THE SPEAKER

London, England

28 January 1899

(pages 107-108)

PRE-SHAKESPEARIANISM.

"Songs of the Spirit." By Aleister Crowley. London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trübner & Co.

Mr. Aleister Crawley [sic] (“Songs of the Spirit”) has a remarkable mastery of form:—

Like snows on the mountain, unlifted

By weather or wind as it blows,

In hollows the heaps of it drifted,

The splendour of fathomless snows;

So measure and meaning are shifted

To fashion a rose.

It is the very sound of Mr. Swinburne; and the whole book is full of it. But Mr. Crawley seems to have it by nature; his style would have been as it is supposing Mr. Swinburne had never written; at any rate, that is suggested by the ease and fluency of the measure.