Classic Poetry Series Aleister Crowley - poems - Publication Date: 2004 Publisher: PoemHunter.Com - The World's Poetry Archive A Birthday "Aug." 10, 1911. Full moon to-night; and six and twenty years Since my full moon first broke from angel spheres! A year of infinite love unwearying --- No circling seasons, but perennial spring! A year of triumph trampling through defeat, The first made holy and the last made sweet By this same love; a year of wealth and woe, Joy, poverty, health, sickness --- all one glow In the pure light that filled our firmament Of supreme silence and unbarred extent, Wherein one sacrament was ours, one Lord, One resurrection, one recurrent chord, One incarnation, one descending dove, All these being one, and that one being Love! You sent your spirit into tunes; my soul Yearned in a thousand melodies to enscroll Its happiness: I left no flower unplucked That might have graced your garland. I induct Tragedy, comedy, farce, fable, song, Each longing a little, each a little long, But each aspiring only to express Your excellence and my unworthiness --- Nay! but my worthiness, since I was sense And spirit too of that same excellence. So thus we solved the earth's revolving riddle: I could write verse, and you could play the fiddle, While, as for love, the sun went through the signs, And not a star but told him how love twines A wreath for every decanate, degree, Minute and second, linked eternally In chains of flowers that never fading are, Each one as sempiternal as a star. Let me go back to your last birthday. Then I was already your one man of men Appointed to complete you, and fulfil From everlasting the eternal will. We lay within the flood of crimson light In my own balcony that August night, And conjuring the aright and the averse Created yet another universe. We worked together; dance and rite and spell Arousing heaven and constraining hell. We lived together; every hour of rest Was honied from your tiger-lily breast. We --- oh what lingering doubt or fear betrayed My life to fate! --- we parted. Was I afraid? www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 2 I was afraid, afraid to live my love, Afraid you played the serpent, I the dove, Afraid of what I know not. I am glad Of all the shame and wretchedness I had, Since those six weeks have taught me not to doubt you, And also that I cannot live without you. Then I came back to you; black treasons rear Their heads, blind hates, deaf agonies of fear, Cruelty, cowardice, falsehood, broken pledges, The temple soiled with senseless sacrileges, Sickness and poverty, a thousand evils, Concerted malice of a million devils; --- You never swerved; your high-pooped galleon Went marvellously, majestically on Full-sailed, while every other braver bark Drove on the rocks, or foundered in the dark. Then Easter, and the days of all delight! God's sun lit noontide and his moon midnight, While above all, true centre of our world, True source of light, our great love passion-pearled Gave all its life and splendour to the sea Above whose tides stood our stability. Then sudden and fierce, no monitory moan, Smote the mad mischief of the great cyclone. How far below us all its fury rolled! How vainly sulphur tries to tarnish gold! We lived together: all its malice meant Nothing but freedom of a continent! It was the forest and the river that knew The fact that one and one do not make two. We worked, we walked, we slept, we were at ease, We cried, we quarrelled; all the rocks and trees For twenty miles could tell how lovers played, And we could count a kiss for every glade. Worry, starvation, illness and distress? Each moment was a mine of happiness. Then we grew tired of being country mice, Came up to Paris, lived our sacrifice There, giving holy berries to the moon, July's thanksgiving for the joys of June. And you are gone away --- and how shall I Make August sing the raptures of July? And you are gone away --- what evil star Makes you so competent and popular? How have I raised this harpy-hag of Hell's Malice --- that you are wanted somewhere else? www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 3 I wish you were like me a man forbid, Banned, outcast, nice society well rid Of the pair of us --- then who would interfere With us? --- my darling, you would now be here! But no! we must fight on, win through, succeed, Earn the grudged praise that never comes to meed, Lash dogs to kennel, trample snakes, put bit In the mule-mouths that have such need of it, Until the world there's so much to forgive in Becomes a little possible to live in. God alone knows if battle or surrender Be the true courage; either has its splendour. But since we chose the first, God aid the right, And damn me if I fail you in the fight! God join again the ways that lie apart, And bless the love of loyal heart to heart! God keep us every hour in every thought, And bring the vessel of our love to port! These are my birthday wishes. Dawn's at hand, And you're an exile in a lonely land. But what were magic if it could not give My thought enough vitality to live? Do not then dream this night has been a loss! All night I have hung, a god, upon the cross; All night I have offered incense at the shrine; All night you have been unutterably mine, Miner in the memory of the first wild hour When my rough grasp tore the unwilling flower From your closed garden, mine in every mood, In every tense, in every attitude, In every possibility, still mine While the sun's pomp and pageant, sign to sign, Stately proceeded, mine not only so In the glamour of memory and austral glow Of ardour, but by image of my brow Stronger than sense, you are even here and now Miner, utterly mine, my sister and my wife, Mother of my children, mistress of my life! O wild swan winging through the morning mist! The thousand thousand kisses that we kissed, The infinite device our love devised If by some chance its truth might be surprised, Are these all past? Are these to come? Believe me, There is no parting; they can never leave me. I have built you up into my heart and brain So fast that we can never part again. Why should I sing you these fantastic psalms When all the time I have you in my arms? www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 4 Why? 'tis the murmur of our love that swells Earth's dithyrambs and ocean's oracles. But this is dawn; my soul shall make its nest Where your sighs swing from rapture into rest Love's thurible, your tiger-lily breast. Aleister Crowley www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 5 Adela Jupiter Mars P Moon VENEZIA, "May" 19"th", 1910. Jupiter's foursquare blaze of gold and blue Rides on the moon, a lilac conch of pearl, As if the dread god, charioted anew Came conquering, his amazing disk awhirl To war down all the stars. I see him through The hair of this mine own Italian girl, Adela That bends her face on mine in the gondola! There is scarce a breath of wind on the lagoon. Life is absorbed in its beatitude, A meditative mage beneath the moon Ah! should we come, a delicate interlude, To Campo Santo that, this night of June, Heals for awhile the immitigable feud? Adela! Your breath ruffles my soul in the gondola! Through maze on maze of silent waterways, Guarded by lightless sentinel palaces, We glide; the soft plash of the oar, that sways Our life, like love does, laps --- no softer seas Swoon in the bosom of Pacific bays! We are in tune with the infinite ecstasies, Adela! Sway with me, sway with me in the gondola! They hold us in, these tangled sepulchres That guard such ghostly life. They tower above Our passage like the cliffs of death. There stirs No angel from the pinnacles thereof. All broods, all breeds. But immanent as Hers That reigns is this most silent crown of love Adela That broods on me, and is I, in the gondola. They twist, they twine, these white and black canals, Now stark with lamplight, now a reach of Styx. Even as out love - raging wild animals Suddenly hoisted on the crucifix To radiate seraphic coronals, Flowers, flowers - O let our light and darkness mix, Adela, Goddess and beast with me in the gondola! Come! though your hair be a cascade of fire, Your lips twin snakes, your tongue the lightning flash, www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 6 Your teeth God's grip on life, your face His lyre, Your eyes His stars - come, let our Venus lash Our bodies with the whips of Her desire. Your bed's the world, your body the world-ash, Adela! Shall I give the word to the man of the gondola? Aleister Crowley www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 7 An Oath (An Oath wrtitten during the Dawn Meditation) Aiwaz! Confirm my troth with thee ! my will inspire With secret sperm of subtle, free, creating Fire! Mould thou my very flesh as Thine, renew my birth In childhood merry as divine, enchenated earth! Dissolve my rapture in Thine own, a sacred slaugther Whereby to capture and atone the soul of water! Fill thou my mind with gleaming Thought intense and rare To One refined, outflung to naught, the Word of Air! Most, bridal bound, my quintessentil Form thus freeing From self, be found one Selfhood blent in Spirit Being. Aleister Crowley www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 8 Arhan When the chill of earth black-breasted is uplifted at the glance Of the red sun million-crested, and the forest blossoms dance With the light that stirs and lustres of the dawn, and with the bloom Of the wind’s cheek as it clusters from the hidden valley’s gloom : Then I walk in woodland spaces, musing on the solemn ways Of the immemorial places shut behind the starry rays Of the East and all its splendour, of the West and all its peace; And the stubborn lights grow tender, and the hard sounds hush and cease. In the wheel of heaven revolving, mysteries of death and birth, In the wonb of time dissolving, shape anew a heaven and earth Ever changing, ever growing, ever dwindling, ever dear, Ever worth the passion glowing to distil a doubtful tear. These are with me, these are of me, these approve me, these obey, Choose me, move me, fear me, love me, master of the night and day. These are real, these illusion : I am of them, false or frail, True or lasting, all is fusion in the spirit’s shadow-veil, Till the knowledge -Lotus flowering hides the world beneath its stem; Neither I, nor nor God life-showering, find a counterpart in them. As a spirit in a vision shows a countenance in fear, Laughs the looker to derision, only comes to disappear, Gods and mortals, mind and matter, in the glowing bud dissever : Vein from vein they rend and shatter, and are nothingness for ever. In the blessed, the enlightened, perfect eyes these visions pass, Pass and cease, poor shadows frightened, leave no stain upon the glass. One last stroke, O heart- free master, one last certain calm of will, And the maker of Disaster shall be strcken and grow still. Burn thou to the core of matter, to the spirit’s utmost flame, Consciousness and sense to shatter, ruin sight and form and name! Shatter, lake-reflected spectre; lake, rise up in mist to sun; Sun, dissolve in showers of nectar, and the Master’s www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 9 work is done. Nectar perfume gently stealing, masterful and sweet and strong, Cleanse the world with light of healing in the ancient House of Wrong ! Free a million mortals on the wheel og being tossed ! Open wide the mystic portals, and be altogether lost! At Akyab. Aleister Crowley www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 10