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I
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My God, how I love Thee!
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With the vehement appetite of a beast I hunt Thee through the Universe.
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Thou art standing as it were upon a pinnacle at the edge of some fortified city. I am a white bird, and perch upon Thee.
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Thou art My Lover: I see Thee as a nymph with her white limbs stretched by the spring.
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She lies upon the moss; there is none other but she:
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Art Thou not Pan?
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I am He. Speak not, O my God! Let the work be accomplished in silence.
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Let my cry of pain be crystallized into a little white fawn to run away into the forest!
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Thou art a centaur, O my God, from the violet-blossoms that crown Thee to the hoofs of the horse.
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Thou art harder than tempered steel; there is no diamond beside Thee.
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Did I not yield this body and soul?
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I woo thee with a dagger drawn across my throat.
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Let the spout of blood quench Thy blood-thirst, O my God!
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Thou art a little white rabbit in the burrow Night.
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I am greater than the fox and the hole.
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Give me Thy kisses, O Lord God!
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The lightning came and licked up the little flock of sheep.
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There is a tongue and a flame; I see that trident walking over the sea.
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A phoenix hath it for its head; below are two prongs. They spear the wicked.
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I will spear Thee, O Thou little grey god, unless Thou beware!
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From the grey to the gold; from the gold to that which is beyond the gold of Ophir.
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My God! but I love Thee!
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Why hast Thou whispered so ambiguous things? Wast Thou afraid, O goat-hoofed One, O horned One, O pillar of lightning?
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From the lightning fall pearls; from the pearls black specks of nothing.
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I based all on one, one on naught.
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Afloat in the aether, O my God, my God!
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O Thou great hooded sun of glory, cut off these eyelids!
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Nature shall die out; she hideth me, closing mine eyelids with fear, she hideth me from My destruction, O Thou open eye.
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O ever-weeping One!
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Not Isis my mother, nor Osiris my self; but the incestuous Horus given over to Typhon, so may I be!
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There thought; and thought is evil.
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Pan! Pan! Io Pan! it is enough.
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Fall not into death, O my soul! Think that death is the bed into which you are falling!
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O how I love Thee, O my God! Especially is there a vehement parallel light from infinity, vilely diffracted in the haze of this mind.
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I love Thee. I love Thee. I love Thee.
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Thou art a beautiful thing whiter than a woman in the column of this vibration.
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I shoot up vertically like an arrow, and become that Above.
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But it is death, and the flame of the pyre.
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Ascend in the flame of the pyre, O my soul! Thy God is like the cold emptiness of the utmost heaven, into which thou radiatest thy little light.
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When Thou shall know me, O empty God, my flame shall utterly expire in Thy great N. O. X.
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What shalt Thou be, my God, when I have ceased to love Thee?
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A worm, a nothing, a niddering knave!
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But Oh! I love Thee.
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I have thrown a million flowers from the basket of the Beyond at Thy feet, I have anointed Thee and Thy Staff with oil and blood and kisses.
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I have kindled Thy marble into life - ay! into death.
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I have been smitten with the reek of Thy mouth, that drinketh never wine but life.
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How the dew of the Universe whitens the lips!
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Ah! trickling flow of the stars of the mother Supernal, begone!
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I Am She that should come, the Virgin of all men.
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I am a boy before Thee, O Thou satyr God.
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Thou wilt inflict the punishment of pleasure - Now! Now! Now!
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Io Pan! Io Pan! I love Thee. I love Thee.
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O my God, spare me!
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Now! It is done! Death.
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I cried aloud the word - and it was a mighty spell to bind the Invisible, an enchantment to unbind the bound; yea, to unbind the bound.
