The Star in the West

162 THE STAR IN THE WEST 1 as in the latter . In fact, all were as the ground from which they had sprung and on which they grew . In “ The Triumph of Man , ” a magnificent poem in heroic verse , Crowley unfurls the oriflamme of Reason against the bunting of God , leading us on from the realms of gloating anthropophagi to the " magical brotherhood of kings ." The absolute crown and king dom of desire , the one God sealed in the seas and be tokened in the winds . “ The Spirit of Mankind !” Before the darkness , earlier than being , When yet thought was not , shapeless and unseeing , Made misbegotten of deity on death , There brooded on the waters the strange breath Of an incarnate hatred . Darkness fell And chaos , from prodigious gulphs of hell . Life , that rejoiced to travail with a man , Looked where the cohorts of destruction ran , Saw darkness visible , and was afraid , Seeing . There grew like Death a monster shade , Blind as the coffin , as the covering sod Damp , as the corpse obscene , the Christian God . So to the agony dirges of despair Man cleft the womb , and shook the icy air With bitter cries for light and life and love . But these , begotten of the world above , Withdrew their glory , and the iron world Rolled on its cruel way , and passion furled Its pure wings , and abased itself , and bore Fetters impure , and stopped , and was no more . But resurrection's ghastly power grew strong , And Lust was born , adulterous with Wrong , The Child of Lies ; so man was blinded still , Garnered the harvest of abortive ill, For wheat reaped thistles , and for worship wrought A fouler idol of his meanest thought : A monster , vengeful , cruel , traitor , slave , Lord of disease and father of the grave , ? Jephthah , vol . i, p . 76 .