Thelema ScholarTHE ALEISTER CROWLEY COLLECTION
FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION

Search the corpus.

Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.

64 matching pages

Page 1 of 4
1910 · PDF PAGE 85

Ambergris

76 AMBERGRIS FROM THE ARGONAUTS At Waikiki Light shed from seaward over breakers bending Kiss-wise to the emerald hollows : light divine Whereof the sun is God, the sea his shrine ; Light in vibrations rhythmic ; light unending ; Light sideways from the girdling crags ex-tending Unto this lone and languid head of mine ; Light, that fulfils creation as with wine, Flows in the channels of the deep : light, rending The adamantine columns of the night, Is laden with the love-song of the light. Light, pearly-glimmering through dim gulf and hollow, B…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 122

Ambergris

AMBERGRIS 113 FROM GARGOYLES Prayer The light streams stronger through the lamps of sense. Intelligence Grows as we go. Alas : its icy glimmer Show dimmer, dimmer The awful vaults we traverse. Were the sun Himself the one Glory of space, he would but illustrate The night of Fate. Are not the hosts of heaven in vain arrayed ? Their light dismayed Before the vast blind spaces of the sky ? O galaxy Of thousands upon thousands closely curled ! Your golden world Incalculably small, its closest cluster Mere milky lustre Staining the infinite darkness…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 86

Ambergris

AMBERGRIS 77 Light ! ever light ! I swim far out and follow The footsteps of the wind, and light invades My desolate soul, and all the cypress shades Glow with transparent lustre, and the hollow I thought I had hidden in my heart must swallow The bitter draught of Truth ; no Nereid maids Even in my sea are mine : the whole sea’s glades And hills and springs are void of my Apollo— The Sea herself my tune and my desire ! The Sun himself my lover and my lyre !

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 134

Ambergris

…BERGRIS 125 Save some low sigh caught up where pulses beat Of warm love waiting in the arboreal seat Till the shade lengthen on the lawn light-gleaming. Now all the birds change tune, and all the light Glows lowlier, musing on departed day. Strange wings and sombre, heralding the night, Fleet far across the woods ; and gleaming bright The evening star looks from the orient way. Shadow and silence deepen : all the woods Take on a tenderer phrase of musical Breezes : the stream-sought homes and solitudes Murmur a little where the maiden moods Are…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 50

Ambergris

AMBERGRIS 41 Light is extended. I and Thou Are as they had not been. So on my head the light is one, Unity manifest ; A star more splended than the sun Burns for my crown’d crest ; Burns, as the murmuring orison Of waters in the west. What angel from the silver gate Flames to my fierier face ? What angel, as I contemplate The unsubstantial space, Move with my lips the laws of Fate That bind earth’s carapace ? No angel, but the very light And fire and spirit of Her, Unmitigated, eremite, The unmanifested myrrh, Ocean, and night that is not night…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 129

Ambergris

120 AMBERGRIS FROM RODIN IN RIME Acrobates My little lady light o’ limb Twirls on her lover’s twisting toes. Lithe as a lynx, red as a rose, She spins aloft and laughs at him. So gay the pose, so quaint the whim, One stares and stares : it grows and grows. So swift the air she seems to skim One’s senses dazzle ; wonder glows Warm in one’s veins like love—who knows ? One follows till one’s eyes are dim My little lady light o’ limb.

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 66

Ambergris

AMBERGRIS 57 FROM THE MOTHER’S TRAGEDY A Death in Thessaly Μόνος Θεών γάρ Θάνατος οϋ δώρων έρά —ÆSCH., Fr. Niobe. Farewell ! O Light of day, O torch Althæan ! The strange fruits lure me of Persephone ; I raise the last, the memorable pæan, Storm-throated, mouthed as cave-rolling sea ; I lift the cup : deep draughts of blue Lethean ! My wine to me. O lamentable season of Apollo, When swoops his glory to the golden wave ! As all his children, so their lord shall follow ! The flower he slew, the maiden he would save, As Itylus, light woven, tuned …

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 39

Ambergris

…cones of shapeless sleep And infinite dreams, and stars that roam, And comets moving through the deep Unfathomable skies, Darker for moonlight, and the glow-worm eyes Of dusky women that were stars, And paler curves of the immutable bars That line the universe with light, Great eagle-flights of mystic moons That dip, while the dull midnight swoons About the skirts of Night : These bowed and shaped themselves and said : “ It shall be thus ! ” And the intolerable luminous Death that is god bent down his head And answered : Thus, immutably, Above …

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 100

Ambergris

… imaginable, But known of one, by virtue of that spell Of thy sweet will toward him : thou, unknown, Untouched, grave mistress of the sunlight throne Of thine own nature ; known not even of me, But of some spark of woven eternity Immortal in this bosom. Phosphor paled And in the grey upstarted the dread veiled Rose light of dawn. Sun-shaped shone thy spears Of love forth darting into myriad spheres, Which I the poet called this light, that flower, This knowledge, that illumination, power This and love that, in vain, in vain, until Thy beauty da…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 53

Ambergris

44 AMBERGRIS Made luminous with light of power. I seal each æon’s period, And wait the moment and the hours. Aloof, alone, unloved, I stand With love and worship in my hand. I commune with the Gods : I wait Their summons, and I fire the brand I speak their Word : and there is Fate. I know no happiness, no pain, No swift emotion, no disdain, No pits : but the boundless light Of the Eternal Love, unslain, Flows through me to redeem the night. Mine is a sad slow life : but I, I would not gain release, and die A moment ere my task be done. To falte…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 46

Ambergris

AMBERGRIS 37 I led her the beautiful way To the land where the Winds lie between. So still lingers sun upon sea ; Still twilight draws down to the world ; The light of my spirit is she ; The soul of her love is in me ; Lithe kisses with music are curled. Like light on the meadows we dwell ; Like twilight clings heart unto heart ; Like midnight the depth of the spell Our love weaves, and stronger than hell The guards of our palace of art. We are one as the dew that is drawn By the sun from the sea : we are curled In curves of delight and of dawn…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 123

Ambergris

…nce hope must be, Look to the future, to the chance minute That life may shoot Some flower at least to blossom in the night, Since vital light Is sure to fail us on the hideous way. What ? Must we pray ? Verily, O thou littlest babe, too weak To stir or speak, Capable hardly of a thought, yet seed Of word and deed ? To thine assured fruition we may trust This weary dust. We who are old, and palsied, (and so wise !) Lift up our eyes To little children, as the storm-tossed bark Hails in the dark Some hardly visible harbour light ; we hold The hou…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 75

Ambergris

66 AMBERGRIS Breast of the surf-bound strand, Life of the earth, God’s child, Man’s bride, the light of the sweet land ! Are emeralds ever a spark of this clear green, Or sapphires hints of this diviner blue, Or rubies shadows of this rosy hue, Or light itself elsewhere so clear and clean ? For all the sparkling dews of heaven fallen far Crystalline, fixed, forgotten (as a star Forgets its nebulous virginity) Are set in all the sky and earth and sea. Shining with solar fire, The single-eyed desire Of scent and sound and sight and sense perfuses…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 64

Ambergris

AMBERGRIS 55 The self-begotten, the impassive shrine, The seat of Heaven’s archipelagoes ; Yet lighted not the glory whence it came, Nor shone upon the surface of the sea. Time, and the Great One, and the Nameless Name, Held in their grip the child, Eternity. Silence and Darkness in their womb withheld That spiritual fire, and brooded still : Nature and Time, their soleness undispelled, Ever awaiting the eternal Will. And Law was unbegotten : uttermost Night Dwelt, inaccessible to sound and sight Shielded from Voice, impervious to Light. Then g…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 40

Ambergris

… holy spirit of a man Burns through the limit of the wheels that ran Through all the unrelenting skies When Icarus died, And leaps, the flight of wise omnipotent eyes, When Dædalus espied An holy habitation for the shrine Solitary, mid the night of broken brine That foamed like starlight round the desolate shore. So to the mine of that crystalline ore Golden, the electric spark of man is drawn Deep in the bosom of the world, to soar New-fledged, an eagle to the dazzling dawn With lidless eyes undazzled, to arise, Song of the morning, to the Sou…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 90

Ambergris

…d love. With me the night is fallen in day ; The day swoons back to night ; The white and black are woven in gray, Faint sleep of silken light. A strange soft light about me shed Devours the sense of time : Hovers about my sleepy head Some sweet persistent rime. Beneath my breast my love may hear Deep murmur of the billows— O gather me to thee, my dear, On soft forgetful pillows ! O gather me in arms of love As maidens plucking posies,

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 34

Ambergris

…y nightingale, sing ; Past is the season of weeping ; Birds in the wood are on wing, Lambs in the meadow are leaping. Can there be any delight still in the buttercups sleeping ? Dawn, paler daffodil, dawn ; Smile, for the winter is over ; Sunlight makes golden the lawn, Spring comes and kisses the clover ; All the wild woodlands await poet and songster and lover. Linger, dew, linger ! and gem All the fresh flowers in the garland ! Blossom, leaf, bud and green stem Flash with your light to some far land, Where men shall wonder if you be not a ne…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 82

Ambergris

… 73 FROM ALICE : AN ADULTERY Alice The roses of the world are sad, The water-lilies pale, Because my lover takes her lad Beneath the moonlight veil. No flower may bloom this happy hour— Unless my Alice be the flower. The stars are hidden in dark and mist, The moon and sun are dead, Because my love has caught and kissed My body in her bed. No light may shine this happy night— Unless my Alice be the light. So silent are the thrush, the lark ! The nightingale’s at rest, Because my lover loves the dark, And has me in her breast. No song this happy …

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 143

Ambergris

…walled, Whose face is like an emerald ; Whose crown is indigo as night ; Smaragdine snakes about thy brow Twine, and the disk of flaming light Is on thee, seated in the prow Of the Sun’s bark, enthrones above With lapis-lazuli for love And ruby for enormous force Chosen to seat thee, thee girt round With leopard’s spell, and golden sound Of planets choral in their course ! O thou self-formulated sire ! Self-master of thy dam’s desire ! Thine eyes blaze forth with fiery light ; Thine heart a secret sun of flame ! I adore the insuperable might : …

original embedded textRead original & transcription →
1910 · PDF PAGE 44

Ambergris

AMBERGRIS 35 FROM THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY GHOST The May Queen (old style) It is summer and sun on the sea, The twilight is drawn to the world : We linger and laugh on the lea, The light of my spirit with me, Sharp limbs in close agony curled. The noise of the music of sleep, The breath of the wings of the night, The song of the magical deep, The sighs of the spirits that weep, Make murmur to tune our delight. Slow feet are our measures that move ; Swift songs are more soft than the breeze ; Our mouths are made mute for our love ; Our eyes are ma…

original embedded textRead original & transcription →