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 {16...
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