The Star in the West

THE VIRGIN 69 “ Can that have been human ? ” I see you point through the drizzling night to a cramped and shivering form . Can that have been a woman ? That living death , de graded by crime , brutalized by vice , vitiated , unsouled ; lower than a slave , worse than a dog ; spurned by man , shunned by woman , a human wreck , a growing horror ? Even so , once a smiling girl , sweet as a rose , pure as a lily ; now the bedraggled gin -sodden har ridan . O ! marriage , thy name is Failure : 0 ! priest , what hast thou done ? Cramped the human mind , be trayed thy trust , sacrificed love on the altar of Mam mon , leaving the heart as a blighted flower , the soul as a hollow shell , void , execrable . Even love is sold , the solace of all woe Is turned to deadliest agony , old age Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms And youth's corrupted impulses prepare A life of horror from the blighting bane Of commerce ; whilst the pestilence that springs From unenjoying sensualism, has filled All human life with hydra -headed woes. So sang Shelley . Now let us turn to Aleister Crowley , and we shall find his ideal no less great , noble and true than that of Shelley's , the divinest of the poets and pioneers of Truth , Freedom , and Beauty . Love is the finding in others what others cannot find in them , and it is of two degrees . The love of a mother towards her child ; and the love of man and “ large as this total may appear , it is not improbable that it is below the reality than above it. One thing is certain —if it be an exaggerated statement -that the real number is swollen every succeeding year , for prostitution is an inevitable attend ant upon extended civilization and increased population .” London Labour and London Poor , p. 213.