28
THE STAR IN THE WEST
And gaze on chaos , and a week bring
back
Adam
and Eve beneath the apple tree .
Join’st thou thy feeble hands in foolish
prayer
To him thy brain hath moulded
and set there
In thy brain's
heaven ?
Such a god replies
As thy fears move .
So men pray everywhere .
God
did first work in earth
when womankind
He chipped
from Adam's
rib-a thankless
task
I wot His wisdom
has long since repined .
When
I am dead remember
me for this
That I bade workers
work , and lovers
kiss ;
Laughed
with the Stoic at the dream of pain ,
And
preached
with Jesus the evangel - bliss .'
Whilst
such lines as the following in the second poem
also remind
us of the astronomer
poet :
O thou , zelator of this Paradise ,
Tell thou the secret of the pillar ! None
Can hear thee , of the souls beneath the sun.
Speak ! or the very Godhead
in thee dies .
For we are many , and thy name is One .?
Before we leave the glowing east , one more curious
similarity still
strikes
us , it is that though
in so many
ways
the ideas of Aleister Crowley are akin
to those
of Omar
Khayyam ,
yet
his
fertile
imagination
also
engenders
flights as spiritual
as those
contained
in
the melodious
ghazals
of Jeláladdin .
In
more
than
one
place
we
come
across
lines
similar to these
in
Tannhäuser
:
I say , then , “ I; " and yet it is not “ I ”
Distinct , but “ I ” incorporate
in All .
I am the Resurrection
and the Life !
1 Mysteries
: Lyrical and Dramatic
, vol . I, pp. 109-112.
(The
metre though
not the cadence
is that of “ Laus Veneris .")
2 The Temple of the Holy Ghost , vol . i, p. 191.