ADVERTISEMENTS.
SONGS OF THE SPIRIT.” By ALEISTER
CROWLEY. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner
&Co. Price 3s. 6a.
“ Mr. Aleister Crowley (‘Songs of the Spirit’) has a remark-
able mastery of form:
‘ Like snows on the mountain, unlifted
By weather or wind as it blows,
In hollows the heaps of it drifted,
The splendour of fathomless snows;
So measure and meaning are shifted
To fashion a rose.’
It is the very sound of Mr. Swinburne; and the whole book is
full of it. But Mr. Crowley seems to have it by nature; his
style would have been as it is supposing Mr. Swinburne had
never written; at any rate, that is suggested by the ease and
fluency of the measure.”—Mr. John Davidson in The Speaker.
‘In the epilogue to his ‘Songs of the Spirit’ Mr. Crowley
tells us that
‘The garland I madein my SOrrow
Was woven of infinite peace,’
and he prays that ‘for an hour Let my rhyme be not wholly
unsweet.’ Nor shall it be, seeing how rich and melodious are
many of his poems, besides being full of powerful and original
thought. Their tendency
is that of the occult philosophy, of a
wild and lurid colouring enough it may be, but in no instance
devoid of the marks of a true poetic imagination.”—The Book-
seller.
* A volume of very unequal verse. ‘There are exquisite stanzas
here and there, and as a whole, the bookis above the average,
but there are many poor pieces and many faults.” —-7e Bookman.
* “¢Songsof the Spirit’ proves that Mr. Aleister
r Crowley has
read his Swinburne.
* Like snows on the mountain, unlifted
By weather or wind as it blows,
In hollows the heaps of it drifted,
The splendour of fathomless snows;
So measure and meaning are shifted to fashion a rose.’
I