THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW

London, England

June 1901

(PAGE 715)

POETRY.

The Soul of Osiris: A History. By Aleister Crowley. London: Kegan Paul, Trench Trübner & Co.

Religious poetry is not always poetic. This cannot, however, be said with regard to the volume of verse entitled, The Soul of Osiris, by Aleister Crowley. There is much in the volume which will excite admiration, and much that will perplex and irritate the unintiated reader. The poet is, indeed, a mystic, and veils a morbidly exaggerated Catholicism under an ultra-Egyptian passion for death. Take as an example of the sickly mysticism of these poems the following:

“I stood within Death’s gate,

And blew the horn of Hell;

Mad laughter echoing against fate,

Harsh groans less terrible,

Howled from beneath the vault; in night the avenging thunders swell’d.”

This is the opening of a poem called “Cerebus.”

“Nature is one with my distress,

The flowers are dull, the stars are pale,

I am the Son of Nothingness.

I cannot lift the golden veil.

O Mother Isis, let thine eyes

Behold my grief, and sympathise!”

There is a lack of virility in poetry of this sort, but it cannot be denied that Aleister Crowley is a true poet—a poet of the school of Baudelaire [Charles Baudelaire] and Poe.