The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Shadow-Eater, by Benjamin De Casseres
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
using this eBook.
Title: The Shadow-Eater
Author: Benjamin De Casseres
Release Date: May 02, 2021 [eBook #65232]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
Produced by: Charlene Taylor, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at
https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The Internet
Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHADOW-EATER ***
These Poems Are Dedicated to
CARLO DE FORNARO
Who Was the First to Understand, Appreciate and
Sympathize with Them
OF THIS FIRST EDITION OF SIX-HUNDRED AND
FIFTY COPIES OF “THE SHADOW-EATER” BY
BENJAMIN DE CASSERES ONE-HUNDRED AND
FIFTY COPIES HAVE BEEN PRINTED ON TUSCANY
HAND MADE PAPER AND SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR
THE
SHADOW-EATER
BY
Benjamin De Casseres
NEW YORK
WILMARTH PUBLISHING COMPANY
1917
Copyright, 1915
By ALBERT & CHARLES BONI
Copyright, 1917
Assigned to WILMARTH PUBLISHING COMPANY
CONTENTS
PAGE
The Protagonist 7
Tantara! Tantaro! 8
The Tongueless One 9
The Shrine in the Mist 10
My Comic Perspective 12
The Peeper 14
The Circle-That-Looks-Like-A-line 15
My Divine Hate 18
The Rotted Ideal 20
The Vision Malefic 21
Dying 22
The Dead Who Live 23
Exvolved 24
The God of Negation 25
Godward 26
Beyond Sense 27
The Cynic of Nazareth 28
De Profundis 29
On a Marriage 30
The Syncopated Spinner 31
Love and Sleep 32
The Watcher 33
Face to Face 34
My Shadows 35
The Vigil 36
The Closed Room 37
Half-Seen 38
The Long Vigil 39
Prophetic 40
Resurrection Night 41
Bird of the Night 42
The Cleft in the Wall 43
The Truant 45
Change and an Ending 46
The Quest in the Flesh 47
In the Adytum 49
The Way Out: BIO 50
Moth-Terror 51
My Holy Lust 52
The Overone 53
The Ultimate 54
The Sleeper 55
The Alleys of Eld 56
Love the Destroyer 57
Rejection 58
The Spear of the Great Spurning 59
THE PROTAGONIST
To Carlo de Fornaro.
Medusa! I go toward you smiling, serene; my will is granite to your
stare, and I have that within me which blows out the light of hells set
there within your eyes and turns to mottled stone the serpents on your
head.
I have woven of my pains a masque of bronze and the summits of my
deepest hells are changed into the impetuous lightnings of my will and
claws of steel have come to grow upon my mutilated members.
I have violated my own graves and set the skeletons of my selves at my
meal-less feasting board, and still found tender meat upon their bones,
and the marrow of their ancient griefs was as hippocrene to me.
Eternity! Infinity! I come toward thee swifter than a thought of death!
I come toward thee bulging like a woman in her ninth month!--bulging
with my hells, my devils, my Gethsemanes, booty of my sullen pride!
BENJAMIN DE CASSERES
TANTARA! TANTARO!
Death-lights on the scud and the baying of wind in the rigging, the hail
on my cheek--
Tantara! Tantaro!
The wheel in my hand is shattered by a bolt from On High, chart and compass
are lost in the coiling dun sea--
Tantara! Tantaro!
Scuttle me? Yea, scuttle me--I’ll bob up again, not in smooth waters but
there where the storm is the wildest--
Tantara! Tantaro!
Didst Thou think to awe me, me the unhallowed, the daring, the storm-cleaver,
the seeker in gutter and star?--
Tantara! Tantaro!
I am lashed to myself, to the iron mast of Necessity, and Thy scourgings
I use for my rivets--
Tantara! Tantaro!
Ballast and cargo and anchor, all have been jettisoned into Thy seas--
Tantara! Tantaro!
On! On! my soul through the storm, through the wrath and the terror of death--
Tantara! Tantaro!
THE TONGUELESS ONE
There stands that Mute into whose ear the ages have whispered their secrets--
There stands that Mute with lusting eye and lusting ear who uttereth naught--
Mute of a myriad secrets who knoweth whither we wend;
Mute of the graven face and the alabaster hands--
There before me stands that Mute whose earthly name is Death--
That Mute into whose monstrous ear all things are whispered but who UTTERETH
NAUGHT.
THE SHRINE IN THE MIST
I travel toward a Shrine that is set in a mist--long have I been on the
way.
I hear dull rasping whispers afloat on the night:
Are they spirits conferring, friendly to me and my journey, or the half-smothered
mockeries of the fiends that I know--that I know?--
They that sneer and pass on the winds in the night.
I travel toward a Shrine that is set in a mist--
By day I am beset by the beasts of my nethers and awed by the old bleached
adavers that strew the intricate alleys of vision.
I peer at you, O glutton, well-fed, nigger-hipped, bag-eyed; at you I am
peering,
And wonder whether the Shrine is hid in the mists of your belly--
Wondering whether the Truth be not a belch and a leer and a lusty young
wench.
And I peer at you, too, O Gautama, the purpled renunciant, great Shadow-Eater:
I peer at you there on the roadside, where you sit ’neath the Bo tree, motionless,
graven as death, solved in thy pulseless Nirvana--
Wondering whether the Shrine is hid in the mists of thy brain.
Am I mocked? Am I followed? Who goes there?
Hands off! thou Vile Thing!
Thou knowest not me nor the thing that I seek:
The Shrine that is set in a mist--over THERE, just BEYOND.
MY COMIC PERSPECTIVE
When a boy I was wrenched in a gin hidden in a garden of roses: thus am
I lame.
Later was slugged on the head by the Father of Lies--the Ideal:
But I laughed and hallooed, “Come, To-morrow!”
I have been bushwhacked by women, gnawed to the bone by a great ancient
lust:
All things I touched turned slime-green and black-hideous thoughts played
’round my night-pillow like rats ’round the new-dead:
But I laughed and hallooed, “Come, To-morrow!”
I used to say, “God?--why, that is myself!”
The world took me seriously, set me up for a savior:
But I laughed, doffed aureole, and hallooed, “Come, To-morrow!”
Then I donned horns and tail and cried, “Behold! I am Lucifer!”
So they stoned me till I looked like a shambles:
But I laughed and hallooed, “Come, To-morrow!”
I bought from a drab a filthy old handkerchief, exhibited it as the Veil
of Isis.
The popes of philosophy bowed down to me and mumbled “Eureka!”
But I laughed (for I knew) and hallooed, “Come, To-morrow!”
Well, here am I now, a butt-end, awaiting translation.
The world I have found a small box with endless false bottoms;
I have come to the tomb, a little clay box which, too, is false bottomed:
I call into it, laugh and halloo, “Come, TO-MORROW!”
THE PEEPER
I am an eavesdropper, a peeper, a cosmic footpad;
With my ear at the keyhole of Eternity I report what I hear in that beyond-room,
where IT works--
IT, the thwarter of me and of thee and of all things that savor of smut
and of ether--
Thwarts even itself in its huge imbecility: IT, the spirit of Law, the shadow
of thee and of me, the Great Blunted Purpose.
What I hear in the beyond-room, is it the illusions of dreams, the crackle
of burning brain-faggots, or the veritable IT at its experiments?--
Solving us, evoking us, tempting us out of the womb of the Naught into the
awareness called life.
Does IT use the dregs of me or the best of me?
Eternity: is it inhabited?
The imminent cycles, the durations dead, the secrets in them: are they in
ITS keeping?
Still, I listen, with my eye at the keyhole, and report;
For I know there are a Thwarter and one thwarted, a Nothing at war with
a Something, a gad and a writhe--
One who returns everlastingly, but who is never repeated in Time.
THE-CIRCLE-THAT-LOOKS-LIKE-A-LINE
I am the Watcher, and me nothing eludes.
I live behind the mask of things,
My breath is world-wither, and a chance shot from my eye-sockets confounds
the God of Illusions at Its imbecile pastimes.
I stand within Time’s crumbling walls and weave at Eternity’s looms the
Circle-that-looks-like-a-line.
I am leagued with the Sphinx, and her secretive mumblings I alone understand.
I am the footnote that explains that old undecipherable palimpsest called
Life,
And it is for me the drum beats--the deadly intoning drumbeats that the
mummer Man jigs to.
Briskly Man in his morn steps forth, guards up.
He bows, he smiles, and his eyes, foci of his myriad lusts, seek in the
dust for the thing that slipped, eel-like, through his fingers in the
yesterday.
At night, within his locked and barred room, his hope-fattened face dismantles.
His eyes grow knotted troubled lights, jaws sag--weary, oh, weary is he!
Pain! Pain! gay-pain! I watch, I record, in the Circle-that-looks-like-a-line!
Youth! Youth! how gay his step!
His soul scents Truth--he is off like a hound on the trail, white brow upturned,
the old ecstatic urge in his eye:
His hands would hook her now!
Up! Up! he reaches and steps off the precipice of the world.
A Hag bends over him, a Hag whose face is a lutescent leer, eyes steel-grayed
by a knowledge of the pitiless truths.
Eternity rings with her glee-shrieks as she gathers his bones--bones that
shall feed her quenchless immemorial fires in the nether hollows--
Hollows of the mocking shapes,
Hollows of metallic laughs,
Hollows of the wan gray spectres.
Pain! Pain! gay-pain! I watch, I record, in the Circle-that-looks-like-a-line!
Yea, I am the lidless, dispassionate Eye that pierces the murk and the mist--
My tears are a laughing,
My laughing a weeping--
I watch and I wait and record,
Brooding over my soul, that dried lava-stream and granary of volcanic dust;
Brooding over my brain, that mirror of the implacable trivial.
I am a shadow that is more real than a substance,
Am skewered and pinioned to offal--yet my soul is a
Kremlin of unapprehended magnificence,
The Vision Malefic and the Vision Beatific, too.
I live and am not, am the Infinite withered to naught.
I watch, I record, and I weave at Eternity’s looms
the Circle-that-looks-like-a-line.
MY DIVINE HATE
Ever-changing, ever-vanishing, an evocation from out the Mist, tottering
forever to a doom that is never pronounced,
I am the visible Invisible,
The eel that slips through God’s hands,
A dominoed Abstraction whose lineaments the most curious cannot discover,
Renascent over your head when you think I lie dead,
Intruder in Time, enclayed for a moment, flinty, brittle,
Flying the flag of Rebellion, chanting my hates and my dreams.
The world is the Temple of Pain grounded and mortised in lies--
And that which they have told you is good I say is maggoty with lies.
Hope is a whore and love is a lie and a flea has more for his labor than
a man, the wisest of whom is still earth’s awkward buffoon.
To-morrow is God--they have added a jot to Eternity!
Know they not to-day is Eternity and to-morrow its lewd, beckoning shadow?
And love they have sanctified because of its delicate tickle.
Pah! this rotten old breeding-patch circling the sun!
From the center to circumference, from nadir to zenith,
I, the eel that slips through the Great Bungler’s hands, survey and judge
and cannot be lured by these old temporal cozzeners.
Yea, forever I vanish, I change, yet forever stand firm,
Flying the flag of Rebellion from the Temple of Pain, knowing the Thing
that skulks in the adytum.
THE ROTTED IDEAL
Framed in ebon memories her picture hangs there upon the walls of my brain.
’Tis not the face I put there in my youth: that glorious youth of me, slain
by its lusts, bitten to death by the baby vampires that swarmed in its blood.
The lost woman of my soul! warm lips, black eyes--face that was a prism
of love shot through by the rays from some dumb despair--
Long has it vanished.
And the dust of my acts have gathered on that brow, and my sins have smitten
her cheeks to a pallor, and her eyes welter in two brackish tears--
Tears that have lain stagnant in those bony cups for a myriad soul-cycles.
I have wrought my own decay into that face: it has traveled the way of my
own dissolution.
Will it break on my brain-walls and streak all my rottenness anew?
And a spider has woven a web over and around the great frame of ebon and
the thin bladder of flesh that once was her face--
A leering, grinning spider has woven his web there,
A leering, grinning spider whose mouth sucks poison from her lips.
Lead on, hell-lights!
THE VISION MALEFIC
My soul is a tarn as black and motionless as the night above in which whirl
forever and ever the pallid balls of light that are my sickly dreams.
I am weaving a shroud for the God whom I hate--I have defied him and cursed
Him, and here is His winding-sheet.
I am lodged in my sins, and my soul is lean of its lusts.
The worm that gnaws at the breast of the maid new-dead--that is I,
And the bell that tolled her to rest--I am that toll.
My heart ventricles are like the bases of canyons untouched by the sun.
I am dried, bleached and blanched, lie stark in a great pestilent vapor,
And Time feeds at my brain like the vultures at the heart of Prometheus:
Who will shrive me and draw the lids over these eyes?
DYING
There he lies, his pale face fitfully waving a truce to Old Care,
Life flowing out from a million invisible rents in his soul,
To-morrow finally abolished.
To-night he still breathes,
To-morrow he’ll lie with the breathless,
Past the goal, uprendered, solved in black mist, domino doffed--no more.
O Life, thou plunderer,
Sly in thy cozzening, fell in thy lusts, weaver of nightmares, liar and
cheat,
Here is thy last mockery,
Here is thy quarry: hast signalled the worms even now?
Swift be thy flight, thou craven and satyr and old purpled lust!
THE DEAD WHO LIVE
Up from the nether world in unending procession,
Like the lurid mists at the dawn-time,
Like the black wraiths that ascend from foul crypts,
Arise and ever arise my impulses.
Across the field of consciousness they stalk, anhungered, lust-ravened,
lean of their ghastly dreams--
Thou devils of the gone-by!
EXVOLVED
I am the Spectre at the feasts of the strong men and sneer at their brag.
I listen where the weak wail and sneer at them, too, for their wail is old
Envy masked as Humility.
The strong shall be tricked out of their strength, I say, and knock at the
doors of the weak for a dole of black bread;
The weak shall become strong, I say, and burrow their way into the thrones
of the mighty.
The pieces are changed, the game is eternally the same.
Only I shall persist in an eternal likeness unto myself--
I, neutral, indifferent, sewed up in my silence, my soul the great menstruum
of contrasts, the Heel and the Worm.
THE GOD OF NEGATION
I have ascended to the topmost spaces and dragged the cars of the devildare
gods from their courses;
They saw me not, but felt me as a Presence that hurled them from the track.
I have in a wondrous Thought undermined the Milky Way and have sown the
orbits of the suns with dragons’ teeth uprooted from my rebellious soul:
Those eyes of gleaming fire saw me not, but felt me as a movement in the
Abyss.
I have numbed the arm of the blind old Artisan, and he shall die at my last
Epiphany:
He heard me not, but felt me as the great Destructive Presence.
GODWARD
God?--the sum of my tendencies, uttered, unuttered, definite, innate;
Me the individual, my special differentia--not thee, but me unevolved, guessing
at myself unegged; that is God if God there be.
Christ was the deepest, Napoleon was the deepest, he of Weimar was the deepest:
to be yourself, that is the deepest--
That is to be God.
Thou shalt love thyself more than thy neighbor.
Sound trumpet, thrust rapier, cleave unto thyself: self-ward we go, godhood
be ours!
Unique in all time is my unquotable self: God in the dungeon of me, fear-shackled,
thonged in the cords of the past.
Into the light at this moment, thou long-buried ONE; sternly, defiantly,
joyously, I lift Thee into the light!
Long hast thou lain in crypts, and thy eyes are still closed; mute is God’s
tongue, as silent as dreams.
Sound trumpet, thrust rapier, I cleave to myself, though spiked to a cross
and rabbled by Doubt!
BEYOND SENSE
My brain is the haunt of a naked Curiosity that has lured my soul across
the purple bars of sense, beyond the last outpost of Reason, where I
know not if I be I.
Lights quicken and wane, glooms thicken around me and break into lean and
hurrying Shapes--supraterrestrial phantoms, spectral norms of this world
and vague patterns of things not yet become.
Forest of branching selves, my various masks, my serio-comic souls, my antique,
half-remembered egos: are ye that?
And here I now stand peering tensely curious into the crater of Eternity,
seeking out Demiurge there in the depths,
When the truth flashes on me: I am but fume, spew, from that Depth--
I and thee, all, but fantastic smoke-shapes flitting above the crater of
Eternity;
And Demiurge, muttering, retreating, advancing there in the Depths, is but
the shadow of Me the Curious One.
THE CYNIC OF NAZARETH
The keenest Cynic of them all: Jesus Christ!
Hail! passionate rebel, great anarch of Nazareth, slitter of masks, announcer
of Self procreate from a self--
Halloo! Halloo! from me to thee.
Sombre in hate, clear-eyed, dawn-browed, a mock in thy soul,
A mock at psalter and sceptre and a sneer for the sickly old God in the
temples of stone--
Hail! Cynic and Mocker of Nazareth: greeting from me to thee!
DE PROFUNDIS
Night! Night! Eternal Night, whose black vapors have filled all the sluiceways
of Time--Night! ageless and void, seamless and bald:
Night upgurgling from chaos, upswirl of the noumenal seas, drape me and
veil me from the illusory lights of this world!
My being’s at nadir,
I pass into my solstice,
I have touched of ITS garment, the black thing IT weaves on ITS sentient
looms, ITS great blouse of black which encircles the world fold upon
fold--
While we crawl in ITS creases and guess.
Sit I in the night of ITS sleeve,
Withering into eternities,
Bowed in ITS night, in ITS night!
ON A MARRIAGE
I hear laughter and there is a feasting, and another marriage is made--
A conspiracy has been formed to accouch another being.
Thou child unborn that now resteth in eternal day, day that is neither light
nor dark;
Child that art yet uncreate and unwhipped of Pain,
In laughter and in feasting they have conspired against thy blissful sleep
There in the Unconscious,
There where thou art lapped and laved in non-being.
Hast thou heard the rumors from the lust-plane,
The guilty murmurings from the priest that made two beings incorporate?
Dost thou know thou art doomed to be born, to bear the cross and have the
nails of pain cleave thy temples?
O thou sweet dweller in the White Temple,
Baby! Baby! as yet a lustful dream in two human hearts!
Already thy white robes are stained by a tiny red mark--
Thou art doomed to enter the lazarhouse.
Baby! Baby! I hear thee in the night weeping and wailing ’gainst thy birth:
For another marriage is made.
THE SYNCOPATED SPINNER
Yon drowsing Spider that squats there upon Time’s rotting timbers spinning
her seven webs of a million threads, spinning and weaving from the birth
of the Primitive Cycle--
Her criss-crosses, her mazes and labyrinths that are called Eternal Laws
by the midges caught in the films
Spun by that drowsing Spider squat there upon Time’s rotting timbers:
Awake! thou great spinning demon, shake webs and midge-men into the Nothing,
and with the shade of a smirk that I know resume thy loathsome pastime
There squat upon Time’s rotting timbers!
LOVE AND SLEEP
I am a pale passionate Pilgrim evoked from the dust and the dark.
In my brain are the molten ivories of the dawn, in my heart the brooding
desire for thee.
Whispers of the purple hours to come, whispers of the white eternities past,
Draw me hither and thither and nowhither.
Ah me! shall I rest here a while on the chubby round earth or travel back
to the ivoried eternities?
Stand I thus at pause,
I, a pale passionate Pilgrim evoked from the dust and the dark.
THE WATCHER
Who are these shadows about me--my neighbors, my nearest, the jostler whom
I felt at my elbow?
I--I who have gazed into the eternities and can in a glance pierce the curtains
of Time,
Who have watched through this night the endless procession into being and
beyond that
(The cry in the womb, the release, the hasty scud across earth, the thud
in the Pit!);
The screams in the dark, seen in a vision the Wheel go around and around
and the writhing, pain-gutted images clinging to the blood-smeared spokes--
I--what have I to do with this black, seething Now and its shadows?
Surge around me, ye humans, ye water-gymnasts;
The tide’s running out, the present is ever-dissolving and the morn bringeth
death to ye all.
But I who plash in the eternal waters and stray to the pallid horizon
Will return on the day of your silence, the Same, ever the Same.
FACE TO FACE
It is well thou art hid, O Lord, and sittest with glued lips fast on thy
throne beyond the yellow disk of day.
Up from the slime I came, a Caliban blaspheming, leaning on crutch, superb
hate in my eye, peering through bramble and forest for THEE.
Aeons ago was I thus, and now I am here, still evolving, planted firmly
on two feet, almost at thy heels, not vexed, as cunning as thou,
O Lord of the vortices, fiend in the flux!
Linked to Prometheus, linked to great Lucifer, I’ll meet thee at the GREAT
CROSSWAYS and heal thee forever of the disease of creating.
MY SHADOWS
Yonder lies my way.
Yea, I have taken the road, and in a sleep, in a cycle, I returned to the
forks--
For all things are One, and beyond the One I cannot step.
The gad ever stings, and the Furies drive me forward--over suns, over flaming
chaotic foreworlds, to the hilt of creation;
But my thought is firm-set: illusive the flight, the return, the urge, the
reaction.
I move not.
Based in the One, squatted here at the forks where the grooves of Change
center,
I move not,
Adventure not forth,
Ran not that race over far-streaming worlds, nor danced on the cosmic pain-griddles.
’Twas my dominoed self,
An aspect of me, a shadow that travels forward and backward and upward and
downward on Time’s dirty screens.
What road shall I take when all things return unto me?--
I who move not on Time’s dirty screens, was not touched by the gad;
I who am here at the forks where the grooves of Change center,
Who am One and the All, am motion and rest.
THE VIGIL
Here in the naked primal night,
Here where the VEILED sits graven in silence in ITS garden of weeds,
Here where the NOTHING drowses and mutters of a SOMETHING to come;
Here where the fangs of my soul have fastened at last;
Here where through wild-steaming streams of passion and great shroud-like
dawns I have dragged my undying Desire--
Here, too, will I vigil with THEE through the glutted eternities--
Thou imbecile artisan, thou bungler, evader, rhetor and faun!
THE CLOSED ROOM
I am at the door of the Closed Room,
I stand without, whispering and chatting to myself, in many fantastic attitudes,
like gnomes that skulk in castle-moats.
There are finger-marks on the door-knob--
Many, many have gone in, no one ever came out.
Through chinks I hear vague rumors, or is it the echo of the blood in my
arteries?
And my eyes have spied, as I think, a light falling through cracks in the
wall, or is it only the reflection of brain-sparks on the polished wood?
I finger the old worn knob, but am not yet admitted.
HALF-SEEN
Out from the brake and stubble of sense I peered for a moment--
Wist! was that THEE that passed on the wind?
Once, too, I swam out beyond sight of all land and emerged on the crest
of the highest wave--
Wist! was that THEE that sped over the horizon?
I throttled one by one each image in my brain on a night when the north-wind
blew from the Zenith--
Wist! was that THEE that startled me into a body again?
Ride thou on the wind, or merge in all horizons, Image unimaged, escape
me Thou canst not, for I am the part that must make THEE whole at the
last--
At the last!
THE LONG VIGIL
Like sunlight, I touch all things, yet nothing do I gain;
I am neither richer nor poorer than I was at the beginning of things.
Passion, hope, pain, grief, leave me unchanged (I shed universes and moult
cycles).
To the eye of the world I am tossed like a cork on rough waters,
But I know I have stood Here since the Day of the Primal Appearance,
Transfixed in supreme wonder,
Rigid in pride, dissenting, unmoved.
PROPHETIC
Time lies cataleptic in my brain: Eternity alone reigns there.
Infinite space has shrunken to a single point of fire, from whose heart
radiate the trackless voids.
Life I have bosomed in a sigh.
I will exhale with the dawn, step lightly to my zenith, death in-wrapt.
RESURRECTION NIGHT
I slept, and out of their ancient tombs of tissue-plasm streamed a shadowy
host of Living Dead.
Gliding silently across the waxed and shining floor of my soul, they breathed
their breaths upon the emptièd mirror of my mind:
And Terror and Guilt captained that crew.
The subtle fingers of the dawn brushed my brow and my soul flowed back into
the sluiceways of the old familiar world;
But long I laid in wonder staring at the wall, for in that night I had again
become the Things I was before my birth.
And Terror and Guilt were old shapes of me.
BIRD OF THE NIGHT
O thou pinioned Thought, where wilt thou wing me to-night?
Dug from the marl and silt of my soul,
Breath of my delicate dreams,
Bird with the eyes of the circular fires sucked from the suns we have grazed
in our flight,
Cleaver of lightnings, warbler in the zenith of my passionate being,
Plumed and feathered for thy mystic spiral progressions,
Where wilt thou bear me this night?
THE CLEFT IN THE WALL
They pass through my brain and leave not a mark: cities and women and autumnal
skies.
I am related to nothing in the phenomenal flux,
The world-days are vain shapes of desire, a mist on my mirror, my mind--
My mind that reflects cities and women and autumnal skies,
Wrack of old Chaos, wrack of old Time.
My soul is a fountain that balances the ball of the visible cosmos;
I toss high, I toss hither and thither the whole universe, the hollow ball
of desire--
It is nothing to me, a sport, a day-dream, as meaningless as old death and
old birth,
Or cities and women and autumnal skies.
I travelled far with my pickaxe and spade and spied by chance a tiny cleft
in Time’s granite wall--
I called it the NOW;
And through it I peeped like a boy through a knot-hole,
Peeped into the Infinite, a sea no bigger than a dewdrop, placid and waveless
and spaceless.
(What Giant Shape lay therein, the opening and shutting of whose eyes gendered
immeasureable cycles?)
I passed through the cleft of the NOW with infinite labor, and dispersed
body and soul,
And cities and women and autumnal skies drift past my sight and leave me
untouched.
THE TRUANT
What was its mandate?
Where is the script IT placed in my hand?
Who sent me on this strange errand?
Or was it--No! No! too horrible!
And yet--and yet, how came I here?
In the immobile immensities, where renascence and decay and the plexed dream
called Life were still unsensed--
Before I aggregated,
Before I anealed into an I,
Before the first stratum of lust was laid,
Before the dispart from the ALL--
In the immobile immensities something was ordered of me;
I was sent on an errand!
Hey ho! I have dallied with mortals too long,
Yet I dare not return without the thing done.
Or was it--No! No! too horrible!
CHANGE AND AN ENDING
Glow, glow, thou yellow fire, mother of me--thou shalt reclaim me body and
soul.
Shine, shine, thou pulsing white eyes of the night--I shall quiver in thy
lights and be recompounded in thy crucibles of clay.
Moon! Moon! sick-yellowed in amorous need of life, shall I not be as thee--still,
cold and age-seamed?
Yea, in the whirl of the atoms and the swirl of great hidden forces I shall
be accouched in an uttermost star,
Builded anew in the dirt of a still unwombed world,
Speak, dream, languish and rot again and again,
Go the round of the infinite cycles till I spy, as by chance,
IT, the Cagliostro, the Worker, the kneader of mud-shapes,
Slay IT there where I meet IT, and lay me down, out of Space, out of Time,
certain of endless quiescence for me and for THEE.
THE QUEST IN THE FLESH
Here where the forces elemental circle me, caress me and touch my city-scattered
parts to a whole;
Here on the mount, ’neath a blue-burnished heaven and a passionate luring
sun, where the war of the wind with the leaves mocks at the strength we
have hid;
Here is the lesson to learn, here is the Teacher eternal, the war-lord of
Space, the parent of hate and of love.
Do I not hate with a love that’s intense?
Is not my soul strengthened in battle?
My brain is a duel of opposing forces, and the thing that I war against
is more precious to me than the tickle of grass or the ease that brings
degradation.
War! War!--bring me helmet and shield and the sword of the spirit; the great
weaponed SELF that I seek and that forever seeks me
Is shut in a tower of gold o’ergrown with weeds and the rank, poisonous
fungi of outworn selves,
And here, gripped in these forces elemental, I make a passionate compact
with my dumb, brutish instincts
To assail every live-dead thing that hinders my march to that tower of gold,
o’ergrown, untended, unkenned;
And there in the winds, in a fury of battle, deliver the SELF in the light
of the sun--
SELF that shall live to its uttermost transfigured instinct,
SELF that am God of all gods.
IN THE ADYTUM
The door is ajar--
The door of my soul swung on the hinges of doubt;
It is ever ajar and waits for a Caller--
A Caller, in the night, or the day--I know not the time that he cometh,
Oh whether he cometh at all.
I crouch in my being, implacable, receptive, the ears of my soul in rigid
prick,
Catching whiffs of the Verities borne from seas remote that mirror the catchpenny
world in its depths.
Sundered from all I sit,
To none abnegated,
Before my door standing ajar,
The door of my soul swung on the hinges of doubt.
What finger-marks these on the white knob of my door?
Narrow, black finger-prints, telltale of thinkers and ghosts,
Or maybe somnambules who have walked out of the world,
Or he, beloved of my soul: Has he called?--where loafed I then?
Who wills may enter,
But none have I seen--
Seen enter the door that’s ajar,
The door of my soul swung on the hinges of doubt.
THE WAY OUT: BIO.
Like a polished pearl hid in a pocket,
Like lighted tapirs set in the murk of a crypt,
Like the flicker of phosphor on dun seas,
Like a meteor athwart the heavens of Cimmeria--
So the Secret of my soul shines for me in this timeless Night.
MOTH-TERROR
I have killed the moth flying around my night-light; wingless and dead it
lies upon the floor.
(O who will kill the great Time-Moth that eats holes in my soul and that
burrows in and through my secretest veils!)
My will against its will, and no more will it fly at my night-light or be
hidden behind the curtains that swing in the winds.
(But O who will shatter the Change-Moth that leaves me in rags--tattered
old tapestries that swing in the winds that blow out of Chaos!)
Night-Moth, Change Moth, Time-Moth, eaters of dreams and of me!
MY HOLY LUST
The lust of the sailor for new lands, the lust of the boat new-launched
for the turbulent, foaming, sky-running waters--
Lust ever and ever I thus.
I stand in the ring of the earth and lust for the rings above and beyond
that widen into great monstrous nooses in the pits of azure and opal
till my glance is lost in the fire-capped zenith--
Lust with my eyes and my ears, lascivious of all things unguessed, all things
not conquered.
I lust for the Strength that runneth before and purge myself of the close-clinging,
stiffening muds of old custom, running the fine needle of my quickening
Desire through a million ephemeral nuclei,
Thrust to the core of each vanishing truth.
My lusts hold me taut and redeem me of pain, and I sigh and I sob and I
laugh in the ear of the LOVED ONE, spread on the winds, locked in the
blast, till she yield and diswomb her last secret--
She, my finality, target of lusts, peeping here, peeping there, ever lost,
ever gained--I come at her again and again on the arrows of Time.
THE OVERONE
The great GOD sleeps and dreams through Me,
And cycles run and cycles ebb and still IT blossoms in my brain
Or withers in my stoppages:
The God in chains, the Ghost in leash to Me!
O sleep is deep, and deeper still the unborn dream,
And under sleep there is a sleep where walks the great Noctambulist.
Bitten by the vermin host, stung by knout, gnawed by gad, IT flushes through
my arteries,
The rising God, the Coming One, the God that’s tethered in my brain.
THE ULTIMATE
I wait for THEE in vile places a little while and wait for THEE in high
places a long while.
In the bellies of my adders I make my way laboriously, and I am that high
look-out in the eye of the eagle lost in the azure infinities.
Thy Secret, O universe, I have willed to know; thou swift-hurrying, invisible
SPIRIT buried ’neath thy monstrous uncountable atoms--
Where will I fall flat upon THEE, weaving myself into THEE?
Flying to my remotest zeniths, diving far into the unplumbed Nothing, waddling
in these earth-muds, I seek THEE with my passionate intent Here and in the
mutable many Here-afters.
THE SLEEPER
My soul fell asleep, asleep in a great city, among the leering faces of
her millions;
The iron hoofs of many strange and monstrous animals ground their imprint
in my prescient white Self that lay stark and helpless on the highways
of the world:
O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!
The waves have gone over me and crawling things with fiery eyes have wriggled
onto the white throne where I ruled,
And the old seven deadly delights have kissed me each one and licked up
my strength with their smooth yellow tongues:
O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!
O the terror of sleep and of Me who am blotted, erased and spun into things
that are vile and grosser than compost,
And the long death of Me that drank of this hemlock of earth that brings
not the death that is surcease--only a death of vile dreaming, a lapsing
without a forgetting:
O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!
Out of their crypts stalk my elder old selves, and whilst I stare with the
impotent eye set in the head of the dead they drive in the little brass
rivets of habit to the core of my being:
O my Soul, my Soul, awake thou!
THE ALLEYS OF ELD
Night and the Sea and the depths of Despair!
The gulfs of Time, the moaning of wastrel souls, the ullulation of fiends
in the brackish currents of Change:
I heard with an myriad Ear, and was withered and worn and wrenched in the
screws.
How came I into the Alleys of Eld?
Endless doors were closing behind me--I could not go back, the slams were
decisive, I heard ITS skeleton-key turn in each lock, and peering back,
I looked into its eyes, sinister as Time’s face, brooding upon me--
As I hurried down the Alleys of Eld.
A sudden emergence here on this shore, my brain still gimletted with the
memory of those eyes, my ears still pricked with the click! click! of
ITS skeleton-key--
Emerged! ah! the Night and the Sea and the depths of Despair and the memory
of IT!--
Emerged from the Alleys of Eld!
LOVE THE DESTROYER
I reject Love--
Love and its sibillant, low-murmured lies, sweet sting of fair bodies, old
meat of old Death.
The boom of the red sea of lust rings dull in my ear--I have seen the waves
go over many; dead, dead forever they lie in the steaming hot currents that
bubble up from the mud-beds.
I reject Love--
Love that has strewn millions of Me along the path I upclomb, shredded my
flesh with its claws and burnt out my brains in its long searing clutch.
Through that ageless black night, with my earth-itch fair full upon me,
once my Eye was stabbed by a bolt from the fulgurant Light and my soul
pined away from its love and grew strong in its terrible Nay.
I reject Love--
Love that accouched every star in the blue, that with knout of Desire sends
the young worlds grunting round and round the senescent, suns.
I hear swash and lave of the unimagined fulgurant Light, burning sure and
serene at the Axis of things--soft swash and soft lave wrought in the
great Mnemonic Cell-Soul of me!
REJECTION
The wafir of Time I have bitten--sweet it was not.
Each tapir of thought stood at flare in my soul--and I saw only the density
of the gloom.
My soul has fumed at the lips of Thy women.
(Pah! ’twas a fool’s trick to try to seduce me the HUNTER OF THEE.)
Effort, emotion, thought, dream, lust--what have these for me?
I came to judge of Thy works, not to dance to Thy pipings.
* * * * *
Thou canst not stanch the woe that is mine,
Thou canst not bribe to sleep my Everlasting Nay.
Godlike am I in Thy presence,
As weary as Change, and as young;
A mendicant rebel, a Presage, a rejecter,
A contriver of strange things, unbegotten, eternal!
* * * * *
An abattoir hid in a garden of roses--
Such is Thy universe:
Thus do I judge.
THE SPEAR OF THE GREAT SPURNING
Upreared in the night, pallid-gray ’gainst the moon, towers she they call
Astoreth, goddess of flesh and of worms, older than all years, younger
than Love.
Alone I stand in that desert in that dead of the night with the Spear of
the Great Spurning, tipped with the poison of an Ageless Thought, leveled
straight at her dugs.
Pallid-gray! Pallid-gray! ’gainst the moon, sick is young Astoreth, who
saw me grow from cycle to cycle--
Astoreth pales ’gainst the moon at the vision of him who will not suck at
her dugs.
Drive well, O Spear of the Great Spurning--drive well at the Mother of Life,
who rowels our flesh--goddess of flesh and of worms!
Drive well, O Spear, tinct with my Thought!--with her fall comes the Great
Manumission, and nothing else shall be save the beat of my Thought in the
Void.
NEW YORK CITY, 1902-1906.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHADOW-EATER ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the
United States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away--you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
provided that:
* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation."
* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
works.
* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
www.gutenberg.org
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation's website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without
widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
