Panormit

THE PRIESTESS OF PANORMITAHear me, Lord of the Stars!For thee I have worshipped everWith 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 barsThat ribbed the green west dyingAre dead, O Lord of the Stars,I come to Thee, come to Thee crying.The ambrosial moon that aroseWith breasts slow heaving in splendourDrops wine from her infinte snows,Ineffably, utterly, tender.O moon! ambrosial moon!Arise on my desert of sorrow,That the magical eyes of me swoonWith the lust of rain to-morrow!Ages and ages agoI 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 wineIn the blush of the harlot moon.I and my brother priestsWorshipped a wonderful womanWith a body lithe as a beast's,Subtly, horribly human.Deep in the pit of her eyesI saw the image of death,And I drew the water of sighsFrom the well of her lullaby breath.She sitteth veiled forever,Brooding over the waste.She hath stirred or spoken never.She is fiercely, manly chaste!What madness make me awakeFrom the silence of utmost eldThe grey cold slime of the snakeThat her poisonous body held?By night I ravished a maidFrom 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 highWith my clamorous dithyrambs,Like a stain on the shield of the sky.With blood and censer and songI rent the mysterious veil;My eyes gaze long and longOn the deep of that blissful bale.My cold grey kisses awakeFrom the silence of utmost eldThe grey cold slime of the snakeThat her beautirul body held.But--God! I was not contentWith the blasphemous secret of years;The veil is hardly rentWhile the eyes rain stones for tearsSo I clung to the lips and laughedAs the storms of death abated,The storms of the grievous graftBy the swing of her soul unsated.Wherefore reborn as I amBy 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 restBy meed of the mystic runeThat reeds in peril and pestThe ambrosial moon--the moon!For under the tawny starThat shines in the Bull aboveI can rein the riotous carOf galloping, galloping Love;And straight to the steady rayOf the Lion-hearted Lord I career,Pointing my flaming wayWith the spasm of night for a spear!O moon! O secret sweet!Chalcedony clouds of caressesAbout 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 menThan silence, and wisdom, and kindness?Nay! let him fashion an arrowWhose 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 sunIn his horoscope Heaven hath cast,It is nothing; every oneShall win to the moon at last.The mage has wrought by his artA 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 ambosial moon is arisen.I have bought a lily-white goatFor 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 liftFor 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 breadA garden of poppies and clover;For a water bitter and dead,A foam of fire flowing over.From the Lamb and his prison fareAnd 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 runeThat is mighty in heaven and hell!Drip thy mystical dewsOn 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 fondFolly of wisdom in you!Come, while the moon (the moon!)Sheds her ambrosial splendour,Reels in the redeless runeIneffably, utterly, tender!Hark! the appealing cryOf 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 tuneTo 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,Mischievous, 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 browHath driven the demon out.Surely the scented sleepThat crowns the equal warIs 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 sacrificeThis first-fruit flower of wineFor a vehicle of thy vice,As I am Thine to be mine.For five in the year gone byI pray Thee give to me one;A lover 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!

Origin: invocation-rituals.blogspot.com