A poem by Alistar Crowley (1875-1947)

I

How should I seek to make a song for thee

When all my music is to moan thy name?

That long sad monotone; the same; the same –

Matching the mute insatiable sea

That throbs with life’s bewitching agony,

Too long to measure and too fierce to tame!

An hurtful joy, a fascinating shame

Is this great ache that grips the heart of me.

Even as a cancer, so this passion gnaws

Away my soul, and will not ease its jaws

Till I am dead. Then let me die! Who knows

But that this corpse committed to the earth

May be the occasion of some happier birth?

Spring’s earliest snowdrop? Summer’s latest rose?

II

Thou knowest what asp hath fixed its lethal tooth

In the white breast that trembled like a flower

At thy name whispered. thou hast marked how hour

By hour its poison hath dissolved my youth,

Half skilled to agonise, half skilled to soothe

This passion ineluctable, this power

Slave to its single end, to storm the tower

That holdeth thee, who art Authentic Truth.

O golden hawk! O lidless eye! Behold

How the grey creeps upon the shuddering gold!

Still I will strive! That thou mayst sweep

Swift on the dead from thine all-seeing steep –

And the unutterable word by spoken.

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