Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
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1907 · PDF PAGE 10

Rosa Coeli

There as I bowed mine head Upon the amber altar, And shed my life out there before ye all, Careless if I had summoned from the skies Some young true God, or spoiled the sacrifice, And were but dead as any man is dead ! So I have given up my inmost life Even unto you, sweet wife, Careless—yet conscious of the babe-stirred womb Of some dread Mother older than the Tomb, Wiser than Life, more pitiful than Death. IV OUR wine-stained and wine-coloured hair unloosing, Mingle your wine-wise breath, Spiritual siren ! with the scent seducing Your body sh…

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1907 · PDF PAGE 9

Rosa Coeli

…e perceives Its lonely mother-flower, Us, in our love’s arcane Briatic bower. We scatter light, a music-tingling shower ; We breathe out life, a crimson whisper ; We radiate love, a velvet-soft complaint, Most like the echo of a chime at vesper Rung far across narcissus-haunted leas, Lilied lagoons, and moon-enchaunted seas, By the high-bosomed boy, large-eyed, with fasting faint, That shares an hermitage with some devoutest saint. III S, in our life, I passed the awful gate Where like a Cerberus sate The triform silence, Fate, And bade the red…

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1907 · PDF PAGE 21

Rosa Coeli

… strange experience Worth all the woes of sense, Some drop of nectar worth a world of wine, Some grace of One divine Worth more than all life’s grace, and more than life Intense, Was there a wonder if the silken boy Found her a-playing on the bluebell marge And drank from golden vats the wine of joy ; Hot, eager, overcoming in her breath, As she would draw him to those large And firm white breasts and mix her liquid life With his in pagan strife ? 16 T

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1907 · PDF PAGE 8

Rosa Coeli

…d ! God ! The chasms secret and profound Suck down the porphyry flood Of your maniacal, ensorcelled blood That maddens and bewitches. My life is suffocated—now I swoon— I die ! I am in hell, red hell, red hell, Circles me closer ; all the soul’s afire As if the boreal moon With all the icy Lapland hags That shiver on ’s hibernal crags Were but a thin white shell Hoarding the seed of many a million suns, Giving its life up unto its desire— Out bursts the womb of my unguessed-at godhead ; 3 R

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1907 · PDF PAGE 22

Rosa Coeli

…Nay ! ’tis no wonder—shall they wonder then, These bat-eyed newspaper-besotted men, If thou and I have found the Elixir rare That giveth Life to those whoso drinketh it, The Stone beyond compare, The harmony of the Circle and the Square, All that surpasseth mortal wit Even to imagine ? we have found it, Rose, Rose of the Stars, Rose of the utmost snows ! Where ? Where Love knows. 17

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1907 · PDF PAGE 17

Rosa Coeli

And ever nearer to the scarlet slash I clomb, where the strange perfumes struck me like a lash And the dread fires scorched up my life. There, O insufferable delight I mock with the weak word of wife, I was sucked down into the crater rim, Into the crimson damask dim Candescent cave of night— O then I mock myself with words ! They are like cardinal-coloured birds And honey-coloured doves : Yet one thing mortal serves to name another As mortal as itself. Why must our deathless loves Be stained by the black-hearted mother That called things by de…

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1907 · PDF PAGE 12

Rosa Coeli

…l dip The timid foot ; but rather will I strip Each rag of thought, and leap Into the sunset deep Still glowing with the glamour Of your life’s blood, and ashen gold With floating gossamer your hair, that might enfold A giant god, and strangle him anon With starry serpents like Laocoon, A stoic god that might enamour And draw him with its tendrils into time. VII Y mouth was wet with the delicious crime Of kissing you, one night, when in a vision Your hair was like a forest of tall pines In winter ; black strange dwarfs with crooked spines And e…

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1907 · PDF PAGE 11

Rosa Coeli

…ing, I see thee as thou soarest, So that, the girders of the soul unloosing, That Child of you and me, O rose of roses, That Child whose life encloses Our lives, is therefore I, may wander ever By the fritillary-fringéd river, Through lotus gardens of the sleepy gods, On hills where every timid oread tries Blue gentian as disguise From holier (though she think profaner) eyes, On seas where, it may be, (to even the odds !) Each nymph and undine issues from the foam Armed with a pearly mirror and with a coral comb To tire her beauty, lure me to t…

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1907 · PDF PAGE 19

Rosa Coeli

…ellence— Not unto me close curled And on my body’s beauty crucified In silver spirit clad with gold of sense, But sending forth thy rays life-pearled As a bridegroom squandering his strength upon the bride —Thou art sufficient to redeem the world. XIV ! IS the secret of the starry deep Nothing but pain and pleasure, grief and joy ? Is God a wanton boy To play with us so bitter cheap By such a jewelled light ? Be thine the power, Rose of the Stars, in this thy tortured hour When the wee lips that clung to thee are cold, To give the world a light…

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