Little Poems in Prose

wilderness, whence it can only return charioted by the horses of Apollo and the lions of Deme- ter, or where it must for ever wander tortured and cast out, uttering ever the hyaena cry of madness, and making its rare meal upon the carrion of the damned. This yearning has made all the saints and all the sinners; it severs man from his fellows, and sets his feet upon a lonely road, where God and Satan alone, no lesser souls, com- mune with it. This yearning is the mother of all artists; in Baudelaire it reaches its highest and most con- scious expression. It is for this reason that I tremble and weep, being as it were the bearer of his ashes into those smug lands where the noblest of al languages is prostituted to no other uses than those of gluttony, snobbery and greed. The condition of England and America to- day makes it a profanation to translate Baude- laire; yet such is his virtue, and such the in- nate virtue of humanity, that if this volume only fall into the hands of the young, it may produce a crop of saints and artists even in those barren fields. ALEISTER CROWLEY.