The Book of Jade quotes

I am a little tired of all things mortal;

I see through half-shut eyelids languorous The old monotonous Gold sun set slowly through the western portal, Where I recline upon my deep dîwân, In Ispahân.

It is not that thy face is fair As dying sunsets are, Nor that thy lovely eyelids wear The splendour of a star;

’Tis the deep sadness of thine eyes Hath my heart captive led, And that within thy soul I prize The calmness of the dead.

O holy love, O fair white face, O sweet lost soul of thine! Thy bosom is an altar-place, Thy kisses holy wine; Sweet incense offer’d for my bliss Is thy corrupted breath, And on thy stained lips I kiss The holy lips of Death!

—We were, O pallid maiden vesperal, Before the world; we also in our turn By the vain morning gold scatter’d away.

I love all sombre and autumnal things,

Regal and mournful and funereal, Things strange and curious and majestical, Whereto a solemn savor of death clings:

But I said only—I have dream’d of you.

Naught really is; all things are very old, And very foolish. Please to go away.

All the authors that there are bore Me; All the philosophies bore Me; All the statues and all the temples bore Me;

Tired Muse, put faded roses on thy brow, Put thy bare arms about the harp, and sing: —

I am a little bor’d with everything.

Past the clos’d jalousies the mlengkas go;

Before despis’d old age comes over us, Let us step into the great world ere long.

We shall be very grand in the great world!

They come and go, they pass before my soul, Desire and Love, weak Anguish and Distress, Shame and Despair: in phantom crowds they press, Life’s poor processional, Time’s lowly dole.

I love you more than Death: your mournful head, Your shrouding hair, and your unfathom’d eyes, And your white body beautiful, alas, Priestess and victim in love’s holy mass … Your flesh that loves, and loving ever dies …

I could not love you more if you were dead.

Death is death; the little host that squirms, The smell, the dark, the coffin clos’d, and I So soft, so soft; no movement, and no breath; No ears, no nose, no eyeballs; Death is Death; The sepulchre, no sight, no sound, no cry, And always;

no movement, and no breath; No ears, no nose, no eyeballs; Death is Death; The sepulchre, no sight, no sound, no cry, And always; Death is Death; the worms! the worms

Not for your evil is my spirit sad⁠— I mourn because you are not really bad;

Because your beauty’s perfect cruelty Is ever marr’d with pity and distress, And you still show within your wickedness The poor stale weakness of humanity.

Sharp swords, bright lightnings, orient opium?— All these, brave souls, are of one sanctity;

All ways are good whereby ye pass to God.

It is not that I have not sought thy face Ceaselessly through the world’s eternal lie, More than all things and throughout every place, Which having seen I were content to die.

Here with mine Anguish, my Sorrow, my Madness, my Grief, I sit quaffing Wine, in high state in my echoing hall. This is the last night I drink with you, maniac wassailers dreary! Lift up your goblets and drink ere I go!

Lo, I am easily bor’d, I am easily tired and made weary; Now at the last I am weary of Woe.

Lo, I that walk in the flower crown’d season of youthfulness golden, Think ye that all things my gladness can slay? Sorrow is fitting for dotards and them that are loathsome and olden; I am as one that goes ever away.