THE ANTHENAEUM

London, England

25 March 1899

(page 367)

RECENT VERSE.

Songs of the Spirit, by Aleister Crowley (Kegan Paul and Co.), ascend, as the motto on the title-page—“Sublimi feriam sidera vertice”—indicates, to higher regions, which seem peopled with an unusual number of gory phantoms. They are difficult to read, and where they touch definite things more sensual than sensous. A poet’s dreams are not often so persistently full of “miasmal pestilence-light” as these. We do not like “dawny” and “frondage,” and cannot say that these verses deserve to be read—sung they could hardly be.