Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1928 · PDF PAGE 52

Little Poems in Prose

… soul. My thoughts flitted with a lightness like that of the atmosphere; vulgar passions, such as hate and profane love, seemed to me as far away as the clouds which defiled at the bottom of the abyss under my feet. My soul seemed to me as vast and as pure as the cupula of the sky which covered me. The memory of earthly things reached my heart weakened and diminished, like the sound of the bells of the unseen cattle which were feeding far, very far, on the slope of the oppo- site mountain. Upon the small unstirred lake, black by reason of its i…

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1928 · PDF PAGE 25

Little Poems in Prose

…mmortal goddess. And his eyes say: I am the least and the most solitary of men; deprived of love and friendship, and in that respect how far below the least of brutes! Yet I am made, I too, to understand and to feel beauty immortal. Ah, Goddess, have pity of my sadness, of my madness! But the implacable Venus looks afar off upon I know not what, with marble eyes.

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1928 · PDF PAGE 92

Little Poems in Prose

…n a deep, dull joy. Our song-makers tell us that pleasure makes the soul kind, and softens the heart; the song was right that evening as far as I was concerned; not only was I made tender by this family of eyes, but I felt a little ashamed of our bottles and glasses, that were greater than our thirst. I turned my looks to yours, dear love, to read my thought therein. I plunged into your eyes, so beautiful and so strangely sweet; into your green eyes, indwelt by caprice, and in- spired by the moon; when you said to me, “Those people are unbearab…

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1928 · PDF PAGE 51

Little Poems in Prose

…e of the boards, hoping that he would divine my inten- tion, when a great eddy of people, caused by I know not what disturbance, bore me far away from him. And, on my homeward round, obsessed by this sight, I sought to analyse my sudden sad- ness; and I said to myself: I have just seen the image of the old man of letters who has survived the generation which he so brilliantly amused; of the old poet, without friends, with- out family, without children, degraded by his misery and by public ingratitude, into whose booth the forgetful world will n…

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1928 · PDF PAGE 152

Little Poems in Prose

…ste- rious woman to whom he owes so many pleas- ures, so many sorrows, and perhaps also a great part of his genius. Several balls struck far from the bull’s-eye; one of them even buried itself in the ceiling. And as the charming creature laughed wildly, in mockery of her husband’s bad shooting, he turned sharply towards her and said, “You see that doll down there on the right with its nose in the air and so haughty an expression?— Well, my dear angel, I imagine to myself that it is you,” and he shut his eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was…

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1928 · PDF PAGE 64

Little Poems in Prose

… accept; it will seem too good to be true; then their hands will fasten lively on the present, and they will dash off as cats do, who go far away to eat the morsel you have given them, having learned to distrust man. On a road, behind the pale of a large gar- den, at the end of which shone the whiteness of a pretty house bathing in the sun, was a

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1928 · PDF PAGE 50

Little Poems in Prose

…zied explosion of vitality. Here only, absolute wretchedness; wretchedness dressed, to crown its horror, in comic rags, where necessity, far more than art, had introduced the contrast. He did not laugh, poor wretch! He neither leapt nor danced, nor gesticulated nor cried. He sang no song, either merry or sad; he made no supplication. He was dumb and motionless. He had given up the game; he had abdicated: his fate was come upon him. But what a gaze (how profound, how unfor- gettable!) he cast upon the crowds and the lights, whose moving flood st…

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1928 · PDF PAGE 44

Little Poems in Prose

…arming autumn sky, one of those skies whence de- scend the armies of regret and of remem- brance, she seated herself in a garden, aside, far from the crowd, to listen to one of those concerts whose regimental music the people of Paris so enjoy. That was doubtless the little debauch of this innocent old woman, or shall I say of this puri- fied old woman; the well-earned consolation of one of these heavy, friendless days, conversa- tionless, joyless, bare of intimacy, these days which God let fall upon her since many days which God let fall upon …

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1928 · PDF PAGE 97

Little Poems in Prose

…ding like the rolling of con- tinuous thunder. The Prince himself, carried away, mingled his applause with that of his Court. Yet, for a far-seeing eye, his intoxication, his own, was not unmingled with other ele- ments; did he feel himself abased, his despot’s power broken? Humiliated in his art, that of

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1928 · PDF PAGE 167

Little Poems in Prose

…appiness? If so, let us away to those coun- tries that are the emblem of death. I have it, poor soul, we will pack for Tornéo. Let us go farther still, to the far end of the Baltic, still farther from life, if it is possible. Let us set up our camp at the Pole! There the sun strikes the earth obliquely, and the slow alternation of light and night suppresses variety and in- creases monotony—that better half of nothing. There we may take prolonged baths of shadow, while, to amuse us, the Aurora Borealis will send us from time to time its rosy she…

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1928 · PDF PAGE 84

Little Poems in Prose

…tains of many-coloured calico, two laughing heads leaned out. At once he said to himself, “My thought must indeed be a vagabond to go so far to look for what is so near me. Pleasure and happiness live in the first inn one comes to; in the chance inn; is not chance the great mother of pleasures? A big fire, gaudy porcelain, a passable supper, rough

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1928 · PDF PAGE 118

Little Poems in Prose

…was look- ing at us.” “But who then?” asked the others. “God,” he replied, with an accent of perfect conviction. “Ah, He is already very far away—in a moment you will not be able to see Him any more; I think He must be travelling, to visit every country.—There, there! He is going to pass behind that row of trees that is almost on the horizon; and now He is going down behind the steeple. Ah, I cannot see Him any more.” And the child remained for long turned in the same direction, fixing upon the line which cuts earth from heaven a pair of eyes w…

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1928 · PDF PAGE 33

Little Poems in Prose

…e silence and solitude of the night. Souls of those whom I have loved, souls of those whom I have sung, strengthen me, sustain me, drive far from me falsehood and the corrupting vapours of the world, and Thou, O Lord my God, grant me Thy favour that I may make some good verses to prove to myself that I am not the meanest

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1928 · PDF PAGE 113

Little Poems in Prose

…he two ridges of the cut. I forgot to tell you that I had called loudly for help, but all my neighbours had refused to come; faithful so far to the customs of civilized man, who is never willing, I know not why, to mix himself up in the business of a suicide. At last a doctor turned dup who said that the child had been dead for several hours. When later on we had to unclothe him for burial the de- gree of rigor mortis was such that, despairing of bending the limbs, we were obliged to tear and cut the clothes to take them off him. The Commissary…

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1928 · PDF PAGE 54

Little Poems in Prose

…his conqueror rolling to the ground by butting him in the stomach. But why should I describe the hide- ous struggle, which lasted indeed far longer than their puerile powers had led me to ex- pect? The cake journeyed from hand to hand and changed from pocket to pocket at each in- stant, but alas! it changed also in size, and when at last, exhausted, panting, bleeding, they stopped for lack of strength to go on,

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