[ed. Crowley was a great lyrical and metrical poet. He would be better appreciated had he not published his entire output (which is uneven); most other editors have editors, publishers and circumstances to edit and select their best work for them. Crowley? He published his entire 3-vol. Collected Works by age 32! These poems were among seven included edition of 777 Revised (1955) but not used, and are otherwise previously unpublished.]
Cradle Song
Slumber, my soul, a little while,
The butterfly may hold its wings.
Soften thy silence with a smile,
But brood not on the truth of things.
"A little while." What words to thee,
Thou ended never nor begun.
To thee, to sleep is not to be.
To be and not to be are one.
Or was it that my dreams create
These wheels of mystery that revolve
Under the force of Chance and Fate?
And at thy waking they dissolve.
My soul, thou has not wit nor care
If all exists, if all that shews
Be, how things came or how they fare
If all the riot be repose.
Thou art in all, no soul apart,
And all in thee eternal springs;
Nothing can be save that thou art,
Naught move save Light-waves of thy wings.
Thou sleep. 'Tis mind that sleeps or dies.
I? But a tear thou hast loved to weep.
It wearies me to be wise-
Watch thou. I turn my face to sleep.
Hymn to Tahuti
Silence: I utter the Creative Breath,
The Word against the Son of Night,
The Truth of Life against the Lie of Death,
The Modes of Measured Might,
The Wisdom of the twofold phrase,
The Root of Throbbing Energy-Delight
The Shakng of the Viewless Void of Space,
The Making manifest of Mother-Mass,
The Piercing of the Coils of Apophrasz,
The Breakng-forth of Light.
At the ending of the Light,
At the limits of the night,
Stood Tahuti in the presence of the
Unborn Sons of Time.
Then appeared the Universe;
Then came forth its Ministers,
The Immortal Gods, the Aeons of the
Boundless and Sublime,
Then the Voices shook the flame,
Then was heralded the Name.
Lo, upon the Timeless Threshold of the
Cosmos and the Womb,
In the sign of Wonder whirled
Stood He, as before Him hurled
Aeon after Aeon, thundered, lapsed in immemorial dom.
Them in Symbols did He state,
Them in breath did He vibrate,
For between the Light and Darkness did He stand and arbitrate.
The Insensitive
Tread on my heart more firmly, O Lord God.
Express a vintage wine of noble song.
The world needs Beauty for its thin grey blood
Famished for Love too fiercely and too long.
Mine be the vigor to bid rapture bloom
Upon Earth's breast, and flourish in Her womb.
Plunge venom in my heart,so poignant pangs
That every pulse of life and death is mine.
Distil their essence through infernal fangs
For me to make into the soul of wine:
To be-to love-to understand it all,
One Magick mighty and mystical.
Intensify this intimate communion,
This interplay of all things to Delight,
This absolute abandon of the union
Of all the Corybantic Choir of Night.
See on the crest of Love's colossal flood,
The Universe goes swooing into God.
The Hermit
This is the Wisdom of the Wilderness
That all the ghosts that haunt the minds of men
May not endure the Silence, and the stress
Of vastness, and the chaste kiss of the wind.
In these huge wastes of Sun and Sand, Life knows
Naught besides Death, and Love, his procuress.
The soul immune from all the Shadow-Shows
Goes on its unmapped way, affirms its Yes.
By deep indifference, and solemn deed.
In utter darkness, utterly content,
Casting forth freely its mysterious seed,
Careless, contemptuous of the Event
To work thy will, unmindful of success:
This is the Wisdom of the Wilderness.
