Jephthah and Other Mysteries

And see the faint few stars immaculate Watch their own beauty in its depth, and chill Their own desire within its icy stream. Let me move on with vacant eyes, as one Lost in the labyrinth of some ill dream, Move and move on, and never see the sun Lap all the mist with orange and red gold, row some lank windmill into iron shade, And stir the chill canal with manifold Lays of clear morning ; never grow afraid When he dips down beyond the far flat land, Know never more the day and night apart, . Know not where frost has laid his iron hand, Save only that it fastens on my heart ; Save only that it grips with icy fire These veins no fire of hell could satiate; Save only that it quenches this desire. Let me pass out beyond the city gate.’ © We should like to give other examples, but we can only name some of those pieces that seem to us the most remarkable. Such are ‘An II] Dream,’ of which the glowing imagery seizes and holds fast the vagueness of shifting impressions; a ‘ Farewell of Paracelsus to Aprile,’ containing some fine lyric flights; ‘ The Initiation,’ and ‘Succubus,’ a record of fearful obsessions in a metre which, in spite of a few unaccountable lapses, we think extremely effective.”—7he Manchester Guardian. “Mr. Crowley (who should drop the dreadful fore-name with which he has been afflicted) sings always melodiously, if not always intelligibly and sometimes nonsensically. There is too much of the cant of a contest between earthly and heavenly love in his pages. Why any such contest? Cannot the rose and the lily bloom side by side? A book of wandering cries such as this - we cannot regard as of much significance. But we may hope that the author's indubitable singing power may gain an assured note with his further development. We would advise him to be less introspective and subjective and more objective and dramatic, to seek less to express directly his own thoughts than to present man and world in the light of his thoughts. This Spenserian stanza is not unworthy of the author of ‘ Adonais’: ‘So I press on, fresh strength from day to day Girds up my loins and beckons me on high, So I depart upon the desert way, So I strive ever toward the copper sky, With lips burnt black, and blind in either eye. 3