The Priestess of Panormita poem – Aleister Crowley poems | Poetry Monster

A poem by Alistar Crowley (1875-1947)

Hear me, Lord of the Stars!

For thee I have worshipped ever

With stains and sorrows and scars,

With joyful, joyful endeavour.

Hear me, O lily-white goat!

O crisp as a thicket of thorns,

With a collar of gold for Thy throat,

A scarlet bow for Thy horns!

Here, in the dusty air,

I build Thee a shrine of yew.

All green is the garland I wear,

But I feed it with blood for dew!

After the orange bars

That ribbed the green west dying

Are dead, O Lord of the Stars,

I come to Thee, come to Thee crying.

The ambrosial moon that arose

With breasts slow heaving in splendour

Drops wine from her infinite snows.

Ineffably, utterly, tender.

O moon! ambrosial moon!

Arise on my desert of sorrow

That the Magical eyes of me swoon

With lust of rain to-morrow!

Ages and ages ago

I stood on the bank of a river

Holy and Holy and holy, I know,

For ever and ever and ever!

A priest in the mystical shrine

I muttered a redeless rune,

Till the waters were redder than wine

In the blush of the harlot moon.

I and my brother priests

Worshipped a wonderful woman

With a body lithe as a beast’s

Subtly, horribly human.

Deep in the pit of her eyes

I saw the image of death,

And I drew the water of sighs

From the well of her lullaby breath.

She sitteth veiled for ever

Brooding over the waste.

She hath stirred or spoken never.

She is fiercely, manly chaste!

What madness made me awake

From the silence of utmost eld

The grey cold slime of the snake

That her poisonous body held?

By night I ravished a maid

From her father’s camp to the cave.

I bared the beautiful blade;

I dipped her thrice i’ the wave;

I slit her throat as a lamb’s,

That the fount of blood leapt high

With my clamorous dithyrambs

Like a stain on the shield of the sky.

With blood and censer and song

I rent the mysterious veil:

My eyes gaze long and long

On the deep of that blissful bale.

My cold grey kisses awake

From the silence of utmost eld

The grey cold slime of the snake

That her beautiful body held.

But — God! I was not content

With the blasphemous secret of years;

The veil is hardly rent

While the eyes rain stones for tears.

So I clung to the lips and laughed

As the storms of death abated,

The storms of the grevious graft

By the swing of her soul unsated.

Wherefore reborn as I am

By a stream profane and foul

In the reign of a Tortured Lamb,

In the realm of a sexless Owl,

I am set apart from the rest

By meed of the mystic rune

That reads in peril and pest

The ambrosial moon — the moon!

For under the tawny star

That shines in the Bull above

I can rein the riotous car

Of galloping, galloping Love;

And straight to the steady ray

Of the Lion-heart Lord I career,

Pointing my flaming way

With the spasm of night for a spear!

O moon! O secret sweet!

Chalcedony clouds of caresses

About the flame of our feet,

The night of our terrible tresses!

Is it a wonder, then,

If the people are mad with blindness,

And nothing is stranger to men

Than silence, and wisdom, and kindness?

Nay! let him fashion an arrow

Whose heart is sober and stout!

Let him pierce his God to the marrow!

Let the soul of his God flow out!

Whether a snake or a sun

In his horoscope Heaven hath cast,

It is nothing; every one

Shall win to the moon at last.

The mage hath wrought by his art

A billion shapes in the sun.

Look through to the heart of his heart,

And the many are shapes of one!

An end to the art of the mage,

And the cold grey blank of the prison!

An end to the adamant age!

The ambrosial moon is arisen.

I have bought a lily-white goat

For the price of a crown of thorns,

A collar of gold for its throat,

A scarlet bow for its horns.

I have bought a lark in the lift

For the price of a butt of sherry:

With these, and God for a gift,

It needs no wine to be merry!

I have bought for a wafer of bread

A garden of poppies and clover;

For a water bitter and dead

A foam of fire flowing over.

From the Lamb and his prison fare

And the owl’s blind stupor, arise

Be ye wise, and strong, and fair,

And the nectar afloat in your eyes!

Arise, O ambrosial moon

By the strong immemorial spell,

By the subtle veridical rune

That is mighty in heaven and hell!

Drip thy mystical dews

On the tongues of the tender fauns

In the shade of initiate yews

Remote from the desert dawns!

Satyrs and Fauns, I call.

Bring your beauty to man!

I am the mate for ye all’

I am the passionate Pan.

Come, O come to the dance

Leaping with wonderful whips,

Life on the stroke of a glance,

Death in the stroke of the lips!

I am hidden beyond,

Shed in a secret sinew

Smitten through by the fond

Folly of wisdom in you!

Come, while the moon (the moon!)

Sheds her ambrosial splendour,

Reels in the redeless rune

Ineffably, utterly, tender!

Hark! the appealing cry

Of deadly hurt in the hollow: —

Hyacinth! Hyacinth! Ay!

Smitten to death by Apollo.

Swift, O maiden moon,

Send thy ray-dews after;

Turn the dolorous tune

To soft ambiguous laughter!

Mourn, O Maenads, mourn!

Surely your comfort is over:

All we laugh at you lorn.

Ours are the poppies and clover!

O that mouth and eyes,

Mischevious, male, alluring!

O that twitch of the thighs

Dorian past enduring!

Where is wisdom now?

Where the sage and his doubt?

Surely the sweat of the brow

Hath driven the demon out.

Surely the scented sleep

That crowns the equal war

Is wiser than only to weep —

To weep for evermore!

Now, at the crown of the year,

The decadent days of October,

I come to thee, God, without fear;

Pious, chaste, and sober.

I solemnly sacrifice

This first-fruit flower of wine

For a vehicle of thy vice

As I am Thine to be mine.

For five in the year gone by

I pray Thee give to me one;

A love stronger than I,

A moon to swallow the sun!

May he be like a lily-white goat

Crisp as a thicket of thorns,

With a collar of gold for his throat,

A scarlet bow for his horns!