READING
From Liber Lapidis Lazuli: Chapter VI.
- Thou wast a priestess, O my God, among the Druids; and we
knew the powers of the oak.
- We made us a temple of stones in the shape of the Universe,
even as thou didst wear openly and I concealed.
- There we performed many wonderful things by midnight.
- By the waning moon did we work.
- Over the plain came the atrocious cry of wolves.
- We answered; we hunted with the pack.
- We came even unto the new Chapel and Thou didst bear away
the Holy Graal beneath Thy Druid vestments.
- Secretly and by stealth did we drink of the informing sacrament.
- Then a terrible disease seized upon the folk of the grey
land; and we rejoiced.
- O my God, disguise Thy glory!
- Come as a thief, and let us steal away the Sacraments!
- In our groves, in our cloistral cells, in our honeycomb of
happiness, let us drink, let us drink!
- It is the wine that tinges everything with the true tincture
of infallible gold.
- There are deep secrets in these songs. It is not enough to
hear the bird; to enjoy song he must be the bird.
- I am the bird, and Thou art my song, O my glorious galloping
God!
- Thou reinest in the stars; thou drivest the constellations
seven abreast through the circus of Nothingness.
- Thou Gladiator God!
- I play upon mine harp; Thou fightest the beasts and the flames.
- Thou takest Thy joy in the music, and I in the fighting.
- Thou and I are beloved of the Emperor.
- See! he has summoned us to the Imperial dais.
The night falls; it is a great orgy of worship and bliss.
- The night falls like a spangled cloak from the shoulders
of a prince upon a slave.
- He rises a free man!
- Cast thou, O prophet, the cloak upon these slaves!
- A great night, and scarce fires therein; but freedom for
the slave that its glory shall encompass.
- So also I went down into the great sad city.
- There dead Messalina bartered her crown for poison from the
dead Locusta; there stood Caligula, and smote the seas of forgetfulness.
- Who wast Thou, O Caesar, that Thou knewest God in an horse?
- For lo! we beheld the White Horse of the Saxon engraven upon
the earth; and we beheld the Horses of the Sea that flame about
the old grey land, and the foam from their nostrils enlightens
us!
- Ah! but I love thee, God!
- Thou art like a moon upon the ice-world.
- Thou art like the dawn of the utmost snows upon the burnt-up
flats of the tiger's land.
- By silence and by speech do I worship Thee.
- But all is in vain.
- Only Thy silence and Thy speech that worship me avail.
- Wail, O ye folk of the grey land, for we have drunk your
wine, and left ye but the bitter dregs.
- Yet from these we will distil ye a liquor beyond the nectar
of the Gods.
- There is value in our tincture for a world of Spice and gold.
- For our red powder of projection is beyond all possibilities.
- There are few men; there are enough.
- We shall be full of cup-bearers, and the wine is not stinted.
- O dear my God! what a feast Thou hast provided.
- Behold the lights and the flowers and the maidens!
- Taste of the wines and the cakes and the splendid meats!
- Breathe in the perfumes and the clouds of little gods like
wood-nymphs that inhabit the nostrils!
- Feel with your whole body the glorious smoothness of the
marble coolth and the generous warmth of the sun and the slaves!
- Let the Invisible inform all the devouring Light of its disruptive
vigour!
- Yea! all the world is split apart, as an old grey tree by
the lightning!
- Come, O ye gods, and let us feast.
- Thou, O my darling, O my ceaseless Sparrow-God, my delight,
my desire, my deceiver, come Thou and chirp at my right hand!
- This was the tale of the memory of Al A'in the priest; yea,
of Al A'in the priest.
RESPONSORY
- The night falls like a spangled cloak from the shoulders
of a prince upon a slave.
- --- He rises a free man!
- And at last I smite myself into him as a vision smiteth into
a stone, and whom I call must follow.
- --- He rises...