Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1910 · PDF PAGE 3

Rosa Decidua

…n joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.”—BLAKE. ROSE of the World ! If so, then what a world ! What worm at its red heart lay curled From the beginning ? Plucked and torn and trampled And utterly corrupt is she That was the queen-flower unexampled In gardens goodlier than Arcady. O Thou ! whose body was my lyre, whose soul Lay on my mouth like a live coal ! This time thou hearest not my song ; thine ears Are stopped with worse than death ; And all this wasted breath Of mine—those songs of six most memorable years Of ecstasy and a…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 6

Rosa Decidua

… insidious And cunning as some sordid sorceress ; Incapable of action or control, Yet a black gulph to drown so strong a soul ! . . . He lay close curled within my rose’s heart. There is no blame ; yet what avails all art ? See ! I reel back beneath the blow of her breath As she comes smiling to me : that disgust Changes her drunken lust Into a shriek of hate—half conscious still (Beneath the obsession of the will) Of all she was—before her death, her death ! So hell boils over in her, and she rages —It seems through countless ages— With all th…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 12

Rosa Decidua

…I will not pose There lies the rotten rose And stinks. That is the truth ; the rest is gloss. My loss was total loss. So close that rose lay to my heart, its fall Was the catastrophe of all.

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