LITERATURE

London, England

21 April 1899

(page 346)

RECENT ENGLISH VERSE.

We imagine Mr. Aleister Crowley, author of “Songs of the Spirit,” to be a young man; evidently he is just passing through the Swinburnian epoch. His verse is full of the influence of “Poems and Ballads”; it contains a lot of words without much thought at the back of them. We seem, for example, to have heard this sort of thing a good many times before:

“The garland I made in my sorrow

Was woven of infinite peace;

The joy that was white on the morrow

Made music of viols at ease.

The thoughts to the Highest would borrow

The roar of the seas.”

And yet, despite a good deal of bombast about “lust being one with love,” and the like, Mr. Crowley has many poetical qualities, and a good deal of promise.