THE VIRGIN
89
is similar to that of “ Alice ,” if not sublimer :
“
I was
so glad
he loved enough to go
-“ my arms could
never have
released
his neck .”
The King
dies and
soon the Queen also .
Love is symbolized in this poem
in
its
higher form
as
above death
.
She seeks
and finds
"
There
is
no
sin
.”
And
I?
I
knew not anything
,
but know
We are still silent
,
and united
so
,
And
all
our being spells one vast To
Be
,
A
passion like the passion
of
the sea
.?
Besides
the
freedom
of
lovers
,
Aleister
Crowley
advocates
the
freedom
of
the
children
of
love
;
he
does not visit the
sins
of
the fathers
on
the children
,
as
conventionality
cruelly does
.
Though
he
is
a
firm
believer
in
the chain
of
cause
and effect
as
is
strongly
shown
in
“
The Mother's Tragedy
,
”
he
does not carry
it
further into the realms
of
Biblical vice
.
The children
of what
is
known
as
an illicit love-which
in
most
cases
is
true free love
-
have time after time proved
themselves better and greater than those
engendered
in
the unimpassioned
embrace
of
the marriage
-
bed
.
Shakespeare
brings
this
point
out forcibly
in
King
Lear
,
when Edmund
speaks
as
follows
:
.
why brand they
us
With
base
?
with baseness
?
bastardy
?
base
,
base
?
Who
in
the lusty stealth
of
nature take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth
,
within
a
dull
,
stale
,
tired bed
,
Go
to
the creating
a
whole tribe
of
fops
,
Got
'
tween
asleep and wake
?
In
“
Jephthah
”
we find
an
almost identical rendering
of
the above
,
concerning the children
of
free love
:
1
Mysteries
:
Lyrical and Dramatic
,
vol
.
i,
p
.
101
.