Collected Works (Vol. I)

32 SONGS OF THE SPIRIT Now backwards, inwards still my mind Must track the intangible and blind, And seeking, shall securely find Hidden in secret places Fresh feasts for every soul that strives, New life for many mystic lives, and strange new forms and faces. My mind still searches, and attains By many days and many pains To That which Is and Was and reigns Shadowed in four and ten,! And loses self in sacred lands, And cries and quickens, and understands Beyond the first Amen.” THE ALCHEMIST. THIS POEM WAS INTENDED AS THE PRO- LOGUE ‘YO A PLAY—AT PRESENT UN- FINISHED.? An old tower, very lofty, on a small and rocky islet, Inthe highest chamber aman of some forty years, but stlver-haired, looks out of the window. Clear starry night, no moon. Chamber furnished with books, alchemtc instruments, etc. He gazes some minutes, stzhs deeply, but at last speaks. THE world moves not. abyss, Look down into the black unfathomed vault Of starland and behold—myself. I gaze upon the The sea To give a sense of motion or of sound Washes the walls of this grey tower in vain ; I contemplate myself in that dim sphere Whose hollow centre I am standing at With burning eyes intent to penetrate ‘The black circumference, and find out God-— 1 Jehovah, the name of 4 letters. 1+2+ 3+4=10. 2 ‘The first Amen is=91 or 7x13. The second is the Inscrutabie Amoun. 3°¢°'The Poisoners,” finished later, but dis- carded as over-Tourncuresque, And only see myself. The walls of Space Mock me with silence. What is Life? The stars Are silent. O ye matchless ministers That daily pass in your appointed ways To reach—we know not what! How mean- ingless Your bright assemblage and your steady task Of doubtful motion. And the soul of man Grapples in death-pangs with your mystery, And fails to wrestle down the hard embrace That grips the thighs of thought. And so he dies To pass beyond ye—whither? To find God? All my life long I have gazed, and dreamed, and thought, Unless my thought itself were but a dream, A little, troubled dream, a dream of death Whence I may wake—ah, where? In some new world Where Consciousness doth touch the Infinite, And all the strivings of the soul be found Sufficient to beat back the waves of doubt, To pierce the void, and grasp the glorious, To find out Truth? Would God it might be SO, Since here is nothing for the soul to love Or cling to beyond self. My chamberlain Once showed me a pet slave, dwarf, savage, black, A vile, lewd creature, who would cast a staff? Far wheeling through the air :—‘twould suddenly Break its swift course, and curving rapidly Come hard upon himself who threw. Even so These vile deformities—our souls—cast forth Missiles of thought, and seek to reach some end With swift imagining—and end in self. What sage? called God the image of man’s self He sees cast dimly on a bank of cloud, Thrice his own size? AndI whose life has been [Cry without. 1 A boomerang. 2 The image is Crowley’s own, drawn from the Spectre of the Brocken,