LITERATURE

London, England

6 May 1899

(page 464)

RECENT VERSE.

We imagine Mr. Aleister Crowley, author of songs of the spirit (Kegan Paul) 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 riot 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. His muse is windy and boyish in over-emphasis, but he has a true sense of musical sound, and, metrically, he has scarcely a bad line. He should mature and live to write very respectable verse. We doubt if he will ever be original; but in the middle way of discipleship he ought to do well enough.