T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
The Altar of Artemis
By Aleister Crowley (18751947)(From The Soul of Osiris, 1901) WHERE, in the coppice, oak and pine | |
And mystic yew and elm are found, | |
Sweeping the skies, that grow divine | |
With the dark wind’s despairing sound, | |
The wind that roars from the profound, | 5 |
And smites the mountain-tops, and calls | |
Mute spirits to black festivals, | |
And feasts in valleys iron-bound, | |
Desolate crags, and barren ground;— | |
There in the strong storm-shaken grove | 10 |
Swings the pale censer-fire for love. | |
The foursquare altar, rightly hewn, | |
And overlaid with beaten gold, | |
Stands in the gloom; the stealthy tune | |
Of singing maidens overbold | 15 |
Desires mad mysteries untold, | |
With strange eyes kindling, as the fleet | |
Implacable untiring feet | |
Weave mystic figures manifold | |
That draw down angels to behold | 20 |
The moving music, and the fire | |
Of their intolerable desire. | |
For, maddening to fiercer thought, | |
The fiery limbs requicken, wheel | |
In formless furies, subtly wrought | 25 |
Of swifter melodies than steel | |
That flashes in the fight: the peal | |
Of amorous laughters choking sense, | |
And madness kissing violence, | |
Ring like dead horsemen; bodies reel | 30 |
Drunken with motion; spirits feel | |
The strange constraint of gods that clip | |
From Heaven to mingle lip and lip. | |
The gods descend to dance; the noise | |
Of hungry kissings, as a swoon, | 35 |
Faints for excess of its own joys, | |
And mystic beams assail the moon, | |
With flames of their infernal noon; | |
While the smooth incense, without breath, | |
Spreads like some scented flower of death, | 40 |
Over the grove; the lovers’ boon | |
Of sleep shall steal upon them soon, | |
And lovers’ lips, from lips withdrawn, | |
Seek dimmer bosoms till the dawn. | |
Yet on the central altar lies | 45 |
The sacrament of kneaded bread, | |
With blood made one, the sacrifice | |
To those, the living, who are dead— | |
Strange gods and goddesses, that shed | |
Monstrous desires of secret things | 50 |
Upon their worshippers, from wings | |
One lucent web of light, from head | |
One labyrinthine passion-fed | |
Palace of love, from breathing rife | |
With secrets of forbidden life. | 55 |
But not the sunlight, nor the stars, | |
Nor any light but theirs alone, | |
Nor iron masteries of Mars, | |
Nor Saturn’s misconceiving zone, | |
Nor any planet’s may be shown, | 60 |
Within the circle of the grove, | |
Where burn the sanctities of love: | |
Nor may the foot of man be known, | |
Nor evil eyes of mothers thrown | |
On maidens that desire the kiss | 65 |
Only of maiden Artemis. | |
But horned and huntress from the skies, | |
She bends her lips upon the breeze, | |
And pure and perfect in her eyes, | |
Burn magical virginity’s | 70 |
Sweet intermittent sorceries. | |
When the slow wind from her sweet word | |
In all their conchéd ears is heard. | |
And like the slumber of the seas, | |
There murmur through the holy trees | 75 |
The kisses of the goddess keen, | |
And sighs and laughters caught between. | |
For, swooning at the fervid lips | |
Of Artemis, the maiden kisses | |
Sob, and the languid body slips | 80 |
Down to enamelled wildernesses. | |
Fallen and loose the shaken tresses; | |
Fallen the sandal and girdling gold, | |
Fallen the music manifold | |
Of moving limbs and strange caresses, | 85 |
And deadly passion that possesses | |
The magic ecstasy of these | |
Mad maidens, tender as blue seas. | |
Night spreads her yearning pinions, | |
The baffled day sinks blind to sleep; | 90 |
The evening breeze outswoons the sun’s | |
Dead kisses to the swooning deep. | |
Upsoars the moon; the flashing steep | |
Of Heaven is fragrant for her feet; | |
The perfume of the grove is sweet | 95 |
As slumbering women furtive creep | |
To bosoms where small kisses weep, | |
And find in fervent dreams the kiss | |
Most memoried of Artemis. | |
Impenetrable pleasure dies | 100 |
Beneath the madness of new dreams; | |
The slow sweet breath is turned to sighs | |
More musical than many streams | |
Under the moving silver beams, | |
Fretted with stars, thrice woven across. | 105 |
White limbs in amorous slumber toss, | |
Like sleeping foam, whose silver gleams | |
On motionless dark seas; it seems | |
As if some gentle spirit stirred | |
Their lazy brows with some swift word. | 110 |
So, in the secret of the shrine, | |
Night keeps them nestled, so the gloom | |
Laps them in waves as smooth as wine, | |
As glowing as the fiery womb | |
Of some young tigress, dark as doom, | 115 |
And swift as sunrise. Love’s content | |
Builds its own monument, | |
And carves above its vaulted tomb | |
The Phoenix on her fiery plume, | |
To their own souls to testify | 120 |
Their kisses’ immortality. | |