LILITH

Dedicated to L.K.
The stench of the gross goat is in my nostrils instead of the perfume of Artemis. I plucked the Virgin by his broidered chlamys....who could have guessed that hairry horror hidden ? I have got gall to be my drink, who mingled my wine with myrrh and musk and ambergris. I made my bed of silk and and furs; and waking I found I had swooned to sleep upon the midden. Ah! Were those virgin lips of thine polluted with some rank savour of Sabbatic lust ? What spell turned thhe, the maiden, to a monkey jibbering antiphonal blasphemies To those chaste chants I woeed thee by, the moment that touching thee, my fruit dissolved to dust, Fair-seeming Sodom-apple ! Yet thy kisses smote all my spine to shuddering ecstasies ! So strode the fool upon the mountain ridges, crying; One step, and I attain the crest ! Lo! The loose cornice tricks him, and he tumbles, a mangled nothing, to the glacier. So the nun cries: One effort and I conquer; I pass the gate, I win the appointed rest ! And passing it discovers the foul body of Sin that waits to set his teeth in her. So in my dreams, escaping from a monster, I turn one corder; "there is refuge -there!" Nay, there he lurked who never had pursued me....'twas I who chased him to his proper holt. Then, O thou vile adorable, my lover, my master, catch me backward by the hair ! Fasten thy fangs upon my mouth's gasped anguish, and split my dream-clouds with thy thunderbolt ! Though thou be God or Satan, do thaou master my death- pand with thy life-pang, and possess All that I am with all thou art, my Vampire, my Siren that I thought a nightingale ! Abase me! Spit upon me! Scourge me ! Murder me ! Take thy wolf's meal of my loveliness ! Give me the reek of thy foul breath, and show me the leper's face behind the shining veil ! Yae! Though I sink through measureless abysses, I trace the incommensurable curve. Thy foursqure wedge that rages in my circle shall match it at the infinite period. Polluted body, violated spirit, corrupted soul, stunned brain and tortured nerve:- These merge into thy bloody maw, Echidna, that shall emerge the lone white flame of God.