FACE TO FACEIt is well thou art hid, O Lord, and sittest with glued lips fast on thy throne beyond the yellow disk of day.Up from the slime I came, a Caliban blaspheming, leaning on crutch, superb hate in my eye, peering through bramble and forest for THEE.Aeons ago was I thus, and now I am here, still evolving, planted firmly on two feet, almost at thy heels, not vexed, as cunning as thou,O Lord of the vortices, fiend in the flux!Linked to Prometheus, linked to great Lucifer, I’ll meet thee at the GREAT CROSSWAYS and heal thee forever of the disease of creating.
FACE TO FACEIt is well thou art hid, O Lord, and sittest with glued lips fast on thy throne beyond the yellow disk of day.Up from the slime I came, a Caliban blaspheming, leaning on crutch, superb hate in my eye, peering through bramble and forest for THEE.Aeons ago was I thus, and now I am here, still evolving, planted firmly on two feet, almost at thy heels, not vexed, as cunning as thou,O Lord of the vortices, fiend in the flux!Linked to Prometheus, linked to great Lucifer, I’ll meet thee at the GREAT CROSSWAYS and heal thee forever of the disease of creating.
FACE TO FACEIt is well thou art hid, O Lord, and sittest with glued lips fast on thy throne beyond the yellow disk of day.Up from the slime I came, a Caliban blaspheming, leaning on crutch, superb hate in my eye, peering through bramble and forest for THEE.Aeons ago was I thus, and now I am here, still evolving, planted firmly on two feet, almost at thy heels, not vexed, as cunning as thou,O Lord of the vortices, fiend in the flux!Linked to Prometheus, linked to great Lucifer, I’ll meet thee at the GREAT CROSSWAYS and heal thee forever of the disease of creating.
MY SHADOWSYonder lies my way.Yea, I have taken the road, and in a sleep, in a cycle, I returned to the forks—For all things are One, and beyond the One I cannot step.The gad ever stings, and the Furies drive me forward—over suns, over flaming chaotic foreworlds, to the hilt of creation;But my thought is firm-set: illusive the flight, the return, the urge, the reaction.I move not.Based in the One, squatted here at the forks where the grooves of Change center,I move not,Adventure not forth,Ran not that race over far-streaming worlds, nor danced on the cosmic pain-griddles.’Twas my dominoed self,An aspect of me, a shadow that travels forward and backward and upward and downward on Time’s dirty screens.What road shall I take when all things return unto me?—I who move not on Time’s dirty screens, was not touched by the gad;I who am here at the forks where the grooves of Change center,Who am One and the All, am motion and rest.
MY SHADOWSYonder lies my way.Yea, I have taken the road, and in a sleep, in a cycle, I returned to the forks—For all things are One, and beyond the One I cannot step.The gad ever stings, and the Furies drive me forward—over suns, over flaming chaotic foreworlds, to the hilt of creation;But my thought is firm-set: illusive the flight, the return, the urge, the reaction.I move not.Based in the One, squatted here at the forks where the grooves of Change center,I move not,Adventure not forth,Ran not that race over far-streaming worlds, nor danced on the cosmic pain-griddles.’Twas my dominoed self,An aspect of me, a shadow that travels forward and backward and upward and downward on Time’s dirty screens.What road shall I take when all things return unto me?—I who move not on Time’s dirty screens, was not touched by the gad;I who am here at the forks where the grooves of Change center,Who am One and the All, am motion and rest.
MY SHADOWSYonder lies my way.Yea, I have taken the road, and in a sleep, in a cycle, I returned to the forks—For all things are One, and beyond the One I cannot step.The gad ever stings, and the Furies drive me forward—over suns, over flaming chaotic foreworlds, to the hilt of creation;But my thought is firm-set: illusive the flight, the return, the urge, the reaction.I move not.Based in the One, squatted here at the forks where the grooves of Change center,I move not,Adventure not forth,Ran not that race over far-streaming worlds, nor danced on the cosmic pain-griddles.’Twas my dominoed self,An aspect of me, a shadow that travels forward and backward and upward and downward on Time’s dirty screens.What road shall I take when all things return unto me?—I who move not on Time’s dirty screens, was not touched by the gad;I who am here at the forks where the grooves of Change center,Who am One and the All, am motion and rest.
THE VIGILHere in the naked primal night,Here where the VEILED sits graven in silence in ITS garden of weeds,Here where the NOTHING drowses and mutters of a SOMETHING to come;Here where the fangs of my soul have fastened at last;Here where through wild-steaming streams of passion and great shroud-like dawns I have dragged my undying Desire—Here, too, will I vigil with THEE through the glutted eternities—Thou imbecile artisan, thou bungler, evader, rhetor and faun!
THE VIGILHere in the naked primal night,Here where the VEILED sits graven in silence in ITS garden of weeds,Here where the NOTHING drowses and mutters of a SOMETHING to come;Here where the fangs of my soul have fastened at last;Here where through wild-steaming streams of passion and great shroud-like dawns I have dragged my undying Desire—Here, too, will I vigil with THEE through the glutted eternities—Thou imbecile artisan, thou bungler, evader, rhetor and faun!
THE VIGILHere in the naked primal night,Here where the VEILED sits graven in silence in ITS garden of weeds,Here where the NOTHING drowses and mutters of a SOMETHING to come;Here where the fangs of my soul have fastened at last;Here where through wild-steaming streams of passion and great shroud-like dawns I have dragged my undying Desire—Here, too, will I vigil with THEE through the glutted eternities—Thou imbecile artisan, thou bungler, evader, rhetor and faun!
THE CLOSED ROOMI am at the door of the Closed Room,I stand without, whispering and chatting to myself, in many fantastic attitudes, like gnomes that skulk in castle-moats.There are finger-marks on the door-knob—Many, many have gone in, no one ever came out.Through chinks I hear vague rumors, or is it the echo of the blood in my arteries?And my eyes have spied, as I think, a light falling through cracks in the wall, or is it only the reflection of brain-sparks on the polished wood?I finger the old worn knob, but am not yet admitted.
THE CLOSED ROOMI am at the door of the Closed Room,I stand without, whispering and chatting to myself, in many fantastic attitudes, like gnomes that skulk in castle-moats.There are finger-marks on the door-knob—Many, many have gone in, no one ever came out.Through chinks I hear vague rumors, or is it the echo of the blood in my arteries?And my eyes have spied, as I think, a light falling through cracks in the wall, or is it only the reflection of brain-sparks on the polished wood?I finger the old worn knob, but am not yet admitted.
THE CLOSED ROOMI am at the door of the Closed Room,I stand without, whispering and chatting to myself, in many fantastic attitudes, like gnomes that skulk in castle-moats.There are finger-marks on the door-knob—Many, many have gone in, no one ever came out.Through chinks I hear vague rumors, or is it the echo of the blood in my arteries?And my eyes have spied, as I think, a light falling through cracks in the wall, or is it only the reflection of brain-sparks on the polished wood?I finger the old worn knob, but am not yet admitted.
HALF-SEENOut from the brake and stubble of sense I peered for a moment—Wist! was that THEE that passed on the wind?Once, too, I swam out beyond sight of all land and emerged on the crest of the highest wave—Wist! was that THEE that sped over the horizon?I throttled one by one each image in my brain on a night when the north-wind blew from the Zenith—Wist! was that THEE that startled me into a body again?Ride thou on the wind, or merge in all horizons, Image unimaged, escape me Thou canst not, for I am the part that must make THEE whole at the last—At the last!
HALF-SEENOut from the brake and stubble of sense I peered for a moment—Wist! was that THEE that passed on the wind?Once, too, I swam out beyond sight of all land and emerged on the crest of the highest wave—Wist! was that THEE that sped over the horizon?I throttled one by one each image in my brain on a night when the north-wind blew from the Zenith—Wist! was that THEE that startled me into a body again?Ride thou on the wind, or merge in all horizons, Image unimaged, escape me Thou canst not, for I am the part that must make THEE whole at the last—At the last!
HALF-SEENOut from the brake and stubble of sense I peered for a moment—Wist! was that THEE that passed on the wind?Once, too, I swam out beyond sight of all land and emerged on the crest of the highest wave—Wist! was that THEE that sped over the horizon?I throttled one by one each image in my brain on a night when the north-wind blew from the Zenith—Wist! was that THEE that startled me into a body again?Ride thou on the wind, or merge in all horizons, Image unimaged, escape me Thou canst not, for I am the part that must make THEE whole at the last—At the last!
THE LONG VIGILLike sunlight, I touch all things, yet nothing do I gain;I am neither richer nor poorer than I was at the beginning of things.Passion, hope, pain, grief, leave me unchanged (I shed universes and moult cycles).To the eye of the world I am tossed like a cork on rough waters,But I know I have stood Here since the Day of the Primal Appearance,Transfixed in supreme wonder,Rigid in pride, dissenting, unmoved.
THE LONG VIGILLike sunlight, I touch all things, yet nothing do I gain;I am neither richer nor poorer than I was at the beginning of things.Passion, hope, pain, grief, leave me unchanged (I shed universes and moult cycles).To the eye of the world I am tossed like a cork on rough waters,But I know I have stood Here since the Day of the Primal Appearance,Transfixed in supreme wonder,Rigid in pride, dissenting, unmoved.
THE LONG VIGILLike sunlight, I touch all things, yet nothing do I gain;I am neither richer nor poorer than I was at the beginning of things.Passion, hope, pain, grief, leave me unchanged (I shed universes and moult cycles).To the eye of the world I am tossed like a cork on rough waters,But I know I have stood Here since the Day of the Primal Appearance,Transfixed in supreme wonder,Rigid in pride, dissenting, unmoved.
PROPHETICTime lies cataleptic in my brain: Eternity alone reigns there.Infinite space has shrunken to a single point of fire, from whose heart radiate the trackless voids.Life I have bosomed in a sigh.I will exhale with the dawn, step lightly to my zenith, death in-wrapt.
PROPHETICTime lies cataleptic in my brain: Eternity alone reigns there.Infinite space has shrunken to a single point of fire, from whose heart radiate the trackless voids.Life I have bosomed in a sigh.I will exhale with the dawn, step lightly to my zenith, death in-wrapt.
PROPHETICTime lies cataleptic in my brain: Eternity alone reigns there.Infinite space has shrunken to a single point of fire, from whose heart radiate the trackless voids.
Life I have bosomed in a sigh.I will exhale with the dawn, step lightly to my zenith, death in-wrapt.
RESURRECTION NIGHTI slept, and out of their ancient tombs of tissue-plasm streamed a shadowy host of Living Dead.Gliding silently across the waxed and shining floor of my soul, they breathed their breaths upon the emptièd mirror of my mind:And Terror and Guilt captained that crew.The subtle fingers of the dawn brushed my brow and my soul flowed back into the sluiceways of the old familiar world;But long I laid in wonder staring at the wall, for in that night I had again become the Things I was before my birth.And Terror and Guilt were old shapes of me.
RESURRECTION NIGHTI slept, and out of their ancient tombs of tissue-plasm streamed a shadowy host of Living Dead.Gliding silently across the waxed and shining floor of my soul, they breathed their breaths upon the emptièd mirror of my mind:And Terror and Guilt captained that crew.The subtle fingers of the dawn brushed my brow and my soul flowed back into the sluiceways of the old familiar world;But long I laid in wonder staring at the wall, for in that night I had again become the Things I was before my birth.And Terror and Guilt were old shapes of me.
RESURRECTION NIGHTI slept, and out of their ancient tombs of tissue-plasm streamed a shadowy host of Living Dead.Gliding silently across the waxed and shining floor of my soul, they breathed their breaths upon the emptièd mirror of my mind:And Terror and Guilt captained that crew.
The subtle fingers of the dawn brushed my brow and my soul flowed back into the sluiceways of the old familiar world;But long I laid in wonder staring at the wall, for in that night I had again become the Things I was before my birth.And Terror and Guilt were old shapes of me.
BIRD OF THE NIGHTO thou pinioned Thought, where wilt thou wing me to-night?Dug from the marl and silt of my soul,Breath of my delicate dreams,Bird with the eyes of the circular fires sucked from the suns we have grazed in our flight,Cleaver of lightnings, warbler in the zenith of my passionate being,Plumed and feathered for thy mystic spiral progressions,Where wilt thou bear me this night?
BIRD OF THE NIGHTO thou pinioned Thought, where wilt thou wing me to-night?Dug from the marl and silt of my soul,Breath of my delicate dreams,Bird with the eyes of the circular fires sucked from the suns we have grazed in our flight,Cleaver of lightnings, warbler in the zenith of my passionate being,Plumed and feathered for thy mystic spiral progressions,Where wilt thou bear me this night?
BIRD OF THE NIGHTO thou pinioned Thought, where wilt thou wing me to-night?Dug from the marl and silt of my soul,Breath of my delicate dreams,Bird with the eyes of the circular fires sucked from the suns we have grazed in our flight,Cleaver of lightnings, warbler in the zenith of my passionate being,Plumed and feathered for thy mystic spiral progressions,Where wilt thou bear me this night?
THE CLEFT IN THE WALLThey pass through my brain and leave not a mark: cities and women and autumnal skies.I am related to nothing in the phenomenal flux,The world-days are vain shapes of desire, a mist on my mirror, my mind—My mind that reflects cities and women and autumnal skies,Wrack of old Chaos, wrack of old Time.My soul is a fountain that balances the ball of the visible cosmos;I toss high, I toss hither and thither the whole universe, the hollow ball of desire—It is nothing to me, a sport, a day-dream, as meaningless as old death and old birth,Or cities and women and autumnal skies.I travelled far with my pickaxe and spade and spied by chance a tiny cleft in Time’s granite wall—I called it the NOW;And through it I peeped like a boy through a knot-hole,Peeped into the Infinite, a sea no bigger than a dewdrop, placid and waveless and spaceless.(What Giant Shape lay therein, the opening and shutting of whose eyes gendered immeasureable cycles?)I passed through the cleft of the NOW with infinite labor, and dispersed body and soul,And cities and women and autumnal skies drift past my sight and leave me untouched.
THE CLEFT IN THE WALLThey pass through my brain and leave not a mark: cities and women and autumnal skies.I am related to nothing in the phenomenal flux,The world-days are vain shapes of desire, a mist on my mirror, my mind—My mind that reflects cities and women and autumnal skies,Wrack of old Chaos, wrack of old Time.My soul is a fountain that balances the ball of the visible cosmos;I toss high, I toss hither and thither the whole universe, the hollow ball of desire—It is nothing to me, a sport, a day-dream, as meaningless as old death and old birth,Or cities and women and autumnal skies.I travelled far with my pickaxe and spade and spied by chance a tiny cleft in Time’s granite wall—I called it the NOW;And through it I peeped like a boy through a knot-hole,Peeped into the Infinite, a sea no bigger than a dewdrop, placid and waveless and spaceless.(What Giant Shape lay therein, the opening and shutting of whose eyes gendered immeasureable cycles?)I passed through the cleft of the NOW with infinite labor, and dispersed body and soul,And cities and women and autumnal skies drift past my sight and leave me untouched.
THE CLEFT IN THE WALLThey pass through my brain and leave not a mark: cities and women and autumnal skies.I am related to nothing in the phenomenal flux,The world-days are vain shapes of desire, a mist on my mirror, my mind—My mind that reflects cities and women and autumnal skies,Wrack of old Chaos, wrack of old Time.My soul is a fountain that balances the ball of the visible cosmos;I toss high, I toss hither and thither the whole universe, the hollow ball of desire—It is nothing to me, a sport, a day-dream, as meaningless as old death and old birth,Or cities and women and autumnal skies.
I travelled far with my pickaxe and spade and spied by chance a tiny cleft in Time’s granite wall—I called it the NOW;And through it I peeped like a boy through a knot-hole,Peeped into the Infinite, a sea no bigger than a dewdrop, placid and waveless and spaceless.(What Giant Shape lay therein, the opening and shutting of whose eyes gendered immeasureable cycles?)I passed through the cleft of the NOW with infinite labor, and dispersed body and soul,And cities and women and autumnal skies drift past my sight and leave me untouched.
THE TRUANTWhat was its mandate?Where is the script IT placed in my hand?Who sent me on this strange errand?Or was it—No! No! too horrible!And yet—and yet, how came I here?In the immobile immensities, where renascence and decay and the plexed dream called Life were still unsensed—Before I aggregated,Before I anealed into an I,Before the first stratum of lust was laid,Before the dispart from the ALL—In the immobile immensities something was ordered of me;I was sent on an errand!Hey ho! I have dallied with mortals too long,Yet I dare not return without the thing done.Or was it—No! No! too horrible!
THE TRUANTWhat was its mandate?Where is the script IT placed in my hand?Who sent me on this strange errand?Or was it—No! No! too horrible!And yet—and yet, how came I here?In the immobile immensities, where renascence and decay and the plexed dream called Life were still unsensed—Before I aggregated,Before I anealed into an I,Before the first stratum of lust was laid,Before the dispart from the ALL—In the immobile immensities something was ordered of me;I was sent on an errand!Hey ho! I have dallied with mortals too long,Yet I dare not return without the thing done.Or was it—No! No! too horrible!
THE TRUANTWhat was its mandate?Where is the script IT placed in my hand?Who sent me on this strange errand?Or was it—No! No! too horrible!And yet—and yet, how came I here?
In the immobile immensities, where renascence and decay and the plexed dream called Life were still unsensed—Before I aggregated,Before I anealed into an I,Before the first stratum of lust was laid,Before the dispart from the ALL—In the immobile immensities something was ordered of me;I was sent on an errand!
Hey ho! I have dallied with mortals too long,Yet I dare not return without the thing done.Or was it—No! No! too horrible!
CHANGE AND AN ENDINGGlow, glow, thou yellow fire, mother of me—thou shalt reclaim me body and soul.Shine, shine, thou pulsing white eyes of the night—I shall quiver in thy lights and be recompounded in thy crucibles of clay.Moon! Moon! sick-yellowed in amorous need of life, shall I not be as thee—still, cold and age-seamed?Yea, in the whirl of the atoms and the swirl of great hidden forces I shall be accouched in an uttermost star,Builded anew in the dirt of a still unwombed world,Speak, dream, languish and rot again and again,Go the round of the infinite cycles till I spy, as by chance,IT, the Cagliostro, the Worker, the kneader of mud-shapes,Slay IT there where I meet IT, and lay me down, out of Space, out of Time, certain of endless quiescence for me and for THEE.
CHANGE AND AN ENDINGGlow, glow, thou yellow fire, mother of me—thou shalt reclaim me body and soul.Shine, shine, thou pulsing white eyes of the night—I shall quiver in thy lights and be recompounded in thy crucibles of clay.Moon! Moon! sick-yellowed in amorous need of life, shall I not be as thee—still, cold and age-seamed?Yea, in the whirl of the atoms and the swirl of great hidden forces I shall be accouched in an uttermost star,Builded anew in the dirt of a still unwombed world,Speak, dream, languish and rot again and again,Go the round of the infinite cycles till I spy, as by chance,IT, the Cagliostro, the Worker, the kneader of mud-shapes,Slay IT there where I meet IT, and lay me down, out of Space, out of Time, certain of endless quiescence for me and for THEE.
CHANGE AND AN ENDINGGlow, glow, thou yellow fire, mother of me—thou shalt reclaim me body and soul.Shine, shine, thou pulsing white eyes of the night—I shall quiver in thy lights and be recompounded in thy crucibles of clay.Moon! Moon! sick-yellowed in amorous need of life, shall I not be as thee—still, cold and age-seamed?Yea, in the whirl of the atoms and the swirl of great hidden forces I shall be accouched in an uttermost star,Builded anew in the dirt of a still unwombed world,Speak, dream, languish and rot again and again,Go the round of the infinite cycles till I spy, as by chance,IT, the Cagliostro, the Worker, the kneader of mud-shapes,Slay IT there where I meet IT, and lay me down, out of Space, out of Time, certain of endless quiescence for me and for THEE.
THE QUEST IN THE FLESHHere where the forces elemental circle me, caress me and touch my city-scattered parts to a whole;Here on the mount, ’neath a blue-burnished heaven and a passionate luring sun, where the war of the wind with the leaves mocks at the strength we have hid;Here is the lesson to learn, here is the Teacher eternal, the war-lord of Space, the parent of hate and of love.Do I not hate with a love that’s intense?Is not my soul strengthened in battle?My brain is a duel of opposing forces, and the thing that I war against is more precious to me than the tickle of grass or the ease that brings degradation.War! War!—bring me helmet and shield and the sword of the spirit; the great weaponed SELF that I seek and that forever seeks meIs shut in a tower of gold o’ergrown with weeds and the rank, poisonous fungi of outworn selves,And here, gripped in these forces elemental, I make a passionate compact with my dumb, brutish instinctsTo assail every live-dead thing that hinders my march to that tower of gold, o’ergrown, untended, unkenned;And there in the winds, in a fury of battle, deliver the SELF in the light of the sun—SELF that shall live to its uttermost transfigured instinct,SELF that am God of all gods.
THE QUEST IN THE FLESHHere where the forces elemental circle me, caress me and touch my city-scattered parts to a whole;Here on the mount, ’neath a blue-burnished heaven and a passionate luring sun, where the war of the wind with the leaves mocks at the strength we have hid;Here is the lesson to learn, here is the Teacher eternal, the war-lord of Space, the parent of hate and of love.Do I not hate with a love that’s intense?Is not my soul strengthened in battle?My brain is a duel of opposing forces, and the thing that I war against is more precious to me than the tickle of grass or the ease that brings degradation.War! War!—bring me helmet and shield and the sword of the spirit; the great weaponed SELF that I seek and that forever seeks meIs shut in a tower of gold o’ergrown with weeds and the rank, poisonous fungi of outworn selves,And here, gripped in these forces elemental, I make a passionate compact with my dumb, brutish instinctsTo assail every live-dead thing that hinders my march to that tower of gold, o’ergrown, untended, unkenned;And there in the winds, in a fury of battle, deliver the SELF in the light of the sun—SELF that shall live to its uttermost transfigured instinct,SELF that am God of all gods.
THE QUEST IN THE FLESHHere where the forces elemental circle me, caress me and touch my city-scattered parts to a whole;Here on the mount, ’neath a blue-burnished heaven and a passionate luring sun, where the war of the wind with the leaves mocks at the strength we have hid;Here is the lesson to learn, here is the Teacher eternal, the war-lord of Space, the parent of hate and of love.Do I not hate with a love that’s intense?Is not my soul strengthened in battle?My brain is a duel of opposing forces, and the thing that I war against is more precious to me than the tickle of grass or the ease that brings degradation.
War! War!—bring me helmet and shield and the sword of the spirit; the great weaponed SELF that I seek and that forever seeks meIs shut in a tower of gold o’ergrown with weeds and the rank, poisonous fungi of outworn selves,And here, gripped in these forces elemental, I make a passionate compact with my dumb, brutish instinctsTo assail every live-dead thing that hinders my march to that tower of gold, o’ergrown, untended, unkenned;And there in the winds, in a fury of battle, deliver the SELF in the light of the sun—SELF that shall live to its uttermost transfigured instinct,SELF that am God of all gods.
IN THE ADYTUMThe door is ajar—The door of my soul swung on the hinges of doubt;It is ever ajar and waits for a Caller—A Caller, in the night, or the day—I know not the time that he cometh,Oh whether he cometh at all.I crouch in my being, implacable, receptive, the ears of my soul in rigid prick,Catching whiffs of the Verities borne from seas remote that mirror the catchpenny world in its depths.Sundered from all I sit,To none abnegated,Before my door standing ajar,The door of my soul swung on the hinges of doubt.What finger-marks these on the white knob of my door?Narrow, black finger-prints, telltale of thinkers and ghosts,Or maybe somnambules who have walked out of the world,Or he, beloved of my soul: Has he called?—where loafed I then?Who wills may enter,But none have I seen—Seen enter the door that’s ajar,The door of my soul swung on the hinges of doubt.
IN THE ADYTUMThe door is ajar—The door of my soul swung on the hinges of doubt;It is ever ajar and waits for a Caller—A Caller, in the night, or the day—I know not the time that he cometh,Oh whether he cometh at all.I crouch in my being, implacable, receptive, the ears of my soul in rigid prick,Catching whiffs of the Verities borne from seas remote that mirror the catchpenny world in its depths.Sundered from all I sit,To none abnegated,Before my door standing ajar,The door of my soul swung on the hinges of doubt.What finger-marks these on the white knob of my door?Narrow, black finger-prints, telltale of thinkers and ghosts,Or maybe somnambules who have walked out of the world,Or he, beloved of my soul: Has he called?—where loafed I then?Who wills may enter,But none have I seen—Seen enter the door that’s ajar,The door of my soul swung on the hinges of doubt.
IN THE ADYTUMThe door is ajar—The door of my soul swung on the hinges of doubt;It is ever ajar and waits for a Caller—A Caller, in the night, or the day—I know not the time that he cometh,Oh whether he cometh at all.I crouch in my being, implacable, receptive, the ears of my soul in rigid prick,Catching whiffs of the Verities borne from seas remote that mirror the catchpenny world in its depths.Sundered from all I sit,To none abnegated,Before my door standing ajar,The door of my soul swung on the hinges of doubt.
What finger-marks these on the white knob of my door?Narrow, black finger-prints, telltale of thinkers and ghosts,Or maybe somnambules who have walked out of the world,Or he, beloved of my soul: Has he called?—where loafed I then?Who wills may enter,But none have I seen—Seen enter the door that’s ajar,The door of my soul swung on the hinges of doubt.
THE WAY OUT: BIO.Like a polished pearl hid in a pocket,Like lighted tapirs set in the murk of a crypt,Like the flicker of phosphor on dun seas,Like a meteor athwart the heavens of Cimmeria—So the Secret of my soul shines for me in this timeless Night.
THE WAY OUT: BIO.Like a polished pearl hid in a pocket,Like lighted tapirs set in the murk of a crypt,Like the flicker of phosphor on dun seas,Like a meteor athwart the heavens of Cimmeria—So the Secret of my soul shines for me in this timeless Night.
THE WAY OUT: BIO.Like a polished pearl hid in a pocket,Like lighted tapirs set in the murk of a crypt,Like the flicker of phosphor on dun seas,Like a meteor athwart the heavens of Cimmeria—So the Secret of my soul shines for me in this timeless Night.
MOTH-TERRORI have killed the moth flying around my night-light; wingless and dead it lies upon the floor.(O who will kill the great Time-Moth that eats holes in my soul and that burrows in and through my secretest veils!)My will against its will, and no more will it fly at my night-light or be hidden behind the curtains that swing in the winds.(But O who will shatter the Change-Moth that leaves me in rags—tattered old tapestries that swing in the winds that blow out of Chaos!)Night-Moth, Change Moth, Time-Moth, eaters of dreams and of me!
MOTH-TERRORI have killed the moth flying around my night-light; wingless and dead it lies upon the floor.(O who will kill the great Time-Moth that eats holes in my soul and that burrows in and through my secretest veils!)My will against its will, and no more will it fly at my night-light or be hidden behind the curtains that swing in the winds.(But O who will shatter the Change-Moth that leaves me in rags—tattered old tapestries that swing in the winds that blow out of Chaos!)Night-Moth, Change Moth, Time-Moth, eaters of dreams and of me!
MOTH-TERRORI have killed the moth flying around my night-light; wingless and dead it lies upon the floor.(O who will kill the great Time-Moth that eats holes in my soul and that burrows in and through my secretest veils!)My will against its will, and no more will it fly at my night-light or be hidden behind the curtains that swing in the winds.(But O who will shatter the Change-Moth that leaves me in rags—tattered old tapestries that swing in the winds that blow out of Chaos!)Night-Moth, Change Moth, Time-Moth, eaters of dreams and of me!
MY HOLY LUSTThe lust of the sailor for new lands, the lust of the boat new-launched for the turbulent, foaming, sky-running waters—Lust ever and ever I thus.I stand in the ring of the earth and lust for the rings above and beyond that widen into great monstrous nooses in the pits of azure and opal till my glance is lost in the fire-capped zenith—Lust with my eyes and my ears, lascivious of all things unguessed, all things not conquered.I lust for the Strength that runneth before and purge myself of the close-clinging, stiffening muds of old custom, running the fine needle of my quickening Desire through a million ephemeral nuclei,Thrust to the core of each vanishing truth.My lusts hold me taut and redeem me of pain, and I sigh and I sob and I laugh in the ear of the LOVED ONE, spread on the winds, locked in the blast, till she yield and diswomb her last secret—She, my finality, target of lusts, peeping here, peeping there, ever lost, ever gained—I come at her again and again on the arrows of Time.
MY HOLY LUSTThe lust of the sailor for new lands, the lust of the boat new-launched for the turbulent, foaming, sky-running waters—Lust ever and ever I thus.I stand in the ring of the earth and lust for the rings above and beyond that widen into great monstrous nooses in the pits of azure and opal till my glance is lost in the fire-capped zenith—Lust with my eyes and my ears, lascivious of all things unguessed, all things not conquered.I lust for the Strength that runneth before and purge myself of the close-clinging, stiffening muds of old custom, running the fine needle of my quickening Desire through a million ephemeral nuclei,Thrust to the core of each vanishing truth.My lusts hold me taut and redeem me of pain, and I sigh and I sob and I laugh in the ear of the LOVED ONE, spread on the winds, locked in the blast, till she yield and diswomb her last secret—She, my finality, target of lusts, peeping here, peeping there, ever lost, ever gained—I come at her again and again on the arrows of Time.
MY HOLY LUSTThe lust of the sailor for new lands, the lust of the boat new-launched for the turbulent, foaming, sky-running waters—Lust ever and ever I thus.I stand in the ring of the earth and lust for the rings above and beyond that widen into great monstrous nooses in the pits of azure and opal till my glance is lost in the fire-capped zenith—Lust with my eyes and my ears, lascivious of all things unguessed, all things not conquered.I lust for the Strength that runneth before and purge myself of the close-clinging, stiffening muds of old custom, running the fine needle of my quickening Desire through a million ephemeral nuclei,Thrust to the core of each vanishing truth.My lusts hold me taut and redeem me of pain, and I sigh and I sob and I laugh in the ear of the LOVED ONE, spread on the winds, locked in the blast, till she yield and diswomb her last secret—She, my finality, target of lusts, peeping here, peeping there, ever lost, ever gained—I come at her again and again on the arrows of Time.
THE OVERONEThe great GOD sleeps and dreams through Me,And cycles run and cycles ebb and still IT blossoms in my brainOr withers in my stoppages:The God in chains, the Ghost in leash to Me!O sleep is deep, and deeper still the unborn dream,And under sleep there is a sleep where walks the great Noctambulist.Bitten by the vermin host, stung by knout, gnawed by gad, IT flushes through my arteries,The rising God, the Coming One, the God that’s tethered in my brain.
THE OVERONEThe great GOD sleeps and dreams through Me,And cycles run and cycles ebb and still IT blossoms in my brainOr withers in my stoppages:The God in chains, the Ghost in leash to Me!O sleep is deep, and deeper still the unborn dream,And under sleep there is a sleep where walks the great Noctambulist.Bitten by the vermin host, stung by knout, gnawed by gad, IT flushes through my arteries,The rising God, the Coming One, the God that’s tethered in my brain.
THE OVERONEThe great GOD sleeps and dreams through Me,And cycles run and cycles ebb and still IT blossoms in my brainOr withers in my stoppages:The God in chains, the Ghost in leash to Me!O sleep is deep, and deeper still the unborn dream,And under sleep there is a sleep where walks the great Noctambulist.Bitten by the vermin host, stung by knout, gnawed by gad, IT flushes through my arteries,The rising God, the Coming One, the God that’s tethered in my brain.
THE ULTIMATEI wait for THEE in vile places a little while and wait for THEE in high places a long while.In the bellies of my adders I make my way laboriously, and I am that high look-out in the eye of the eagle lost in the azure infinities.Thy Secret, O universe, I have willed to know; thou swift-hurrying, invisible SPIRIT buried ’neath thy monstrous uncountable atoms—Where will I fall flat upon THEE, weaving myself into THEE?Flying to my remotest zeniths, diving far into the unplumbed Nothing, waddling in these earth-muds, I seek THEE with my passionate intent Here and in the mutable many Here-afters.
THE ULTIMATEI wait for THEE in vile places a little while and wait for THEE in high places a long while.In the bellies of my adders I make my way laboriously, and I am that high look-out in the eye of the eagle lost in the azure infinities.Thy Secret, O universe, I have willed to know; thou swift-hurrying, invisible SPIRIT buried ’neath thy monstrous uncountable atoms—Where will I fall flat upon THEE, weaving myself into THEE?Flying to my remotest zeniths, diving far into the unplumbed Nothing, waddling in these earth-muds, I seek THEE with my passionate intent Here and in the mutable many Here-afters.
THE ULTIMATEI wait for THEE in vile places a little while and wait for THEE in high places a long while.In the bellies of my adders I make my way laboriously, and I am that high look-out in the eye of the eagle lost in the azure infinities.Thy Secret, O universe, I have willed to know; thou swift-hurrying, invisible SPIRIT buried ’neath thy monstrous uncountable atoms—Where will I fall flat upon THEE, weaving myself into THEE?Flying to my remotest zeniths, diving far into the unplumbed Nothing, waddling in these earth-muds, I seek THEE with my passionate intent Here and in the mutable many Here-afters.
THE SLEEPERMy soul fell asleep, asleep in a great city, among the leering faces of her millions;The iron hoofs of many strange and monstrous animals ground their imprint in my prescient white Self that lay stark and helpless on the highways of the world:O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!The waves have gone over me and crawling things with fiery eyes have wriggled onto the white throne where I ruled,And the old seven deadly delights have kissed me each one and licked up my strength with their smooth yellow tongues:O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!O the terror of sleep and of Me who am blotted, erased and spun into things that are vile and grosser than compost,And the long death of Me that drank of this hemlock of earth that brings not the death that is surcease—only a death of vile dreaming, a lapsing without a forgetting:O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!Out of their crypts stalk my elder old selves, and whilst I stare with the impotent eye set in the head of the dead they drive in the little brass rivets of habit to the core of my being:O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!
THE SLEEPERMy soul fell asleep, asleep in a great city, among the leering faces of her millions;The iron hoofs of many strange and monstrous animals ground their imprint in my prescient white Self that lay stark and helpless on the highways of the world:O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!The waves have gone over me and crawling things with fiery eyes have wriggled onto the white throne where I ruled,And the old seven deadly delights have kissed me each one and licked up my strength with their smooth yellow tongues:O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!O the terror of sleep and of Me who am blotted, erased and spun into things that are vile and grosser than compost,And the long death of Me that drank of this hemlock of earth that brings not the death that is surcease—only a death of vile dreaming, a lapsing without a forgetting:O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!Out of their crypts stalk my elder old selves, and whilst I stare with the impotent eye set in the head of the dead they drive in the little brass rivets of habit to the core of my being:O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!
THE SLEEPERMy soul fell asleep, asleep in a great city, among the leering faces of her millions;The iron hoofs of many strange and monstrous animals ground their imprint in my prescient white Self that lay stark and helpless on the highways of the world:O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!The waves have gone over me and crawling things with fiery eyes have wriggled onto the white throne where I ruled,And the old seven deadly delights have kissed me each one and licked up my strength with their smooth yellow tongues:O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!O the terror of sleep and of Me who am blotted, erased and spun into things that are vile and grosser than compost,And the long death of Me that drank of this hemlock of earth that brings not the death that is surcease—only a death of vile dreaming, a lapsing without a forgetting:O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!Out of their crypts stalk my elder old selves, and whilst I stare with the impotent eye set in the head of the dead they drive in the little brass rivets of habit to the core of my being:O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!
THE ALLEYS OF ELDNight and the Sea and the depths of Despair!The gulfs of Time, the moaning of wastrel souls, the ullulation of fiends in the brackish currents of Change:I heard with an myriad Ear, and was withered and worn and wrenched in the screws.How came I into the Alleys of Eld?Endless doors were closing behind me—I could not go back, the slams were decisive, I heard ITS skeleton-key turn in each lock, and peering back, I looked into its eyes, sinister as Time’s face, brooding upon me—As I hurried down the Alleys of Eld.A sudden emergence here on this shore, my brain still gimletted with the memory of those eyes, my ears still pricked with the click! click! of ITS skeleton-key—Emerged! ah! the Night and the Sea and the depths of Despair and the memory of IT!—Emerged from the Alleys of Eld!
THE ALLEYS OF ELDNight and the Sea and the depths of Despair!The gulfs of Time, the moaning of wastrel souls, the ullulation of fiends in the brackish currents of Change:I heard with an myriad Ear, and was withered and worn and wrenched in the screws.How came I into the Alleys of Eld?Endless doors were closing behind me—I could not go back, the slams were decisive, I heard ITS skeleton-key turn in each lock, and peering back, I looked into its eyes, sinister as Time’s face, brooding upon me—As I hurried down the Alleys of Eld.A sudden emergence here on this shore, my brain still gimletted with the memory of those eyes, my ears still pricked with the click! click! of ITS skeleton-key—Emerged! ah! the Night and the Sea and the depths of Despair and the memory of IT!—Emerged from the Alleys of Eld!
THE ALLEYS OF ELDNight and the Sea and the depths of Despair!The gulfs of Time, the moaning of wastrel souls, the ullulation of fiends in the brackish currents of Change:I heard with an myriad Ear, and was withered and worn and wrenched in the screws.How came I into the Alleys of Eld?Endless doors were closing behind me—I could not go back, the slams were decisive, I heard ITS skeleton-key turn in each lock, and peering back, I looked into its eyes, sinister as Time’s face, brooding upon me—As I hurried down the Alleys of Eld.A sudden emergence here on this shore, my brain still gimletted with the memory of those eyes, my ears still pricked with the click! click! of ITS skeleton-key—Emerged! ah! the Night and the Sea and the depths of Despair and the memory of IT!—Emerged from the Alleys of Eld!
LOVE THE DESTROYERI reject Love—Love and its sibillant, low-murmured lies, sweet sting of fair bodies, old meat of old Death.The boom of the red sea of lust rings dull in my ear—I have seen the waves go over many; dead, dead forever they lie in the steaming hot currents that bubble up from the mud-beds.I reject Love—Love that has strewn millions of Me along the path I upclomb, shredded my flesh with its claws and burnt out my brains in its long searing clutch.Through that ageless black night, with my earth-itch fair full upon me, once my Eye was stabbed by a bolt from the fulgurant Light and my soul pined away from its love and grew strong in its terrible Nay.I reject Love—Love that accouched every star in the blue, that with knout of Desire sends the young worlds grunting round and round the senescent, suns.I hear swash and lave of the unimagined fulgurant Light, burning sure and serene at the Axis of things—soft swash and soft lave wrought in the great Mnemonic Cell-Soul of me!
LOVE THE DESTROYERI reject Love—Love and its sibillant, low-murmured lies, sweet sting of fair bodies, old meat of old Death.The boom of the red sea of lust rings dull in my ear—I have seen the waves go over many; dead, dead forever they lie in the steaming hot currents that bubble up from the mud-beds.I reject Love—Love that has strewn millions of Me along the path I upclomb, shredded my flesh with its claws and burnt out my brains in its long searing clutch.Through that ageless black night, with my earth-itch fair full upon me, once my Eye was stabbed by a bolt from the fulgurant Light and my soul pined away from its love and grew strong in its terrible Nay.I reject Love—Love that accouched every star in the blue, that with knout of Desire sends the young worlds grunting round and round the senescent, suns.I hear swash and lave of the unimagined fulgurant Light, burning sure and serene at the Axis of things—soft swash and soft lave wrought in the great Mnemonic Cell-Soul of me!
LOVE THE DESTROYERI reject Love—Love and its sibillant, low-murmured lies, sweet sting of fair bodies, old meat of old Death.The boom of the red sea of lust rings dull in my ear—I have seen the waves go over many; dead, dead forever they lie in the steaming hot currents that bubble up from the mud-beds.
I reject Love—Love that has strewn millions of Me along the path I upclomb, shredded my flesh with its claws and burnt out my brains in its long searing clutch.Through that ageless black night, with my earth-itch fair full upon me, once my Eye was stabbed by a bolt from the fulgurant Light and my soul pined away from its love and grew strong in its terrible Nay.
I reject Love—Love that accouched every star in the blue, that with knout of Desire sends the young worlds grunting round and round the senescent, suns.I hear swash and lave of the unimagined fulgurant Light, burning sure and serene at the Axis of things—soft swash and soft lave wrought in the great Mnemonic Cell-Soul of me!
REJECTIONThe wafir of Time I have bitten—sweet it was not.Each tapir of thought stood at flare in my soul—and I saw only the density of the gloom.My soul has fumed at the lips of Thy women.(Pah! ’twas a fool’s trick to try to seduce me the HUNTER OF THEE.)Effort, emotion, thought, dream, lust—what have these for me?I came to judge of Thy works, not to dance to Thy pipings.* * * * * * * * *Thou canst not stanch the woe that is mine,Thou canst not bribe to sleep my Everlasting Nay.Godlike am I in Thy presence,As weary as Change, and as young;A mendicant rebel, a Presage, a rejecter,A contriver of strange things, unbegotten, eternal!* * * * * * * * *An abattoir hid in a garden of roses—Such is Thy universe:Thus do I judge.
REJECTIONThe wafir of Time I have bitten—sweet it was not.Each tapir of thought stood at flare in my soul—and I saw only the density of the gloom.My soul has fumed at the lips of Thy women.(Pah! ’twas a fool’s trick to try to seduce me the HUNTER OF THEE.)Effort, emotion, thought, dream, lust—what have these for me?I came to judge of Thy works, not to dance to Thy pipings.* * * * * * * * *Thou canst not stanch the woe that is mine,Thou canst not bribe to sleep my Everlasting Nay.Godlike am I in Thy presence,As weary as Change, and as young;A mendicant rebel, a Presage, a rejecter,A contriver of strange things, unbegotten, eternal!* * * * * * * * *An abattoir hid in a garden of roses—Such is Thy universe:Thus do I judge.
REJECTIONThe wafir of Time I have bitten—sweet it was not.Each tapir of thought stood at flare in my soul—and I saw only the density of the gloom.My soul has fumed at the lips of Thy women.(Pah! ’twas a fool’s trick to try to seduce me the HUNTER OF THEE.)Effort, emotion, thought, dream, lust—what have these for me?I came to judge of Thy works, not to dance to Thy pipings.* * * * * * * * *Thou canst not stanch the woe that is mine,Thou canst not bribe to sleep my Everlasting Nay.Godlike am I in Thy presence,As weary as Change, and as young;A mendicant rebel, a Presage, a rejecter,A contriver of strange things, unbegotten, eternal!* * * * * * * * *An abattoir hid in a garden of roses—Such is Thy universe:Thus do I judge.
THE SPEAR OF THE GREAT SPURNINGUpreared in the night, pallid-gray ’gainst the moon, towers she they call Astoreth, goddess of flesh and of worms, older than all years, younger than Love.Alone I stand in that desert in that dead of the night with the Spear of the Great Spurning, tipped with the poison of an Ageless Thought, leveled straight at her dugs.Pallid-gray! Pallid-gray! ’gainst the moon, sick is young Astoreth, who saw me grow from cycle to cycle—Astoreth pales ’gainst the moon at the vision of him who will not suck at her dugs.Drive well, O Spear of the Great Spurning—drive well at the Mother of Life, who rowels our flesh—goddess of flesh and of worms!Drive well, O Spear, tinct with my Thought!—with her fall comes the Great Manumission, and nothing else shall be save the beat of my Thought in the Void.
THE SPEAR OF THE GREAT SPURNINGUpreared in the night, pallid-gray ’gainst the moon, towers she they call Astoreth, goddess of flesh and of worms, older than all years, younger than Love.Alone I stand in that desert in that dead of the night with the Spear of the Great Spurning, tipped with the poison of an Ageless Thought, leveled straight at her dugs.Pallid-gray! Pallid-gray! ’gainst the moon, sick is young Astoreth, who saw me grow from cycle to cycle—Astoreth pales ’gainst the moon at the vision of him who will not suck at her dugs.Drive well, O Spear of the Great Spurning—drive well at the Mother of Life, who rowels our flesh—goddess of flesh and of worms!Drive well, O Spear, tinct with my Thought!—with her fall comes the Great Manumission, and nothing else shall be save the beat of my Thought in the Void.
THE SPEAR OF THE GREAT SPURNINGUpreared in the night, pallid-gray ’gainst the moon, towers she they call Astoreth, goddess of flesh and of worms, older than all years, younger than Love.Alone I stand in that desert in that dead of the night with the Spear of the Great Spurning, tipped with the poison of an Ageless Thought, leveled straight at her dugs.Pallid-gray! Pallid-gray! ’gainst the moon, sick is young Astoreth, who saw me grow from cycle to cycle—Astoreth pales ’gainst the moon at the vision of him who will not suck at her dugs.Drive well, O Spear of the Great Spurning—drive well at the Mother of Life, who rowels our flesh—goddess of flesh and of worms!Drive well, O Spear, tinct with my Thought!—with her fall comes the Great Manumission, and nothing else shall be save the beat of my Thought in the Void.
New York City, 1902-1906.