Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1910 · PDF PAGE 9

Rosa Decidua

…ke a bag-pipe drone to wail Its monotone through high, low, fast and slow. It has been like a secret cancer, Forcing all servants of the life to give Their work to the usurper ; all its themes assail The main word Life ; they build their archipelago Of poison in each sea where life was holy. Their questions have no answer, But all’s converted to the abominable Soul-sickening thing that one is tied to. This is I Just as God in His Nature, wholly Involved therein, its tune, its motive, its quintessence. There were no meaning in Spring’s aspen spe…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 11

Rosa Decidua

ROSA DECIDUA 9 Of life that spring in me are fed Not even on the mire of her decay. They spring from other roots. Now I am cleansed of her, I am so to say A man part paralysed. One limb is dead In feeling as in motion. This remains To ask : Will all catch death—how soon ? This head Excites its miserable brains To think the word it knows by intellect To be the right word—pity ! Then reflect : “ Pitiful ! Pitiful ! most pitiful ! The pity of it ! Think of the love past, Blossoms too beautiful ! Think of the hardships conquered comrade-wise ! Thin…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 3

Rosa Decidua

… The invisible worm That flies in the night In the howling storm Has found out thy bed Of crimson 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 dea…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 7

Rosa Decidua

…gain As a corpse should bleed at the murderer’s touch ! Then, not content, she must needs smutch All my past purifying pain, Turning all life to a thing fouler than Aught yet imaginable to man ! Who asks me for my tears ? She flings the body of my sweet dead child Into my face with hell’s own epitaph, Profanes that shrine Of infinite love and infinite loss, My empty shrine, the one shrine undefiled, My one close-claspèd cross— And hers as much as mine ! Profanes it with a hideous laugh And a lie flung with a curse ; and I must hear, And must no…

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1910 · PDF PAGE 10

Rosa Decidua

…ieved twelve labours, won to ease, And was done down to death and madness by The subtle poison that himself distilled. So all the God in life is chilled To a corpse. The informing one ? God’s a cast clout Of a leper ! Leave me here, corruptest of earth’s whores To scrape my sores ! Cry like a dog and run about the city ! There is no word left, now the deed is dead ! No thought of her is in me ; I am a stranger To all that dream of danger And bliss that Rose was. The green shoots

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1910 · PDF PAGE 8

Rosa Decidua

…now ! Hell’s enough If hell would only burn And silence the one devil-word of love. Ay ! death slinks off. I have a child that claims my life To keep from knowledge of her mother’s fate, To keep from heritage thereof, To shield from the world’s scoff, To watch, stamp out the seeds of madness in her. God ! that hast held me back from hate, Be merciful to me a sinner And ward me, warding her ! As it is written : Excepting Adonai build the house, they labour In vain that build it. And Again : Excepting Adonai keep the city, The watchman watcheth b…

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