Ode To Hecate:
O triple form of darkness! Sombre splendour!
Thou moon unseen of men! Thou huntress dread!
Thou crownèd demon of the crownless dead!
O breasts of blood, too bitter and too tender!
Unseen of gentle spring,
Let me the offering
Bring to thy shrine’s sepulchral glittering!
I slay the swart beast! I bestow the bloom
Sown in the dusk, and gathered in the gloom
Under the waning moon,
At midnight hardly lightening the East;
And the black lamb from the black ewe’s dead womb
I bring, and stir the slow infernal tune
Fit for thy chosen priest.
Here where the band of Ocean breaks the road
Black-trodden, deeply-stooping, to the abyss,
I shall salute thee with the nameless kiss
Pronounced toward the uttermost abode
Of thy supreme desire.
I shall illume the fire
Whence thy wild stryges shall obey the lyre,
When thy Lemurs shall gather and spring round,
Girdling me in the sad funereal ground
With faces turnèd back,
My face averted! I shall consummate
The awful act of worship, O renowned
Fear upon earth, and fear in hell, and black
Fear in the sky beyond Fate!
I hear the whining of thy wolves! I hear
The howling of the hounds about thy form,
Who comest in the terror of thy storm,
And night falls faster, ere thine eyes appear
Glittering through the mist.
O face of woman unkissed
Save by the dead whose love is taken ere they wist!
Thee, thee I call! O dire one! O divine!
I, the sole mortal, seek thy deadly shrine,
Pour the dark stream of blood,
A sleepy and reluctant river
Even as thou drawest, with thine eyes on mine,
To me across the sense-bewildering flood
That holds my soul for ever!
-Crowley, Orpheus