The Star in the West

158 THE STAR IN THE WEST My heart's black night must act the sun's eclipse ; My groans must play the earthquake , ... Still as I journey through the waste , I see A silver figure more divine arise ; The Christ usurps the horizon for me, And He requickens the forgotten skies ; His golden locks are burning on my eyes , And he with rosy finger points the way , The blood -wrought mystic path of Paradise , That leads at last through yonder icy spray Of Death to the blue vault of the undying day . In the last verse of “ A Spring Snow Storm in Wastdale ," there grows a wavering doubt , which leaps out furiously in the “Preliminary Invocation " in “ Jephthah ,” addressed to A. C. S. , breaking the shackles of the “ improving idea " of Christ : Let there be light !-the desecrated tomb Gaped as thy fury smote the Galilean .4 Almost a Shelleyan slur lies in the last of the above words . He is no more the mystic Christ , or the gentle Jesus , but merely a Galilean , of a tribe crude and de spised . Very different do we find Crowley's opinions , in his later works , regarding this unfortunate fakir . The glamour of enthusiastic and unsuspecting youth soon disappears to be swallowed up in the reality of a maturer understanding : He took the universe on trust ; He reconciled the world below With that above ; rolled eloquence Steel -tired o'er reason's “ why ? ” and “ whence ? ” . 1 Songs of the Spirit, vol . i, p. 30. 2 Ibid . vol . i, p. 40. Jephthah , vol . i, p. 64. 3 Ibid . vol. i, p. 43. 4