Collected Works (Vol. I)

THE TRIUMPH OF MAN 107 Wave in the sunbright air, whose lips of flame Chant the almighty music of One Name Whose perfume fills the silent atmosphere, Whose passionate melodies caress the ear ; An angel, strong and eloquent, aloud Cries lo the earth to lift the final shroud, And, having burst Faith’s coffin, to lay by The winding-sheet of Infidelity, And rise up naked, as a god, to hear This message from the reawakened sphere ; Words with love clothed, with life immortal shod :— ‘* Mankind is made a little part of God.” ! Till the response, full chorus of the earth, Flash through the splendid portals of re- birth, Completing Truth in its amazing span :— ‘** Godhead is made the Spirit that is Man.” To whose white mountains, and their arduous ways, Turn we our purpose, till the faith that slays Yield up its place to faith that gives us life, The faith to conquer in the higher strife ; Our single purpose, and sublime intent, With their spilt blood to seal our sacra- ment, Who stand among Light ; Our single purpose, by incarnate might Begotten after travail unto death, To live within the light that quickeneth ; To tread base thoughts as our high thoughts have trod, Deep in the dust, the carrion that was God; Conquer our hatreds as the dawn of love Conquered that fiend whose ruinous throne above Broke lofty spirits once, now falls with Fate, At last through his own violence violate ; the martyrs 1 z7.e. the idea of God, dissociated from the legends of priests, and assimilated to the impersonal Parabrahma of the Hindu. This dual use of the word is common throughout Crowley: the context is everywhere sufficient to decide. In the play ‘‘ Jephthah,” however, conventional ideas are followed. of the To live in life, breathe freedom with cach breath, As God breathed death ; Secure the sacred fastness of the soul, Uniting self to the absolute, the whole, The universal marnage of mankind, Free, perfect, broken from the chains that bind, Force infinite, love pure, desire untold, And mutual raptures of the age of gold, The child of freedom! So the moulder, man, Shakes his grim shoulders, and the shadows wan Fall to forgetfulness ; so life revives And'new sweet loves beget diviner lives, And (Freedom stands, re-risen from the rod, A goodlier godhead than the broken God ; Uniting ‘all the universe in this Music more musical than breezes’ kiss, A song more potent than the sullen sea, The triumph of the freedom of the free ; One stronger song than thrilled the rapturous birth Of stars and planets and the mother, earth ; As lovers, calling lovers when they die, Strangle death’s torture in love’s agony ; As waters, shaken by the storm, that roar, Sea unto sea; as stars that burn before The blackness ; as the mighty cry of swords Raging through battle, for its stronger chords ; And for its low entrancing music, made As waters lambent in the listening glade ; As Sappho’s yearning to the amorous sea ; As Man’s Prometheus, in captivity Master and freeman; as the holy tune All birds, all lovers, whisper to the moon. So, passionate and pure, the strong chant rolls, Queen of the mystic unity of souls ; So from eternity its glory springs King of the magical brotherhood of kings ; The absolute crown and kingdom of desire, Earth’s virgin chaplet, molten in the fire, Sealed in the sea, betokened by the wind : ‘¢ There is one God, the Spirit of Mankind !” tyranny and died in