HOMAGE PRELIMINARY

LIFE that is lost in dullard
 
Dreams of the senses, go!
 
Life, by the soul fair-coloured,
 
Thy valiant trumpets blow!
 
 
 
Far from the world where love is lust,
 
And work is pain, and wealth is dust,
 
Rise on the wings of love, and soar
 
To the sun's self, the eternal shore
 
Where flaming streamers soar and roll,
 
Angels to guard its secret soul,
 
The Garden where my love and I
 
May walk to all eternity.
 
Who dares to force the fiery gate
 
May win our world inviolate.
 
Children whose hearts are passionate;
 
Maidens whose flesh is fair and fain,
 
And men whose souls no senses stain,
 
Come!  These mad miles of flame of ours
 
Are cool as springs and fresh as flowers.
 
{xxix}
 
 
 
And thou, sole star in my black firmament!
 
Thou, night that wraps me close, thou, moon that
 
glimmers.
 
Chaste, yet embraced, serenest element
 
Lapping my life as the sea laps a swimmer's;
 
Thou, by whose strength and purity and love
 
I leave this land, attain to the above,
 
 
 
Come thou rose-red, break on my soul like dawn
 
And gild my peaks, and bid their fountains flow
 
For in thine absence all their life withdrawn
 
Congealed my being to a sterile snow,
 
Snow fallen from some accursed star to ban
 
All the high hope and heritage of man.
 
 
 
Come thou, a gleaming goddess of pure pearl,
 
Price of mine homage to the great glad god!
 
Come, saint and satyr praise alike the girl
 
Who to my whole life put the period
 
Of all fulfilment, whose prophetic breath
 
Girds me with life, and garlands me with death.
 
 
 
Come, be thy magic in the rime and rhythm,
 
Until the sea sways to the tender tune,
 
And the winds whisper, and the leaves wave with them,
 
The leaves wherethrough we look upon the moon,
 
So that men hear me of the world within
 
Secure from sorrow, sanctified from sin,
 
{xxx}
 
 
 
The world of stranger deities and loves
 
Than haunted Ida, or were hidden in
 
The Cretan bowers, the Elusinian goves,
 
A world that trembles on thy violin,
 
Eager to be --- and then the curtain drops
 
Just as thy music, with my heart's pulse, stops.
 
 
 
Nay!  To this world of ours they shall not reach.
 
My rimes are shadows dancing in the breeze
 
By moonlight; there is no delight in speech
 
Such as the silence of our own heart's ease;
 
But even thy shadow is itself a sun
 
To the bleak universe of Everyone.
 
 
 
Then open sesame!  The fairy cavern
 
Of gold and gems, strange land of misty truth,
 
As witches’ eyes in a polluted tavern
 
Glow with the vampire vanity of youth
 
Stolen from maids, so let thine own eyes shine
 
In this fantastic mystery of thine!
 
 
 
Thine eyes are love and truth and loyalty;
 
Thine eyes are mystery unveiled to one.
 
Let them ray forth incarnate deity
 
Fit to assoil the eclipse-attainted sun!
 
Let them point still my weather-beaten soul
 
Infallibly the pathway of the pole!
 
ALEISTER CROWLEY

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