FOR THE SEXES: THE GATES OF PARADISE
(1793-1818)
FRONTISPIECE
WHAT IS MAN?
The Sun’s Light when he unfolds it
Depends on the Organ that beholds it.
[PROLOGUE]
Mutual Forgiveness of each Vice,
Such are the Gates of Paradise.
Against the Accuser’s chief desire,
Who walk’d among the Stones of Fire,
Jehovah’s Finger Wrote the Law:
Then Wept! then rose in Zeal & Awe,
And the Dead Corpse from Sinai’s heat
Buried beneath his Mercy Seat.
O Christians, Christians! tell me Why
You rear it on your Altars high.
I found him beneath a Tree.
WATER
Thou Waterest him with Tears:
EARTH
He struggles into Life
AIR
On Cloudy Doubts & Reasoning Cares
FIRE
That end in endless Strife.
At length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell.
What are these? ALAS! the Female Martyr, Is She also the Divine Image?
MY SON! MY SON!
I WANT! I WANT!
HELP! HELP!
AGED IGNORANCE Perceptive Organs closed, their Objects close.
Does thy God, O Priest, take such vengeance as this?
Fear & Hope are—Vision.
The Traveller hasteth in the Evening.
DEATH’S DOOR
I have said to the Worm:
Thou art my Mother & my sister.
THE KEYS
The Catterpiller on the Leaf
Reminds thee of thy Mother’s Grief.
OF THE GATES
1 My Eternal Man set in Repose,
The Female from his darkness rose
And she found me beneath a Tree,
A Mandrake, & in her Veil hid me.
Serpent Reasonings us entice
Of Good & Evil, Virtue & Vice.
2 Doubt Self Jealous, Wat’ry folly,
3 Struggling thro’ Earth’s Melancholy.
4 Naked in Air, in Shame & Fear,
5 Blind in Fire with shield & spear,
Two Horn’d Reasoning, Cloven Fiction,
In Doubt, which is Self contradiction,
A dark Hermaphrodite We stood,
Rational Truth, Root of Evil & Good.
Round me flew the Flaming Sword;
Round her snowy Whirlwinds roar’d,
Freezing her Veil, the Mundane Shell.
61 rent the Veil where the Dead dwell:
When weary Man enters his Cave
He meets his Saviour in the Grave.
Some find a Female Garment there,
And some a Male, woven with care,
Lest the Sexual Garments sweet
Should grow a devouring Winding sheet.
7 One Dies! Alas! the Living & Dead,
One is slain & One is fled.
8 In Vain-glory hatcht & nurst,
By double Spectres Self Accurst,
My Son! my Son! thou treatest me
But as I have instructed thee.
9 On the shadows of the Moon
Climbing thro’ Night’s highest noon.
10 In Time’s Ocean falling drown’d.
In Aged Ignorance profound,
11 Holy & cold, I clip’d the Wings
Of all Sublunary Things,
12 And in depths of my Dungeons
Closed the Father & the Sons.
13 But when once I did descry
The Immortal Man that cannot Die,
14 Thro’ evening shades I haste away
To close the Labours of my Day.
15 The Door of Death I open found
And the Worm Weaving in the Ground:
16 Thou’rt my Mother from the Womb,
Wife, Sister, Daughter, to the Tomb,
Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife
And weeping over the Web of Life.
TO THE ACCUSER WHO IS THE GOD OF THIS WORLD
Truly, My Satan, thou art but a Dunce,
And dost not know the Garment from the Man.
Every Harlot was a Virgin once,
Nor can’st thou ever change Kate into Nan.
Tho’ thou art Worship’d by the Names Divine
Of Jesus & Jehovah, thou art still
The Son of Mom in weary Night’s decline,
The lost Traveller’s Dream under the Hill.
