THE MORNING POST

London, England

29 September 1899

(PAGE 3)

RECENT VERSE.

Jephthah and Other Mysteries, Lyrical and Dramatic. By Aleister Crowley. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. (Limited). 7s. 6d.

Aleister Crowley is an enthusiastic admirer and close imitator of Mr. Swinburne, copying, indeed, defects even more faithfully than beauties. He gives us a torrent of words, a deluge of adjectives, verbiage that is generally musical, but in which the poetic thought is much inferior to its form. Here is a very Swinburnian stanza:

“When the countenance fair of the morning,

And the lusty bright limbs of the day,

Race far through the West for a warning

Of night that is evil and gray;

When the light by the Southward is dwindled,

And the clouds as for sleep are unfurled.

The moon in the East is rekindled

The hope of the passionate world.”

This is melodious and eloquent, but it does not bear analysis, and it reads more like a parody than real poetry. In the stanza:

“With songsters the heavy sweet air

Is trembling and sighing and shimmering,

With meteors magically fair

The sky is ecstatically glimmering,”

It is strange that anybody with an ear for poetry could tolerate the last line. We gather from intrinsic evidence only that the author is young, a fact which might, indeed, be deduced from his overweening self-confidence; and when he has sown his literary wild oats he may possibly become a great poet. But the handling which his proof sheets would receive from the Seven—some of whom he would undoubtedly shock—would do him good.