The Garden

There's an ancient, ancient garden that I see sometimes in dreams,
Where the very Maytime sunlight plays and glows with spectral gleams;
Where the gaudy-tinted blossoms seem to wither into grey,
And the crumbling walls and pillars waken thoughts of yesterday.
There are vines in nooks and crannies, and there's moss about the pool,
And the tangled weedy thicket chokes the arbour dark and cool:
In the silent sunken pathways springs a herbage sparse and spare,
Where the musty scent of dead things dulls the fragrance of the air.
There is not a living creature in the lonely space around,
And the hedge~encompass'd a quiet never echoes to a sound.
As I walk, and wait, and listen, I will often seek to find
When it was I knew that garden in an age long left behind;
I will oft conjure a vision of a day that is no more,
As I gaze upon the grey, grey scenes I feel I knew before.
Then a sadness settles o'er me, and a tremor seems to start -
For I know the flow'rs are shrivell'd hopes - the garden is my heart.

Love and Thought

Two well-assorted travellers use
The highway, Eros and the Muse.
From the twins is nothing hidden,
To the pair is nought forbidden;
Hand in hand the comrades go
Every nook of Nature through:
Each for other they were born,
Each can other best adorn;
They know one only mortal grief
Past all balsam or relief;
When, by false companions crossed,
The pilgrims have each other lost.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Yet time to turn

Brighter than snow on glittering Alps, the soul
Of my lost love was, bluer than the haze
Of those same hills, more violent and deep
Her eyes' clear gaze,
Dreaming of hidden wonders; and the goal
Of life grew luminous o'er Time's empurpled steep.

She loved me then; she loves me now, afar.
Ah, she knew not! and I, so steeped and stained
With fierce sins, knew myself unworthy of
The heart I gained,
And, a lost mariner whose polar star
He is ashamed to look to, cast away her love.

I would not have her love a thing so vile,
I would not link her life with such as mine!
O cursed sin, to leave my soul too high
To cheat the shrine!
I drave Love forth, Love lingered yet awhile
So that I might not quite win Hell before I die.

O little root of nobleness left thus
Dead since it has no power to grow, to bloom;
Live, since I may not bury it within
The gaping tomb
Where virtue lies, that I, imperious,
Long since interred with hope, and all life's joy save sin.

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)

Causerie

Vous êtes un beau ciel d'automne, clair et rose!
Mais la tristesse en moi monte comme la mer,
Et laisse, en refluant, sur ma lèvre morose
Le souvenir cuisant de son limon amer.

– Ta main se glisse en vain sur mon sein qui se pâme;
Ce qu'elle cherche, amie, est un lieu saccagé
Par la griffe et la dent féroce de la femme.
Ne cherchez plus mon cœur; les bêtes l'ont mangé.

Mon cœur est un palais flétri par la cohue;
On s'y soûle, on s'y tue, on s'y prend aux cheveux!
– Un parfum nage autour de votre gorge nue!…

Ô Beauté, dur fléau des âmes, tu le veux!
Avec tes yeux de feu, brillants comme des fêtes,
Calcine ces lambeaux qu'ont épargnés les bêtes!


Ein Herbsthimmel bist du: schön, rosig und hell!
Doch in mir steigt die See der Traurigkeit
Und lässt auf meinen Lippen, wenn sie fällt,
Den Schlamm des Grams zurück, die Bitterkeit. –

Vergeblich streift dein Händchen die erstarrte Brust;
Das, was du suchst, Liebchen, längst ist's zerrissen
Durch die Krallen und grausamen Zähne der Lust.
Das Herz, das du suchst, haben Bestien gerissen.

Ein Palast ist mein Herz, den die Massen befleckten,
Man besäuft sich, erschlägt sich, kriegt sich in die Haare! –
Wie duftet dein Busen, dein bloßer, erregend! …

O Schöne, Seelenqual, du willst mir's nicht ersparen!
Mit feurigen Augen – wie strahlen sie festlich –
Verbrenne, was Bestien verschonten, die Reste!


Charles Baudelaire

Laeta; a Lament

How sad droop the willows by Zulal’s fair side,
Where so lately I stray’d with my raven-hair’d bride:
Ev’ry light-floating lily, each flow’r on the shore,
Folds in sorrow since Laeta can see them no more!

Oh, blest were the days when in childhood and hope
With my Laeta I rov’d o’er the blossom-clad slope,
Plucking white meadow-daisies and ferns by the stream,
As we laugh’d at the ripples that twinkle and gleam.

Not a bloom deck’d the mead that could rival in grace
The dear innocent charms of my Laeta’s fair face;
Not a thrush thrill’d the grove with a carol so choice
As the silvery strains of my Laeta’s sweet voice.

The shy Nymphs of the woodland, the fount and the plain,
Strove to equal her beauty, but strove all in vain;
Yet no envy they bore her, while fruitless they strove,
For so pure was my Laeta, they could only love!

When the warm breath of Auster play’d soft o’er the flow’rs,
And young Zephyrus rustled the gay scented bow’rs,
Ev’ry breeze seem’d to pause as it drew near the fair,
Too much aw’d at her sweetness to tumble her hair.

How fond were our dreams on the day when we stood
In the ivy-grown temple beside the dark wood;
When our pledges we seal’d at the sanctify’d shrine,
And I knew that my Laeta forever was mine!

How blissful our thoughts when the wild autumn came,
And the forests with scarlet and gold were aflame;
Yet how heavy my heart when I first felt the fear
That my starry-eyed Laeta would fade with the year!

The pastures were sere and the heavens were grey
When I laid my lov’d Laeta forever away,
And the river god pity’d, as weeping I pac’d
Mingling hot bitter tears with his cold frozen waste.

Now the flow’rs have return’d, but they bloom not so sweet
As in days when they blossom’d round Laeta’s dear feet;
And the willows complain to the answering hill,
And the thrushes that once were so happy are still.

The green meadows and groves in their loneliness pine,
Whilst the Dryads no more in their madrigals join,
The breeze once so joyous now murmurs and sighs,
And blows soft o’er the spot where my lov’d Laeta lies.

So pensive I roam o’er the desolate lawn
Where we wander’d and lov’d in the days that are gone,
And I yearn for the autumn, when Zulal’s blue tide
Shall sing low by my grave at the lov’d Laeta’s side.

To One in Paradise

Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine-
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!"- but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! me
The light of Life is o'er!
"No more- no more- no more-"
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams-
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.

Edgar Allan Poe

A Valentine

For her this rhyme is penned, whose luminous eyes,
Brightly expressive as the twins of Leda,
Shall find her own sweet name, that nestling lies
Upon the page, enwrapped from every reader.
Search narrowly the lines!- they hold a treasure
Divine- a talisman- an amulet
That must be worn at heart. Search well the measure-
The words- the syllables! Do not forget
The trivialest point, or you may lose your labor
And yet there is in this no Gordian knot
Which one might not undo without a sabre,
If one could merely comprehend the plot.
Enwritten upon the leaf where now are peering
Eyes scintillating soul, there lie perdus
Three eloquent words oft uttered in the hearing
Of poets, by poets- as the name is a poet's, too,
Its letters, although naturally lying
Like the knight Pinto- Mendez Ferdinando-
Still form a synonym for Truth- Cease trying!
You will not read the riddle, though you do the best you can do.

Edgar Allan Poe

The Twenty-Eighth Day

A curious conflict this of love and fear,
Honour and lust, and truth and trust beguiled:
One in the semblance of a rose-bright child:--
The other in a shape more gross and clear,
A fiercer woman-figure crowned severe
With garlands woven of scourges, but whose wild
Breast beat with splendour of sin, whose looks were mild,
Hiding the cruel smile behind a tear.

So she: "I knew you never would"; yet did
Such acts that no end otherwise might be.
So I: "I will not ever pluck the flower";
Yet strayed enchanted on the lawns forbid,
And bathed enamoured in the secret sea,
Both knowing our words were spoken--for an hour.

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947)

The Pentagram

[Dedicated to George Raffalovich]


In the Years of the Primal Course, in the dawn of terrestrial
birth,
Man mastered the mammoth and horse, and Man was the
Lord of the Earth.

He made him an hollow skin from the heart of an holy tree,
He compassed the earth therien, and Man was the Lord of
the Sea.

He controlled the vigour of steam, he harnessed the light-
ning for hire;
He drove the celestial team, and man was the Lord of the
Fire.

Deep-mouthed from their thrones deep-seated, the choirs
of the æeons declare
The last of the demons defeated, for Man is the Lord of
the Air.

Arise, O Man, in thy strength! the kingdom is thine to
inherit,
Till the high gods witness at lenght that Man is the Lord
of his spirit.

Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947)

What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
- But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight
And fiddled whisper music on those strings
And bats with baby faces in the violet light
Whistled, and beat their wings
And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
And upside down in air were towers
Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
It has no windows, and the door swings,
Dry bones can harm no one.
Only a cock stood on the rooftree
Co co rico co co rico
In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
Waited for rain, while the black clouds
Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
Then spoke the thunder
DA
Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Which is not to be found in our obituaries
Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
In our empty rooms
DA
Dayadhvam: I have heard the key
Turn in the door once and turn once only
We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison
Only at nightfall, aetherial rumours
Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus
DA
Damyata: The boat responded
Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded
Gaily, when invited, beating obedient
To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie

These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Fact and Fancy

How dull the wretch, whose philosophic mind
Disdains the pleasures of fantastic kind;
Whose prosy thoughts the joys of life exclude,
And wreck the solace of the poet’s mood!
Young Zeno, practic’d in the Stoic’s art,
Rejects the language of the glowing heart;
Dissolves sweet Nature to a mess of laws;
Condemns th’ effect whilst looking for the cause;
Freezes poor Ovid in an ic’d review,
And sneers because his fables are untrue!
In search of Truth the hopeful zealot goes,
But all the sadder tums, the more he knows!
Stay! vandal sophist, whose deep lore would blast
The graceful legends of the story’d past;
Whose tongue in censure flays th’ embellish’d page,
And scolds the comforts of a dreary age:
Would’st strip the foliage from the vital bough
Till all men grow as wisely dull as thou?
Happy the man whose fresh, untainted eye
Discerns a Pantheon in the spangled sky;
Finds Sylphs and Dryads in the waving trees,
And spies soft Notus in the southern breeze;
For whom the stream a cheering carol sings,
While reedy music by the fountain rings;
To whom the waves a Nereid tale confide
Till friendly presence fills the rising tide.
Happy is he, who void of learning’s woes,
Th’ ethereal life of body’d Nature knows:
I scorn the sage that tells me it but seems,
And flout his gravity in sunlit dreams!

H.P.Lovecraft,

La Musique

La musique souvent me prend comme une mer!
Vers ma pâle étoile,
Sous un plafond de brume ou dans un vaste éther.
Je mets à la voile;

La poitrine en avant et les poumons gonflés
Comme de la toile.
J'escalade le dos des flots amoncelés
Que la nuit me voile;

Je sens vibrer en moi toutes les passions
D'un vaisseau qui souffre;
Le bon vent, la tempête et ses convulsions

Sur l'immense gouffre
Me bercent. D'autres fois, calme plat, grand miroir
De mon désespoir!


Oft schwemmt die Musik mich hinweg wie ein Meer!
Durch dichten Nebel
Zum blassen Gestirn im Äther weit fern
Setz ich die Segel;

Die Brust rausgestreckt und die Lungen gebläht
Wie Leinwand im Wind,
Erklimm ich die Berge der Wellen und sehe –
Von Nacht nicht mehr blind;

Ich fühle mich ganz wie ein leidendes Schiff,
Das schwankend sich quält;
Von Brisen getrieben, von Stürmen ergriffen

Im Abgrund, der gellt,
Wiegt es mich … – Bis Wasserspiegel windstill zeigt
Meine Hoffnungslosigkeit!


Charles Baudelaire

Diary Of A Madman

Screaming at the window
Watch me die another day
Hopeless situation
Endless price I'll have to pay

Diary of a madman
Walk the line again today
Entries of confusion
Dear diary, I'm here to stay.

Sanity now and beyond me
I will always love you.
However long I stay
I will always love you.
Whatever words I say
I will always love you.
There's no choice.

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I'm home again.

Voices in the darkness
Scream away my mental health
Can I ask a question
To help me save me from myself?

Sanity now and beyond me
I will always love you.
However long I stay
I will always love you.
Whatever words I say
I will always love you.
There's no choice.

I will always love you.

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I'm whole again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I'm whole again

I will always love you
There's no choice

A Perfect Circle

The Profits of Doom

Of this shape a star of five
Also applies to the one with six sides
Against the sun and against the moon
I warn you that these two combined
Will bring man's doom
Of ten horns and seven heads
Count your fingers and the continents
On your forehead or in your right hand
This new moral code that the media commands

Believe not in their clever words
Because faith inact(ed) are the loudest heard
All these things I say are true
Understood sadly by a chosen few

April 2029 the final time
The end my friend is not near
The hour in fact is quite hear
When the moon becomes red
To guide the living dead
This means God's turned his back on you
It's a Friday 13th of course
You won't live to see noon

I am a prophet of doom

So now the star has fallen
Washing away the seas
The seventh seal's been opened
It's raining your fears
Are you paranoid
The coming asteroid
Has got your name tattooed on it
This stone's called Apophis

It brings apocalypse
I am a prophet of doom

Speak the name of he
Created thee all to be
Which should not be spoken
No laws broken

Now life and love the stars above
Which fall upon the all that worship the beast
Influences ceased

My faith is an ember
Burning ever
Working towards a greater reward
Serving my lured

Built this home upon the rock
Not of the flock
But coming as a shepherd
Guarding his heard

My soul's on fire

Type O Negative

Blowin in the wind....

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must the white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes 'n how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they are forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes 'n how many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
Yes 'n how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes 'n how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes 'n how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes 'n how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes 'n how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Bob Dylan (1962)