THE ABERDEEN JOURNAL

Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

31 July 1899

(PAGE 7)

LITERATURE.

POETRY.

"Jephthah, and Other Mysteries, Lyrical and Dramatic." By Aleister Crowley. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Limited.)

No lover of contemporary poetry should fail to read this delightful volume of verse. “Mr. Aleister Crowley” (who, if we mistake not, has an intimate northern connection) has, more than any other of his time, caught the spirit and the style of Swinburne, and in some respects the pupil is greater than his master. If occasionally his meaning is incomprehensible, it is certainly not often that he lapses into meaningless verbiage, and his worst sins in this respect could be without difficulty paralleled from Swinburne and Browning. Mr. Crowley has a vivid imagination and the true poetical temperament. The most captious critic will find very little to blame in the smooth, majestic flow of his rhythms, only we should like to point out that on page 127, in the last verse on the page, “saw” does not rhyme very well with “before.” The longest piece in the book is “Jephthah, a Tragedy,” and Mr. Crowley has certainly handled his materials with consummate skill. The terrible nature of the situation is brought home to one far more vividly than in the bald Biblical narrative. As an example of Mr. Crowley’s style, we quote the following choral ode:—

The young men are girded with swords,

And the spears flash on high, and each shield

Gleams bright like the fury of lords

Through the steam of the well-foughten field,

And the children of Ammon are broken, their

princes and warriors yield.

The captain is chosen for fight.

The light of his eye is as fire,

And his hand is hardy of might

And heavy as dead desire;

And the sword of the Lord and of Jephthah shall

build our dead women a pyre.

The people were sad for his wrath,

The elders were bowed with despair,

And Death was the piteous path;

With ashes we covered our hair;

The voice of the singer was dumb, the voice of the

triumph of prayer.

Our sin was great in His sight:

We chased from our gates our brother,

We shamed his father’s might,

We spat on the grave of his mother,

We laughed in his face and mocked, looking slyly

one to another.

But God beheld, and His hand

Was heavy to bring us grief;

He brought down fire on the land,

And withered us root and leaf

Until we were utterly broken down, lost men

without a chief.

But whom we scorned we have set

A leader and judge over all,

His wrong He may not forget,

But He pitieth men that call

From the heart that is broken with fear and the

noise of funeral.

The lyrical pieces are of an exceptionally high order of merit, and we confidently anticipate that Mr. Aleister Crowley will in no time take his place as an English poet of acknowledged eminence. The book is beautifully printed on excellent paper, and most tastefully bound.