Written by
Alphonse de Lamartine |
Towards new and different shores forever driven onward,
Through endless darkness always borne away,
Upon the sea of time can we not lie at anchor
For but a single day?
Oh lake, the year has scarce run once more round its track,
And by these waves she had to see again,
Look! I have come alone to sit upon this rock
You saw her sit on then.
Beneath those towering cliffs, your waters murmur still,
And on their ragged flanks, your waves still beat,
The wind still flings those drops of spray, that last year fell
On her beloved feet.
Do you recall that evening, when we sailed in silence?
Upon your waters a great stillness held;
The only sounds were those of oars that struck in cadence
Your harmonious swells.
Then suddenly, accents that from the earth have perished
Made echoes ring from your enchanted shores.
The waters paid attention, and the voice I cherished
Gave utterance to these words:
“I beg you, sublime hours, pause in your headlong flight,
And time, suspend your race;
Allow us to savor the fugitive delights
Of our happiest days.
“So many souls down here in agony implore you
‘Fly fast!’ For them, flow on.
Carry off with their days their worry and their sorrow;
Forget the happy ones.
“Just a few more moments, I ask — in vain, for time
Eludes me and takes flight.
I tell the night to pass more slowly, and dawn comes
To chase away the night.
“Then let us love! Then let us fill each fleeting hour
With joy and ecstasy!
Man does not have a port; time does not have a shore.
It passes, and so do we.”
O jealous time, why do those moments of drunkenness
Where love flows over us in joyful waves
Have to fly far away from us at the same pace
As our unhappy days?
What? Can we not retain of them at least some trace?
What? Vanished as though they had never been?
Time, that gave them to us, and then took them away,
Won’t bring them back again.
Eternity, unbeing, dim past, profound abyss,
What do you do with the days that you engulf?
Tell me, will you ever return those hours of bliss
That you have stolen from us?
O lake, mute rocks, thick rushes, hidden caves, dark forest,
You whom time spares or can rejuvenate,
Beautiful nature, keep forevermore at least
The memory of that night.
Let it be in your slumber, and in your fierce storm,
And in the features of your laughing banks,
And in those dense black firs, and in that wild scarp
That above your shoreline hangs.
Let it be in the sounds that echo from your borders,
In the fine spray your waves throw to the wind,
And in the silver star that shines upon your waters
And in their depths is twinned.
Oh, may the plangent breeze, the softly sighing reeds,
The balmy fragrance of the air above,
May everything one sees, one hears, one feels, one breathes,
May all proclaim: they loved!
Translated by Peter Shor
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Written by
Aleister Crowley |
Lo! I lament. Fallen is the sixfold Star:
Slain is Asar.
O twinned with me in the womb of Night!
O son of my bowels to the Lord of Light!
O man of mine that hast covered me
From the shame of my virginity!
Where art thou? Is it not Apep thy brother,
The snake in my womb that am thy mother,
That hath slain thee by violence girt with guile,
And scattered thy limbs on the Nile?
Lo! I lament. I have forged a whirling Star:
I seek Asar.
O Nepti, sister! Arise in the dusk
From thy chamber of mystery and musk!
Come with me, though weary the way,
To bring back his life to the rended clay!
See! are not these the hands that wove
Delight, and these the arms that strove
With me? And these the feet, the thighs
That were lovely in mine eyes?
Lo! IO lament. I gather in my car
Thine head, Asar.
And this -is this not the trunk he rended?
But -oh! oh! oh! -the task transcended,
Where is the holy idol that stood
For the god of thy queen's beatitude?
Here is the tent -but where is the pole?
Here is the body -but where is the soul?
Nepti, sister, the work is undone
For lack of the needed One!
Lo! I lament. There is no god so far
As mine Asar!
There is no hope, none, in the corpse, in the tomb.
But these -what are these that war in my womb?
There is vengeance and triumph at last of Maat
In Ra-Hoor-Khut and in Hoor-pa-Kraat!
Twins they shall rise; being twins they are one,
The Lord of the Sword and the Son of the Sun!
Silence, coeval colleague of the Voice,
The plumes of Amoun -rejoice!
Lo! I rejoice. I heal the sanguine scar
Of slain Asar.
I was the Past, Nature the Mother.
He was the Present, Man my brother.
Look to the Future, the Child -oh paean
The Child that is crowned in the Lion-Aeon!
The sea-dawns surge an billow and break
Beneath the scourge of the Star and the Snake.
To my lord I have borne in my womb deep-vaulted
This babe for ever exalted.
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