it with Hades, change the Ocean space, Level the tides of time that sink and swell, And curse my very father to his face! O father, father Apollo, did I wrong Thy chariot and thy horses in my song? Why clove thine arrow the unseated air, The heaven void of thee, why the thunderthong Slipped from the tether, and the fatal stone Sped not to my heart, not to mine alone? Ah why not? but to hers as she lay sleeping By hate, not fate, quelled, fallen, and overthrown? {160B} She lies so pitiful and pure -- and I, Breast to her breast, mouth to her mouth, I lie, Hand upon hand, and foot on foot, sore weeping -- Can she not live again or I not die? As the old prophet on the child I fall<<1>> And breathe -- but no breath answers me at all. All of my kisses stir no blush, no sigh; She will not hear me ever if I call! <<1. Referring to the story of Elisha.>> Let the far music of oblivious years Sound in the sea beneath! Are not its waters one with all my tears? Hath Atropos no comfort in her shears? No Muse for me one wreath? Were I now dead and free to travel far Whither I will, ah me! Not whither I must -- were there no avatar Drawn like my love from some close kindred star? No shape seen on the sea? Were I now free of this intense desire, By swift magician power I might fly westward shod with wings of fire And find my love, and in her arms expire, Or wed her for an hour. (Not for an hour as man, but even as God Whose day is like an aeon. Love hath nor station, stage, nor period: But is at once in his inane abode Beneath the spring Dircean.) Alas, the will flies ere the power began. Lo, in the Idan grove Invoking Zeus to swell the power of Pan, The prayer discomfits the demented man! Lust lies as still as love.<<1>> <<1. This obscure stanza means: that the invocation of high and pure forces cannot be diverted to low and impure ends; because the man becomes identified with what he invokes, of necessity.>> {161A} Therefore in memory only is there life, And in sweet shapes of art: The same thought for the ointment and the knife -- Oh lightning! blast the image of my wife Out of my mind and heart! How can one hour dissolve a year's delight? One arrow striking the full eagle-flight Drop him so swift, giving no time to die, No dusk to hearld and delay the night? A serpent stung her sleeoping: if the abyss Know any cell more dolorous than this, Were there a sharper tooth to destiny Than this that strikes me in the dead girl's kiss: -- Oh if aught bitterer could be, could know, If ninefold Styx could gather in its flow Cocytus, Phlegethon, and Acheron, All mixed to one full flood of hate and woe: And poisoned by all venom like to his Who kissed Eurydice the traitor-kiss: -- Then let them sting me four fold, nor atone Then for the eightfold misery of this! Is not some justice somewhere? Where is he Hateful to God and man, a misery To his own vileness by exceeding it, Who crawls God-cursed throughout eternity Nay! sure he lives, and licks his slavered lips, Laughing to think how the sweet morsel slips, The breast-flower of my bride; the dainty bit Fit for -- ah God! the pearl-smooth blossom drips Poisonous blood that will not poison me, Though I drink deep its fierce intensity. My lips closed silent on her bosom's light, The stung blood springs -- like pearls beneath the sea {161B} Whose moony glimmer hath a purple vein Hidden -- so I athirst of the said stain Drink up her body's life, as if to spite Its quiet, as if the venom were to drain Into my life -- that hurts me not at all, Struck by a stronger buffet: let me call All deaths! they come not, seeing I am broken In this one horror where a man may fall. I am alive, and live not: I am dead, And die not: on my desolated head No dew may drop, no word of God be spoken, None heard, if by some chance some word be said. The wheels of Fate are over me; quite crushed Lies my pale body where her body blushed, Quite dead! there is no single sob that stirs, No pulse of blood of all that filled and flushed Her cheek and mine, her breast and mine: and lo! How sunset's bloom is faded on the snow! There is no laugh of all those laughs of hers, Those tender thrills of laughter I used to know. Nor in all nature weep the careless eyes, Nor any soul of life may sympathise, All I once was in this is torn and rended -- Scorned and forsaken the lone lyre lies. Hath that not yet some sympathy with me? That lyre that was myself, my heart's decree And ruler, subtle at the dawn, and splendid Noonwards, and soft at day's declivity! I flung it in my anguish to the ground. I raise it, and its music hath not found One string or snapped or loosened, and the tune Is the old triumph garlanded and crowned! {162A} Folly and hate! Blithe mockery of sorrow! Shrill me no harsh lies of some sweet tomorrow!<<1>> Soothe me no hateful mysteries of the moon, How one life lends what other lives may borrow! <<1. Follow references to various ancient theories of immortality, reincarnation, and so on.>> I hate that foolish counterfoil of grief That one pain to its friend may give relief -- Eurydice replace Eurydice Long hence -- no separation sharp and brief But dwelling in the intermediate Halls between Hades and the house of Fate: Atropos cut, and pass to Clotho, and she Respin the shuttle in some other state. What shall it boot me now to gather flowers From this young hope to wile the angry hours? That many thousand years shall pass, and show Eurydice again amid her bowers. Forgetting, and myself again be born, Clasp her grave beauty in the middle corn, Forgetting also: Time as fallen snow Blotting the mind and memory that adorn At least our present littleness: nor hope Of larger excellence, extended scope, Shall help me here, forgetting: nothing skills Of this poor truth -- to flatter with the trope! Wooing in mockery! -- nothing skills but this To raise her now, and resuspire the kiss United by the splendour of the will's Success -- to marry, to be made of bliss, I care not whether there or there: to live In memory and identity: to give No part of self or soul to Lethe's water: To grapple Nature, interpose an "if" {162B} In her machinery of conditioned mood; Suspending law, suspending amplitude Of all Her function; to espouse her daughter In forced embrace lasciviously rude, Indecorous, shameful to the eternal "must"! Law may be mercy, mercy never just! Thus I would alter, and divide her ways, And let her wheels grind themselves down to dust. One supernatural event -- but one! -- Should scale Olympus, shattering the throne Of the AEgis-bearing Father: and the days Of all the Universe be fallen and done. Well then? O sceptred Splendour! dost Thou see How little means Thy Universe to Me? How petty looks Thy will to My desire? Hebe and Hera to Eurydice? I, knowing all the progress of the earth, The dim procession, altering death and birth, The Seven Stairs, the gusts of life in fire And Love in Life, and all the serpent girth Of sevenfold twining worlds and sevenfold ways And nights made sevenfold of the sevenfold days All the vast scheme evolving into man, And upward, onward, through Olympian haze Into the crowning spiritual mist, Where spirit in the spirit may subsist, Evolve itself in the amazing plan Through many planes, as shining amethyst Melts to the sapphire's sombre indigo, And lifts, still sapphire, to the ocean glow; Thence into emerald and the golden light, Till ruby crown the river's living flow And glory of colour in the sun's own flame -- Beyond, to colours without sense or name, Impossible to man, whose vivid sight Would blast him with their splendour as they came {163A} Flashing through spiritual space, withdrawn Now, and now flung triumphant in the dawn Not of mere sun's rise, but before the birth Of a new system on the unfolded lawn Of space beyond the sceptre of the Gods! I, seeing all this would foil Time's periods For one small woman on this one mean earth, Would spoil the plan of the inane Abodes, Throw out of gear all Nature's enginery For such a grain of tinsel dust as I, Reluctant to be mangled in the wheel -- Looks other meanness so contemptibly? Yet I persist. Thou knowest, O most High Zeus, When Hera to thine Io did refuse Peace, and the gadfly bit like barbed steel Those limbs with dews of love once lying loose, When thy vast body boarded her, wrapped round Her senses with a mist of being profound, A flame-like penetration, serpentine, Twining and leaping without end or bound, Inevitable as the gasp of Fate: -- Thou, reft of her by envy of thy mate Didst shake the heaven with bellowings undivine, And rooted stars from their primeval state. Not without law, sayest thou? Almighty Zeus, Am I not also mothered of a muse? Let there be law! untimely to release This soul untinctured of the Stygian dews, Unsprinkled of Lethean lotus-drops! Life grows so steadily, so sudden stops -- (Surely no part in Nature's moving peace!) Thus, when the young, like tempest-stricken crops Unripe, are blasted in the blossoming spring -- This is a miracle, not the other thing! Nature insults herself, blasphemes her God, Thus cutting short the life's hard happening. {163B} Nor would I suffer thus, nor she repine Had my wife faded (as rose-tinted wine Bleached in the sunlight) reached her period And fallen gently in the arms divine, Caressing arms of pale Persephone, And bathed her in death's river tenderly, Washing the whole bright body, the long limbs, The clothing hair, the face, the witchery Of all the smiling shape in the dark stream, As one who gathers the first floral beam Of daylight by the water, dives and swims Deep in cool alleys, softer than a dream: So, rising to the other bank, aglow With the bright motion and the stream's young flow, She might discover the Elysian ground, And find me waiting, find me sad and slow Pacing the green flower-lighted turf, and leap Into my body's kisses, into sleep: -- Sweeter this latter bridal than we found The first, now lost in time's eternal deep. It is not cruel if the ripe fruit fall -- But never an elegy funereal Wept for untimely burial, but cried Aloud against the Fates, forebore to call In pity or passion on the Gods of peace; But cursed, but wailed, nor bade its sharp tongue cease Until lightning spat, sharp to divide Bone from its marrow for their blasphemies! So I should curse, unless indeed my grief Be not to great to yield me such relief. Methinks a sob must start and mar the roar Of loud harsh laughing bitter unbelief Scarring the sky with poisonous foam of song. Also, what curse might remedy the wrong? Are not all feuds forgotten in a war? All stars exhausted in Astraea's throng {164A} When the swift sun leaps skyward? Let me speak Words rather of wisdom: hate may rage and wreak Vengeance in vain if wisdom smile beyond, Too high to care, too ultimate to seek. The bitterest sorrow of all sorrow is this: I had no time to catch one last long kiss, Nor bid farewell, nor lay one lily-frond Of resurrection for the sign of bliss, Remembrance of some immortality Affirmed if not believed: alas for me That might not interchange the last sad vows, Nor close the blue eyes clearer than the sea Before they darkened, and the veil of death Shrouded their splendour: still there lingereth Some sad white lustre on the icy brows, Some breast-curve surely indicating breath, Some misty glamour of deep love within The eye's cold gleam! some dimple on the chin Hinting of laughter: even now she seems A folded rosebud, where the ivory skin Closes the ripe warm centre flower, the mind, The spirit that was beautifully kind, The sense of beauty shadowed in deep dreams, Sent though the horn gates by some sleepy wind. All lingers: all is gone: a little while, And all the live sweet rapture of the smile Of her whole being is discomfited, The body broken, desolated, vile, Till nought remains but the memorial urn Of deep red gold, less golden than did burn Once the strong breast: the ash within is shed, Dust given for flowers: what memory shall turn {164A} Unto the flowers, think worthy to remember How the dust scattered from their fading ember Is their own sign and seal of fatherhood, Grey seas of sorrow sun-kissed into amber. Above me hangs the sun: horrid he hangs, A rayless globe of hell, shooting forth fangs Snake-wise to parch and burn my solitude, Nor leave me quiet lamenting, with these pangs Tearing my live, more Promethean Than ever Titan knew -- the sunbright span Of narrow water mocks me, brightening Far to the indigo Ionian. The sun hangs high, as in the Arabian tale Enchanted palaces defy the gale, Perched upon airy mountains, on the wing Of genii poised, souls suffering and pale With their long labour: wizard spire and dome That maidens grown magicians had for home, Where the charmed sword and graven talisman Held them supremely floating on the foam Where cloudier seas innavigably roll, Misty with elemental shape or soul, This grey essential nebulae of man, Caught in the mesh of magical control! All these are beautiful and shapen so That every bastion flames a separate glow Of changing colour: all detestable, Abhorrent, since the goodly-seeming show Is one large lie of cruelty and lust, Carven from the spectral images of dust, Founded on visions of the accursed well, And built of shame and hatred and distrust, And all things hateful and all lying things -- O song! where wanderest on forgetful wings? Shall these wild numbers help thee to thine own, Or change the winter's gramarye to spring's? {165A} Rather beguile the tedious mourning hours With memory of the long-forgotten bowers, Where loves resurged from cave and grove to throne, From nuptial banquet to the bed of flowers! Rather forget the near catastrophe, And turn my music toward Eurydice; Awake in day-dream all the ancient days, When love first blossomed on the springing tree! Let me recall the days beyond regret, And tune my lyre to love, sharpen and set The strings again to the forgotten ways, That I may tread them over, and forget! In child-like meditative mood I wandered in the dell, Passed through the quiet glades of the wood, And sought the haunted well, Half hopeful that its solitude Might work some miracle. The oaks raised angry hands on high: The willows drooped for tears: The yews held solemn ceremony, Magical spells of years. I saw one cypress melancholy, A prince among his peers. So, turning from the arboreal seat And midmost hollow of earth, I followed Hamadryads' feet That made at eve their mirth To where the streamlet wandered fleet To show what time was worth. I watched the waters wake and laugh Running o'er pebbly beaches, Writing amazement's epitaph With freshets, turns, and reaches: -- The only tale too short by half That nature ever teaches. {165B} Then growing grander as it swept Past bulrushes and ferns, Gathering the tears that heaven had wept, The water glows and burns In sunlight, where no shadows crept Around the lazy turns. All on a sudden silence came Athwart some avenue Where through the trees arrowed the flame From the exultant blue; And all the water-way became One heart of glittering dew. The waters narrowed for a space Between twin rocks confined, Carven like Gods for poise and grace, Like miracles for mind: Each fashioned like a kissing face, The eyes for joy being blind. The waters widened in a pool, Broad mirror of blue light. The surface was as still and cool As the broad-breasted night. Engraven of no mortal tool, The granite glistened white. As if to shield from mortal gaze A nymph's immortal limbs, The shadow of the buttress stays And dips its head and swims, While moss engirdles it with grays And greens that dew bedims. Now, at the last, the western end, Most miracle of all! The groves of rock dispart and rend Their sacred cincture-wall; All tunes of heaven their rapture lend To make the waterfall. There, streaming from the haze and mist Where dew is dashed in spray, Rises a halo sunrise-kissed And kissed at close of day From ruby unto amethyst, Within the veil of grey. {166A} And there within the circled light I saw a dancing thing, Most like the tender-leaved night Of moonrise seen in spring, A shadow luminous and white Like a ghost beckoning. And then dim visions came to me, Faint memories of fear: As when the Argo put on sea Such stories we did hear, Stories to tremble at and flee -- And others worth a tear. I thought of how a maiden man Might hear a deadly song And clasp a siren in his span, And feel her kiss grow strong To drag him with caresses wan Into the House of Wrong.<<1>> <<1. See Homer's Odyssey.>> Another:<<1>> how the women grew Like vines of tender grape, And how they laughed as lovers do, And took a lover's shape, And how men sought them, free to woo -- To leave them, no escape! <<1. See Lucian.>> Another:<<1>> how a golden cup A golden girl would pour, And whoso laughed and drank it up Grew wise and warrior: But whoso stayed to smile and sup Returned -- ah, never more! <<1. Is this a perversion of the story of Calypso?>> And yet again<<1>> -- a river steep, A maiden combing light, Her hair's enchantment -- she would weep And sing for love's delight, Until the listener dropped to sleep In magic of her night. {166B} <<1. See Goethe's "Lorelei.">> And then the maiden smoothed her tresses, And led him to the river, Caught him and kissed with young caresses, And then -- her cruel smiles quiver! Beneath the waves his life represses For ever and for ever! I knew the danger of the deed The while enrapt I gladdened. My eyes upon the dancer feed As one by daylight saddened After long night whose slumbers bleed, By dreams deceived and maddened! It might be -- the delusive dance, The shadowy form I saw, Apollo's misty quivering lance Thrown to elude God's law; It might be -- doth the maid advance, Evanish, or withdraw? So stung by certainty's mistrust, Or tranced in dream of sin, Or blinded by some Panic dust, By Dionysian din Deafened, arose the laughing lust To fling my body in! I stood upon the rock, and cried, And held my body high (Not caring if I lived or died) Erect against the sky: Then plunged into the wheeling tide, And vanished utterly. "O shape half-seen of love, and {l}ost Beneath time's sightless tide, What obolus of the vital cost Remains, or may abide? Or what perception memory steal, Once passed upon the whirling wheel? "O hope half held of love, and fled Beyond the ivory gate, A dream gone from the hapless head By fury of a fate! What image of the hope returns But stings with agony that which yearns? {167A} "O face half kissed in faith and fear, Eager and beautiful! Drop for mortality one tear! For life one smile recall! There is no passion made for me -- Else were my water-well the sea." Such tune my falling body snapped Within the sacred sides, While the warm waves with laughter lapped, And changed their tuned tides, And all my being was enwrapped, A bridegroom's in the bride's. Deep in the hollow of the place A starry bed I saw, Gemmed with strange stones in many a space Of godlike rune and law. Such fancies as the fiery face Of living Art might draw. But rising up I lift my head Beyond the ripples clean: My arms with spray dew-diamonded Stretched love-wise to my queen That danced upon the light, and shed Her own sweet light between. But never a mortal joy might know, Hold never a mortal lover! Whose limbs like moonshine glint and glow, Throb, palpitate, and hover: -- Pale sunrise woven with the snow Athwart a larchen cover! So danced she in the rainbow mist, A fairy frail and chaste, By moon caressed, by sunlight kissed A guerdon vain and waste; And the misery of her thankless tryst Stole on me as she paced. For never her lips should be caressed By love's exulting stings, Whose starry shape shone in the west, Held of the glimmering wings. Her shadowy soul perceived the jest Of man and mortal things. {167B} And there I vowed a solemn oath To Aphrodite fair, Sealing that sacramental troth With a long curl of hair, And the strange prayer's reiterant growth Sent shining through the air. ("Invoking Aphrodite") Daughter of Glory, child Of Earth's Dione mild By the Father of all, the AEgis-bearing King! Spouse, daughter, mother of God, Queen of the blest abode In Cyprus' splendour singly glittering. Sweet sister unto me, I cry aloud to thee! I laugh upon thee laughing, O dew caught up from sea! Drawn by sharp sparrow and dove And swan's wide plumes of love, And all the swallow's swifter vehemence, And, subtler than the Sphinx, The ineffable iynx<<1>> Heralds thy splendour swooning into sense, When from the bluest bowers And greenest-hearted hours Of Heaven thou smilest toward earth, a miracle of flowers! <<1. An imaginary animal, sacred to Venus.>> Down to the loveless sea Where lay Persephone Violate, where the shad of earth is black, Crystalline out of space Flames the immortal face! The glory of the comet-tailed track Blinds all black earth with tears. Silence awakes and hears The music of thy moving come over the starry spheres. Wrapped in rose, green and gold, Blues many and manifold, A cloud of incense hides thy splendour of light; {168A} Hides from the prayer's distress Thy loftier loveliness Till thy veil's glory shrouds the earth from night; And silence speaks indeed, Seeing the subtler speed Of its own thought than speech of the Pandean reed! There no voice may be heard! No place for any word! The heart's whole fervour silently speeds to thee, Immaculate! and craves Thy kisses or the grave's, Till, knowing its unworthiness to woo thee, Remembers, grows content With the old element, And asks the lowlier grace its earlier music meant. So, Lady of all power! Kindle this firstling flower The rainbow nymph above the waterfall Into a mortal shade Of thee, immortal maid, That in her love I gather and recall Some memory mighty and mute In love's poor substitute Of thee, thy Love too high, the impossible pursuit! Then from the cloud a golden voice Great harmonies persuade, That all the cosmic lawns rejoice Like laughter of a maid; Till evolution had no choice But heard it, and obeyed. "Show by thy magic art The hero-story! Awake the maiden heart With tunes of glory! With mortal joys and tears, Keen woes and blisses, Awake her faiths and fears, Her tears and kisses!" {168B} I caught the lavish lyre, and sate Hard by the waterfall, Twisting its sweetness intimate Into the solemn call Of many dead men that were great, The plectron's wizard thrall. Thus as she danced, nor ceased, nor cared, I set the sacred throng Of heroes into acts that fared In Argo light and long, The foes they fought, the feats they dared, In shadow-show and song. ("The play of Argonautae is shadowed before them by Orpheus' magical might.") So faded all the dream: so stole Some fearful fondness in her soul; Even as a cloud thrilled sharply through With lightning's temper keen and true, Splitting the ether: so again Grew on me the ecstatic pain, Seeing her tremble in mid-air. No flower so exquisitely fair Shakes out its petals at the dawn; No breath so beautiful is drawn At even by the listening vale. For oh! she trembled! Frail and pale, Her looks surpassing loveliness Lulled its own light to fond distress, As if the soul were hardly yet Fit to remember or forget New-born! and though the goddess bade The nymph-bud blossom to a maid, And soulless immortality Reach to a soul, at last to die, For love's own sake, bliss dearly bought For change's altering coin ill-wrought, It seemed as through the soul were strange, Not fledged, not capable to range At random through the world of sense Opened so swift and so intense Unto the being. Thus she stood Impatient on the patient flood With wonder waking in her eyes. Thus the young dove droops wing, and dies, {169A} In wonder why the winged thing Loosed from yon twanging silver string Should strike, should hurt. But now she wakes, Wreathes like a waterfall of snakes The golden fervour of her hair About the body brave and bare Starred in the sunlight by the spray, And laughed upon me as I lay Watching the change: First dawn of fire! First ghost of nightfall's grey desire! First light of moonrise! Then, as June Leaps out of May, her lips took tune To song most soft, a spiral spell, As siren breathing in a shell. The notes were clustered round the well Like angels clustering round a god. Let memory wake from its abode Of dim precision lost for long The grace and grandeur of the song! Who art thou, love, by what sweet name I quicken? By whom, O love, my soul is subtly stricken? O Love, O Love, I linger On the dear word and know not any meaning, Nor why I chant; there is a whisper weaning My soul from depths I knew to depths I guess, Centred in two words only: "Love" and "Yes." What lyrist's gentle finger Strikes out a note, a key, a chord unheard of? What voice intones a song I know no word of? Who am I, Love, and where? What is the wonder of this troublous singing? What is the meaning of my spirit's clinging Still to the two sweet words: repeat, repeat! "Yes, Love!" and "Yes, Love!" Oh the murmur sweet! The fragrance in the air! I know not, I; amid the choral gladness Steals an essential tremor as of sadness, A grace-note to the bosom {169B} Of music's spell that binds me, as in Panic Dance to some grasp unthinkable, Titanic, Unto the words fresh flowers that distil Uttermost fragrance in the mind and will, The unsuspected blossom! What is the change -- new birth of spring-time kisses Alone in all these water-wildernesses? What change? what loveliness! Comes this to all? I heard my sisters crying No tale like this -- O! were I only lying Asleep amid the ferns, my soul would weep Over and over in its endless sleep; "Yes, love!" and "yes!" and "yes!" So by some spell divinely drawn She came to me across the dawn, With open arms to me; and sobbed "Yes, love!" and "Yes, love!" O how throbbed The giant glory at my heart! And I? I drew away, apart, Lest by mere chance to me she came. But curling as a wind-blown flame She turned, she found me. As the dew Melts in the lake's dissolving blue So to my arms she came. And now, Now, now I hold her! Broke the brow Of all wide heaven in thunder! Hear Tremendous vortices of fear Swirl in the ether. What new terror Darkens the blue pool's sliver mirror? How bursts the mountain-chasm asunder? Whose voice reverberates in thunder Muttering what curse? The sun dissolves In anguish; the mad moon revolves Like a wild thing about its cage; The stars are shaken in the rage Of -- who but Zeus? Before our gaze, (My love's in shuddering amaze, Of birth deceived and death forlorn, And mine in anger, ay! and scorn!) He stood -- the mighty One! So earth And heaven proclaimed that fearful birth: So they grew silent lest he curse. Dead silence hushed the universe; {170A} And then in clear calm tones he spoke: "Fools! who have meddled, and awoke The inmost forces of the world! One lightning from my hand had hurled Both to annihilation's brink. What foolish goddess bade ye think Ye thus could play with thunder, roll Your wheels upon the world, control The stately being of a soul? Just am I ever! Therefore know The unrevengeful law of woe That ye invoke. Thou seekest life, Child of my water! Thou a wife, Child of my sun! Draw living breath, Maiden, and gain the guerdon -- death! Thou take the wife, and risk the fate AEons could hardly culminate To lose thy soul! Not two but one Are ye. Together, as the stone, The oak, the river, or the sea, Mere elements of mine be ye, Or both resolve the dreadful life, And take death's prize! Take thou the wife, Thou, who didst know. Her ignorance Resolve itself upon a chance! She shall decide the double fate. Be still, my child, and meditate! This is an hour in heaven." He ceased And I was silent. she released Her soul from that tremendous birth Of fear in gentle-minded mirth. "Great Sir!" she cried, "the choice is made! An hour ago I was afraid, Knew nothing, and loved not. But I Know now not this you say -- to die. Some doubtful change! An hour ago I was a nymph. I did not know This change: but now for death or life I care not. Am I not his wife? I love him. Now I would not leave That joy once tasted; shall not grieve If even that should ever cease, So great a pleasure (and a peace!) I have therein. And by the sense Of love's intuitive influence I know he wills me to remain Woman." "How frivolous and vain, {170B} O Zeus," I cried, "art thou to rise Out of Olympus' ecstasies! Omnipotent! but to control The first breath of a human soul! --" The thunder rolled through heaven again, Void was the spring-delighted plain Of that gigantic phantasy. I turned to my Eurydice Even as she turned. The faint breath glows, -- The lightning of a living rose. The bright eyes gleam -- night's spotless stars Glimmering through folded nenuphars. The red mouth moves, still to the word: "Yes, love!" and "yes, love!" Then I heard No sound and saw no sight -- the world Folded its mighty wings, and curled Its passion round us; bade forget The joy with which our eyes were wet. All faded, folded in the bliss; Unfolded the first fadeless kiss. Then my soul woke, not sundering lips, But winged against the black eclipse Of sense: my soul on wings did poise Her glory in the vast turquoise Of the whole sky: expanded far Beyond the farthest sun or star, Beyond all space, all time. I saw The very limits of the law That hath no bounds: beheld the bliss Of that first wonder of the kiss In its true self: how very love Is God, and hath its substance of Pure light: and how love hath its cause Beyond religions, worlds, and laws; Is in itself the first: and moves All evolution, and disproves God in affirming God: all this In that one rapture of the kiss I knew, and all creation's pain Fell into nothing in my brain, As I, remaining man, involved All life's true purpose, and dissolved The phantoms (of itself create) In a mysterious sweet state, Wherein some tune began to move Whose likeness and whose life was love. {171A} Roll, strong life-current of these very veins, Into my lover's soul, my soul that is! Thrill, mighty life of nerves, exultant strains Triumphant of all music in a kiss! Fade! fade, oh strenuous sense Into the soul intense Of life beyond your weak imagining! And, O thou thought, dissever Thy airy life for ever While the bright sounds are lifted up to spring Beyond this tide of being, Shadows and sense far fleeing Into a shadow deeper than the Ocean When passes all the mind's commotion To a serener sky, a mighty calm emotion! The whole world fades, folds over its wide pinions Into a darkness deeper than its own. Silence hath shattered all the dream-dominions Of life and light: the grey bird's soul is flown Into a soundless night, Lampless: a vivid flight Beyond the thrones and stars of heaven down hurled, Till the great blackness heaves An iron breast, and cleaves The womb of night, another mightier world. Lost is my soul, and faded The light of life that braided Its comet tresses into golden fire. Fade, fade, the phantoms of desire! Speed, speed the song of love upon the living lyre! Lo! I abide not, and my lover's glory Abides not: in the swaying of those tides Gathers beneath some mighty promontory One mightier wave, deep drowns it, and abides. Save that one wave alone Nought in the void is known, That wave of love, that sole exultant splendour Throned o'er all being, supreme, A single-shining beam Burning with love, unutterably tender. {171B} Ah! the calm wave retires. Down all the fearful fires Go thundering to darkness, so dissever Their being from pure being, that the river Of love is waveless now, and is pure love for ever. Then mightier than all birth of stars or suns, Breaks the vast flood and trembles in its tide. Serene an splendid shine the mystic ones, Exult, appal, reiterate, abide. Timid and fleet the earth Comes rushing back to birth, Brighter and greener, radiant with gold Of a diviner sun, An exultation Of life to life, of light to light untold. I? I remain, and see Across eternity My lover's face, and gaze, and know the worth Of love's life to the glowing earth, The kiss that wakes all life unto a better birth. So the swoon broke. I saw the face (Shining with Love's reverberant grace) Of my own love across the lawn, As warm and tender as the dawn Tinting the snows of heaven-born hills, Enamelling the mountain rills With light's chameleon-coloured dyes; So shone the love-light in grey eyes, Changing for laughter and for tears, Changeless for joy of myriad years. This, this endures; there is no lover, No loved one; all the ages cover These things from sight: but this abides Floating above the whelming tides Of time and space: abides for ever Whether the lovers join or sever. There is no change: the love exists Beyond the moment's suns and mists in me, abiding: and I see No lover in Eurydice, Save that her kiss awoke in me {172A} This knowledge, this supreme content, Annihilation of the event, The vast eternal element Of utter being, bliss, and thought, In dissolution direly wrought Of sense, identity's eclipse, The shadow of a lover's lips. The awful steel of Death divides The alternation of the tides Of consciousness, and binds in bliss The dead man to the girl's live kiss. So sped my wooing: now I surely think Suspended here upon the burning brink Of this dim agony, invading sense, That bliss should still abide: but now I shrink, Fall from the crags of memory, and abide Now in this nature-life, basilisk-eyed, And serpent-stinging: yea, I perish thence. That perishes which was: and I am tied Unto myself: the "I" springs up again Bound to the wheel of speedless sense and pain, None loosing me. Past is the utter bliss; Present the strong fact of the death, the stain Of the marred lives: I meditate awhile Not on the mere light of the girl, the smile Deepening down to the extremest kiss; Not of the long joys of the little isle Set in Ionian waters, where the years Passed, one long passion, too divine for tears, Too deep for laughter: but on that divine Sense beyond sense, the shadow of the spheres Lost in the all-pervading light of love: That bliss all passion and all praise above; Impersonal, that fervour of the shrine Changed to pure peace that had its substance of {172B} Nothing but love: in vain my thoughts evoke That light amidst the deadly night and smoke Of this dread hour: there's nothing serves nor skills Here, since that hateful "I" of me awoke, Making me separate from the wings of life. Nothing avails me of the cruel strife With my own being: hideous sorrow fills My heart -- O misery! my wife! my wife! Stay! if I cannot be the Absolute, Let me be man! discard the wailing lute And wake the lyre: the mightier than me Drag up the courage in me to dispute The battle with despair: awake the strings Stronger than earth, than the immortal kings Alike of death and life: invoke the sea That I may cross her on the viewless wings Of song, find out the desolating river That girds the earth, unloose the silver quiver, Choosing an arrow of sharp song to run Down to the waters that lament for ever: -- And cleave them! That my song's insistent spell Rive the strong gates of iron-builded hell, And move the heart of the ill-hearted one. Yea! let me break the portals terrible, {173A top} And bring her back! come back, Eurydice! Come back, pale wanderer to Eternity! Come back, my wife, my wife, again to love! Come back, my wife! come back, come back to me! Enough! my purpose holds: no feeble cries! No sob shall shake these nerves: no ecstasies Of hope, or fear, or love avail to move Those iron-hearted dooms and destinies. I will be calm and firm as I were Zeus. I will descend to Hades and unloose My wife: prevail on pale Persephone, Laving her love-locks with exalted dews Of stern grey song; such roseate tunes espouse That all the echoes of that lonely house Answer me sob for sob, that she decree With love deep-seated in her lofty brows Forth sparkling: and with Hades intercede, So as I stir the judgment-seat, and plead, The awful brows may lighten, and decree My wife's return -- a poet's lofty meed! {173B top full page below} EXPLICIT LIBER SECUNDUS. 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 appease 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." {columns resume} 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. {174A} 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 {174B} 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, {175A} 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. {175B} 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 lure 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; {176A} 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 gods 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. {176B} 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 crowned demon of the crownless dead! O breasts of blood, too bitter and too tender! Unseen of gentle spring, Let me the offering 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, {177A} When thy Lemurs shall gather and spring round, Girdling me in the sad funereal ground With faces turned 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! {177B} 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! Aged 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; {178A} 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 {178B} 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. {179A} 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 drier 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. {179B} 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. {180A} 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 {180B} 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 number 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. {181A} 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 AEacus, 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 aged 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 (Though he 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 {181B} 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 lure 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? AEACUS. 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? {182A} AEACUS. 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? AEACUS. Withstanding 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? AEACUS. 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! AEACUS. 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! {182B} MINOS. A passionate being! No weal to the light of his head In the place of the seeing! AEACUS. 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? AEACUS. 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. AEACUS. Away, away to the skies! RHADAMANTHUS. That our dead may take their rest. MINOS. Arise to the air, arise! AEACUS. Away to the mountain crest! {183A} 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. AEACUS. A second our justice waits. RHADAMANTHUS. It falleth anon. MINOS. O fool of hopes and hates Arise and begone! AEACUS. O toy of the mirthless fates! Who art thou to con The mysteries of the dead in the back-souled bastion? MINOS, AEACUS, 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! {183B} I came indeed before this awful throne To seek a party favour, but I wait Shuddering and silent, steadfast 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; {184A} 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 aeons 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 {184B} 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. {185A} 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, {185B} And deep unrest is seated in your limbs. Ye pitty me. Ye pity. Mute and weak With the long trouble of persistent hymns I bow myself and listen while ye speak. MINOS. Brethern, 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? AEACUS. 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." {186A} AEACUS. 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<<1>> disastrous coast? Old power of evil curled Below the phantom world, Canst thou destroy, whose might to misery is hurled? <<1. Egypt.>> RHADAMANTHUS. What god beyond these twain Abides or may remain Seated, too strong to quell, exalted over 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 aged hour. We move not from our place. We ask nor give not grace, Nor change our lordly looks before a suppliant's face. AEACUS. 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. Out utmost power is none To lift one soul to live and look upon the sun. {186B} 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. Be thou, be strong to sing! AEACUS. Loose arrows from the string! RHADAMANTHUS. Bid the wild word take wing! MINOS. Hades hath evil fame To suppliants -- bitter shame! -- Inexorable. AEACUS. 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! AEACUS. That way Leads to the light of day. RHADAMANTHUS. A woman's heart may yearn, To a man's love may turn. {187A} MINOS. Should she, the ravished, spurn A man whose love is reft? AEACUS. 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. AEACUS. 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 {187B} 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 {188A} 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." 1. 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 {188B} 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." 1 ["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. {189A} "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, {189B} 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, {190A} 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. {190B} 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 {191A} 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, veiled 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! {191B} 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. {192A} 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! Accursed 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! {192B} 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. Megaera, thou terror, O daughter of Night Whose sight in a mirror Is death of affright, Winged with error, I chain thee, and cite The words that thy soul must obey if a mortal but say them aright! {193A} Alecto! I call thee, My words ring thee round. My spells enwall thee. My lure 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! {193B} 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 hat 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. MEGAERA. Ha! who invokes? What horror rages Here, to compel our murderous hands to smite? {194A} 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! MEGAERA. He speaks! ALECTO. He thunders! TISIPHONE. His lightnings split the living rock. MEGAERA. 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! MEGAERA. Dost thou hear, Sister? ALECTO. Sweet sister! {194B} TISIPHONE. Dost thou think we fear Who are all fear? or feel, who are but pain? MEGAERA. 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! MEGAERA. 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! MEGAERA. Mine! he is mine! my lover and my lord! ALECTO. Mine! I am in his shape! MEGAERA. 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! {195A} MEGAERA. 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. MEGAERA. Tear the fatal net! ALECTO. Bite with strong acid his congealing blood! TISIPHONE. Rend out the bowels! MEGAERA. 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! MEGAERA. Quench not the fire of murder! ALECTO. Loose the riot Of worms beneath the skull! {195B} TISIPHONE. Tear wide apart The jaws! MEGAERA. 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? MEGAERA. 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! MEGAERA. Hades! answer us! ALECTO. Expel These torments from thy being, us from Hell, Or Zeus from Heaven! TISIPHONE. Or else obey! MEGAERA. 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 {196} 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. MEGAERA. Fall! Fall! ALECTO. Descend the abyss! TISIPHONE. Link the lewd fiend with your incestuous kiss! MEGAERA. 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! MEGAERA. Echidna! {196A} ALECTO. Mother of the Sphinx and snake Of Colchus, and the marsh-beast of the lake Lernean, of Chimaera and Hell's hound -- TISIPHONE. Answer! ALECTO. Arise! MEGAERA. 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! MEGAERA. 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. MEGAERA. 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. {196A} MEGAERA. He hath moved. ALECTO. He hath kissed her! TISIPHONE. Ha! the worse hate of hate in love's white dress. MEGAERA. And lewdness tricked to look like loveliness. ALECTO. Uttermost pain in pleasure's hour supreme. MEGAERA. Hate's nightmare waking love's unreal dream. ALECTO. Claws, teeth, and poison! TISIPHONE. How she plies her pest! MEGAERA. Strangling she holds him. ALECTO. In the inmost breast Her hands defile him. TISIPHONE. In his rotting brain He teeth, her breath, pass all imagined pain. MEGAERA. Sisters! ALECTO. We conquer! TISIPHONE. Have we power? {197B} MEGAERA. The king Endures, and is not moved at anything. ALECTO. He will not now relent. TISIPHONE. He's ours for ever! HADES. Ai! Ai! MEGAERA. 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! MEGAERA. 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 {198A} 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. MEGAERA. We are borne on bitter winds. ALECTO. We sink. TISIPHONE. We flee! MEGAERA. To the abyss! ALECTO. Descend! TISIPHONE. Nor hope in vain The ill-hearted one shall feel our fangs again. MEGAERA. Murder and violation, deafened ear To suppliants, these our friends are. {198B} ALECTO. Hate and fear Leave not for long that bosom. TISIPHONE. Now away! Back from this night more splendid than our day! MEGAERA. We may not drag him down this chance. ALECTO. Despair Not, O my sisters! TISIPHONE. The next suppliant's prayer Rejected -- MEGAERA. 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! {199A} ["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 am