Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1898 · PDF PAGE 88

Songs of the Spirit

…t eve to make demur That I be minister To Cynthia maidenly : All night I have watched her sail through a black and silver sky. Within my soul there fight Two full and urgent streams, Work’s woe and dream’s delight : Like snow and sun they smite, Days battle hard with dreams : On a world of misty beauty the Aurora clearly beams. So labour fought with pride, And love with idleness, My soul was torn and tried With the impassioned tide Of storm and deathly stress— I had never dreamed a lily should arise amid the press. Yet such a flower sprang here…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 105

Songs of the Spirit

…t, No maid, with golden zone, And lily garment that from sight Half hides the ivory throne, Lay in my arms the livelong night To call my soul her own. The Christ’s cold lips my lips did taste On Time’s disastrous tide, His bruiséd arms my soul embraced, My soul twice crucified ; 95

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1898 · PDF PAGE 89

Songs of the Spirit

…, divine, Of a god of light and laughter, of a god of wheat and wine. Work on, strong mind, devise The outer life aright ; Dream, subtle soul, and arise To noblest litanies That pierce the mask of night— In a man work lifts his eyelids, but his dreams lend eyes their light. So dreams and days are wed, And soul and body lie Ambrosial in Love’s bed. See, heaven with stars is spread— So glad of life am I If an angel came to call me I am sure I would not die. 79

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1898 · PDF PAGE 37

Songs of the Spirit

…k thy name ! O Life ! O Heaven ! O dreams long dead ! Ye Spirits Rising unbidden from Hope’s cobwebbed door, Ye quick desires that every soul inherits, Leave me to weep, and torture me no more ! My face grows grey with sheer despair ; I shrink From dreams ; I dare not think. I had a poet’s dreams. My soul was yearning To grasp the firmament and hold it fast, 27

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1898 · PDF PAGE 51

Songs of the Spirit

…way, Pity me, pity, since the poisonous root Of parting strikes the beauty of the day ; We meet for the last time beside the ocean gray. Soul of my soul, we never can forget— But, is our parting burnt across the skies ? Is the last word said ? Must our lips be set Not to new song, but to the bitter sighs As of a child whose flower-garden dies, Who knows no hope of some enduring spring ? 41

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1898 · PDF PAGE 23

Songs of the Spirit

… your appointed ways To reach—we know not what ! How meaningless Your bright assemblage and your steady task Of doubtful motion. And the soul of man Grapples in death-pangs with your mystery, And fails to wrestle down the hard embrace That grips the thighs of thought. And so he dies To pass beyond ye—whither ? To find God ? All my life long I have gazed, and dreamed, and thought, Unless my thought itself were but a dream, A little, troubled dream, a dream of death Whence I may wake—ah, where ? In some new world Where Consciousness doth touch th…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 73

Songs of the Spirit

A RONDEL. REST, like a star at sea Thrice loved, thrice blest, Burns. Will there come to me Rest ? By these suppressed Desires my soul must flee, By heaven’s crest, I pray that secretly Toward God’s breast I draw, to find, maybe, Rest ! 63

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1898 · PDF PAGE 87

Songs of the Spirit

…pray of thorn. There is a great grey tower Cut clear against the deep ; In the sun’s wakening hour I think it has the power To touch the soul of sleep With its tender thought, and bid me to awake for joy—and weep. This night I am earlier, No drowsy thought drew nigh 77

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1898 · PDF PAGE 76

Songs of the Spirit

…longer write : Communion with the night Is built, a bride of fiery truth across the subtle mind. God’s angels, and His fire, Consume the soul’s desire, And strike a lighter lyre. I seek ; the angels lead me on, all light and truth to find. 66

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1898 · PDF PAGE 93

Songs of the Spirit

…, In which I laugh with hell, And furies chant the knell Of all things clean. Ah God ! the shapes that throng ! Ah God ! what eyes ! The souls grown sharp and strong That my lips made their prize, The ruined souls, the wrecks Of bodies fair of flecks Long since, ere God did vex My soul with sacrifice. Pale youth and bloodless maiden Whose breasts have bled, With wrath or mercy laden, By love or terror led, Reproachful or reviling, Some pure and some defiling, Some fearful and some smiling, Some living and some dead. 83

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1898 · PDF PAGE 5

Songs of the Spirit

…ATION TO J. L. B. THE vault of purple that I strove To pierce, and find unchanging love, Or some vast countenance above All glory of the soul of man, Baffled my blind aspiring gaze With sunlight’s melancholy rays, And closed with iron hand the ways That sunder space, divide the days with fiery fan. Thine was the forehead mild and grave That shown throughout the azure nave Where Monte Rosa’s silence gave The starry organ’s measured sound. Where for an altar stood the bare Mass of Mont Cervin, towering there And angels dwelt upon the stair, And a…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 103

Songs of the Spirit

And all my soul is dewed and pearled With tears of poetry. The strong mysterious spell is cast To bind and to release ; To give the devils hope at last, To the unburied peace ; To gladden the reluctant past With silent harmonies. The song grows wilder now and strives All heaven to enchain, As who should grasp a thousand lives, And draw their breath again Into some cavern where he dives, A hell of grisly pain. And now behold ! the barren Cross Bursts out in vernal flowers ; The music weeps, as on the moss The summer’s kissing showers, And there …

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1898 · PDF PAGE 41

Songs of the Spirit

…whose hard iron rang At my strong summons. As their fury sprang Open at last I crossed their threshold, prayed Reward for courage. To my soul dismayed These voices their loud chant of terror sang : “ Thou hast not kept thy trust. To storm the gates Were to have found out God and all delight, Conquered for all thy fellow-men the fates, And found out Paradise in Hell’s despite.” I heard them laugh, the Harpies and the Hates . . . Then fell, like death, the intolerable night. 31

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1898 · PDF PAGE 36

Songs of the Spirit

… and my weakness are interred In the deep water where the pebbles gleam. I rouse the force persistent of my will To compel matter to the soul’s desire, To make Heaven aid the mind that would aspire To touch its borders, and to drink their fill At those far fountains whence one drop of dew Descends upon my head from yonder blue. 26

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1898 · PDF PAGE 20

Songs of the Spirit

…wards still my mind Must track the intangible and blind, And seeking, shall securely find Hidden in secret places Fresh feasts for every soul that strives, New life for many mystic lives, And strange new forms and faces. My mind still searches, and attains By many days and many pains 10

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1898 · PDF PAGE 69

Songs of the Spirit

IN NEVILLE’S COURT, TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. I THINK the souls of many men are here Among these cloisters, underneath the spire That the moon silvers with magnetic fire ; But not a moon-ray is it, that so clear Shines on the pavement, for a voice of fear It hath, unless it be the breeze that mocks My ear, and waves his old majestic locks About his head. There fell upon my ear : “ O soul contemplative of distant things, Who hast a poet’s heart, even if thy pen Be dry and barren, who dost hold Love dear, Speed forth this message on the fiery w…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 25

Songs of the Spirit

…erchance I have not lived so far. Perchance to-day, Like a spring-flower that slowly opens out Its willing petals to the tender dawn, My soul may open to the knowledge of A dawn of new thought that may lead—— Voice. To God. Ph. Hope hardly dared to name it ! 15

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1898 · PDF PAGE 14

Songs of the Spirit

So brake the soul, as newly re-arisen Beyond the years. Far above Space and Time, that earth environ With bands and bars we strive against in vain, Far o’er the world, and all its triple iron And brazen chain, Far from the change that men call life fled higher Into the world immutable of sleep, We see our loved one, and vain eyes desire In vain to weep. Woeful our gaze, if on Ione Earth descendent, To view the absence of yon flame afar— Yet in the Heavens, anew, divine, resplendent, Behold a star ! One light the less, that steady flamed and eve…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 78

Songs of the Spirit

As fell from all his shaken soul the veil. Then on the night began the awful gale That did assume a voice Whereat the air was peopled with such forms As ride abroad upon the path of storms, And in the awe rejoice. They gather, chanting, round that noble head. The master of the prisons of the dead Loosens the bonds and bids the furies spring For their last struggle ere they own a king. This pæan of the sky they sing. CHANT OF DEMONS. We ride upon the fury of the blast, Fast, fast. We race upon the horses of the wind, The tameless thunder follows…

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1898 · PDF PAGE 118

Songs of the Spirit

No chords for my memory bring ; Those lips like a soul that are clinging most silently cling. Take though for these verses, though time be So sure and so swift for thy feet, Though far from this England thy clime be In years that sway slow as the wheat, Take thought, for an hour let my rhyme be not wholly unsweet. For truth and desire and devotion May lend through the verses a voice, They tremble with violent motion, They yearn to be fair for thy choice As billows and winds of the ocean that roar and rejoice. For winds that are shaken and riven…

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