Edward Carpenter
Continuing the vaguely literary theme, I sast reading Edward Carpenter's Toeards Democracy this morning. There is some truly exquisite poetry in this book.

Carpenter himself is quite an interesting guy. Living 1844-1929, he was ordained, then left the Church and became a sort of proto-communist; in 1880 he accepted his own homosexuality and, believing sexual orientation to be innate and unsinful became a great campaigner for sexual freedom. He was also a pacifist and his poetry is heavily mystical. Additionally, he wrote Pagan and Christian Creeds which many people reading this will find interesting.


O Thou Whose Form

O Thou whose form is ever in my heart,
O flesh that holds me pent with terrible force,
Dear limbs and lips that seize upon my life
And in your fire consume it - O sweet love:
Lo all I see -
The clear and sunny hills, the woods, the streams,
The orchards, fields, the lines of poplars tall,
The belfried towns, the river at my feet,
The great blue sky, yea He who stands behind it -
Are mine for thee, to lose themselves in thee.

After Long Ages
(Prologue)

Tired child, on thy way to Paradise:

Does the path seem long? Rest here and let us beguile a few moments.
Rest here, in mortal form Thou that I see advancing - Child of sin and sorrow and suffering rest close here.

Hast thou heard faintly between the clouds in the ever-lasting blue the music of voices and of wings? Hast thou gazed deep into the eyes of the animals?
Hast thou silent in the great secret caverns of thy own heart heard the awful footsteps of thy Lover advancing?
Be at peace. Fear not. Behold, thou shalt conquer all evil.
Clouds of gloom shall wrap thy soul; the long days without grace shall weary thee; the voice of whom thou lovest shall speak to thee as of old no more.
Be at peace. Fear not. Behold, thou shalt conquer all evil.

Turn, lift up thine eyelids, to me, beautiful one; clear away the shadows of thy lashes from those liquid deeps;
Turn full-orbed thy gaze against mine. Fear not. Serene, serene as heaven is all that is between us.
Who is it that I see sitting at her lattice window - far down those liquid deeps?
Who is it the voice of whose singing comes borne to me like the sound of a voice across the far sea?
What is this figure, dear child, that I see moving so mysteriously in those depths -
Vague outline, hinted, as of one moving behind a curtain?

Lo! The caged one, the solitary prisoner feelign about the walls of her prison!
Lo, the baffled beaten and wary soul! Lo, the crowned and immortal god!


As to You, O Moon

As to you, O Moon -
I know very well that when the astronomers look at you through their telescopes they see only an aged and wrinkled body;
But though they measure your wrinkles never so carefully they do not see you personal and close -
As you disclosed yourself among the chimney-tops last night to the eyes of a child,
When you thought no-one was looking.

Gustily ran the wind down the bare comfortless street, the clouds flew in long wild streamers across your face, the few still on foot were hurrying homewards -
When, as between the wisps of rain O moon you shone out wonderfully bare and bright,
Lo! far down in the face of a boy I saw you.

Dashed with rain, wet with tears,
Stopping suddenly to lean his head against a wall, caught by your look -
The pale smudged face, the tense glittering eyes, never swerving a moment,
The curls fringing his dirty cap, the rare pale light of wonder and of suffering:
Yes, far down, as in a liquid pool in the woods, centuries down under the surface, as I passed I distinctly saw you.

I should like to know what you were doing there,
You old moon with your magic down in that boy's soul so powerfully working.
While all the time the appearance of you was journeying up in the sky.
I should like to know how many thousands and thousands you have looked at like that, so quietly and calmly and deceptively:
Why, the reflected light is in their eyes yet - pale sleepless maidens looking out from ivied casements, choral processions winding upwards at dusk to the groves of Ashtoreth, cave-dwellers ages ago sitting at the mouths of their caves - I see the glitter of sparkles as from an immense ocean.

You are an artful old (heavenly) body!
One might almost think that there really was nothing behind those wrinkles,
And that the effluences of gravitation and magnetis which the astronomers think so much of were really the last word to be said about you - as a child might know an elderly dame by the camphor bag which she carried in her pocket, and nothing more.
Yet I fancy that as you jog along round the earth you take very good note in your quiet way of the limpid faces looking up at you, peering deep - centuries down - into each;
I fancy that you are not ill-pleased to pass as you do for a harmless old lady - plucking thus with less hindrance the flowers that you love;
I fncy that somewhere among the niches and chasms of those rugged craters you surely treasure them up, sacred and faithful, against a day we dream little of;
Anyhow I see plainly that like all created things you do not yield yourself up as to what you are at the first or the thousandth onset,
And that the scientific people for all their telescopes know as little about you as anyone -
Perhaps less than most.

How curious the mystery of creation, the juggle of open daylight! and all things conspirators to that end!
Lo! The quiet moon in the sky - yet to a child it has told its secret.

Lucifer

Seest thou me pass - swift with my angels out of heaven propelled -
All stars and lightning in a fluid train?
Seest thou me pass, I say?

His brows, the Lord's, in heaven are glorious;
His eyes give light there, fashioning and beholding rapt all forms divine;
His mighty loins are plunged in night and shadow.

And I -
I am the lightning of the generations through them,
Seed of the worlds to be.

He is the Lord, in moment of creation, fixed everlasting,
The Universe entire - or litle flower starred in ecstasy;
And I, orgasmic, fierce, His swift deliverance.

Seest thou me pass -
All stars and lightning in a fluid train?
From heaven down into chaos seest thou me pass, I say?