Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1903 · PDF PAGE 84

Alice: An Adultery

… nor delight repose, Nor love retire ; the woodland cleaves and closes Round heads an aureole hides, a rainbow shows. A swifter shape of fire cleaves us, encloses Rosebud and rose. . . . . . . . Mouth unto mouth ! O fairest ! Mutely lying, Fire lambent laid on water,—O ! the pain ! Kiss me, O heart, as if we both were dying ! Kiss, as we could not ever kiss again ! Kiss me, between the music of our sighing, Lightning and rain ! 64

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1903 · PDF PAGE 6

Alice: An Adultery

of old-time Athens than to the Imperial Peripatetics of the Daily Telegraph and Mr. Raven-Hill, her looks of fire turned my friend’s silky and insipid moustache into a veritable Burning Bush. But puppy endearments are of little interest to one who has just done his duty by No. 9 in distant Yoshi- wara ; so turned to the conversation of our dirty old Irish hostess, who, being drunk, grew more so, and exceedingly entertaining. Of the central forces which sway mankind, her knowledge was more comprehensive than conven- tional. For thirty years she …

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1903 · PDF PAGE 31

Alice: An Adultery

…imbs of Messaline. The deep arched eyes, the floating mane,— One pierces, one wraps-in my brain. A crown of thorn, a spear of clean Cold fire of dying Messaline. Swart tangles of devouring hair, The scorpion labyrinth and snare, Leprous entanglements of sense, The Imminence of the Immense. And in the deep hard breath I draw Kissed from her strangling mouth and maw, I feel the floating deaths that dwell 9

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1903 · PDF PAGE 37

Alice: An Adultery

…er laugh most musical ? A sigh serenely deep ? She laughs in wordless swift desire A soft Thalassian tune ; Her eyelids glimmer with the fire That animates the moon ; Her chaste lips flame, as flames aspire Of poppies in mid-June. 15

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1903 · PDF PAGE 59

Alice: An Adultery

…nse of Nature’s dream And scent of Heaven Shewn in the glint and gleam Of the pure dawn’s first beam, With earth for leaven ; Moulded of fire and gold, Water and wine to fold Me in its life, and hold !— In all but seven ! 39

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1903 · PDF PAGE 104

Alice: An Adultery

…ess sorrow of long years, depart ! O joy of minutes that be ages long, Come ! Let the choral pulse and strength of song Quicken, and the fire of lute and lyre dart, An arrow red with blood and bright with art, And cover all the fiery bloom of wrong With blossoms blacker where the blood runs strong As our lips pale, their life fled to the heart. Surely we are as dead, we loving so, So bitterly, so keenly : let no breath Persuade us we are living and must die ! Better believe eternal kisses flow Under the strong rude current miscalled death, The …

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1903 · PDF PAGE 63

Alice: An Adultery

…NTH DAY “ Were kisses all the joys in bed, One woman would another wed.” Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music. Another day rose of unceasing fire : Kisses made monstrous for their sterile storm Maddening with sea-sounds, as of lute or shawm Fluting and clashing in extreme desire ; The silly “ Thus far and no farther,” nigher Each hour to break (poor arbitrary form !) As each kiss bade our bodies wed and warm Give love one chance before its wave retire. Not so : this trial was the tiniest Man ever knew, confronted afterward With giant fears and pass…

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1903 · PDF PAGE 100

Alice: An Adultery

…ntent. The subtler splendour of our love has stilled Those sombre glories that it never meant, Those giant meanings that it never meant. Fire only is our substance ; there we dwell, The Salamandrine with the Salamander. No fuel to crack, no water to make tunes, No air to blow us hither and thither ; well ! At our own will through cosmic space we wander Alive, the sun’s beam mixing with the moon’s. 80

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1903 · PDF PAGE 111

Alice: An Adultery

…s and in gardens, like lost souls. Strong kisses that had surfeited a score Of earthly bridals in an hour we squandered ; And tears like fire, and looks like burning coals, Without a word passed on for evermore. 91

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1903 · PDF PAGE 74

Alice: An Adultery

…dour that we prized ; And she, whose robe was far too slight to hide The babe-smooth breasts, was far to frail to cover Her heart’s true fire and music from her lover. 54

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1903 · PDF PAGE 33

Alice: An Adultery

…ve To swoop for cruelty or love ; I feel the swollen veins below The knotted throat ; the ebb and flow Of blood, not milk, in breasts of fire ; Of deaths, not fluctuants, of desire ; Of molten lava that abides Deep in the vast volcanic sides ; Deep scars where kisses once bit in Below young mountains that be twin, Stigmata cruciform of sin, The diary of Messaline. The moving mountains crater-crowned ; The valleys deep and silver-bound ; The girdle treacherously wound ; One violet-crest mounded mole, 11

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1903 · PDF PAGE 34

Alice: An Adultery

… Runs from deep furrows in the wheel ; So from afar one central heat Sends the loud pulse to fever beat ; So from one crown and heart of fire Spring the vast phantoms of desire, Impossible and epicene, Familiar souls of Messaline. And as, when thunder broods afar Imperial destinies of war, Men see the haze and heat, and feel The sun’s rays like a shaft of steel, Seeing no sun ; even so the night Clouds that deep miracle from sight : Until this destiny be done Hangs the corona on the sun ; And I absorbed in those unclean Ghost-haunted veins of M…

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1903 · PDF PAGE 71

Alice: An Adultery

…t is master of fear ; Dew covering the body that dashes and clings to me here. O fairest, O rose among roses ! O flower of the innermost fire ! O tune of my soul that encloses All life, the tempestuous lyre ! O dawn of my dawn that reposes and darts in desire ! And death and its portals are rifted, Life listens our kisses that weep ; Love hears, and his measure is shifted, Grows solemn and deadly and deep ; Love’s ship droops its sails and is drifted in silence to sleep. 51

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1903 · PDF PAGE 21

Alice: An Adultery

…rately, I am quite sure, with reference to his art alone. But if our Editor’s conjecture as to the real cause of his death is right, the fire he played with burnt him at last, and he died of the love he had invoked in play. It is the old-story of the magician strangled by the devil. As to what became of Alice we have no idea, if, indeed, she be after all a real person. In my judgment our poet was perfectly capable of deify- ing an old woman of fifty with a false front and *The results of a lengthy correspondence with some who knew our author, g…

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