THE LONDON DAILY NEWS

London, England

14 September 1904

(page 4)

PLEASANT HARMONY

“The Argonauts.” By Aleister Crowley, Society for the Propagation of Christian Truth, Inverness.

We have received a curious volume, by Mr. Aleister Crowley, in the form of a poetic and lyrical drama in five acts. Mr. Crowley has written several volumes of verse, and has a fair poetic equipment, especially in the matter of technique. He has a smooth sweetness, a pleasant harmony, which he appears to have acquired by a study of the methods of Mr. Swinburne. His drama, in our opinion, is remarkable, less for its action than for its lyrics and for its dedications. Its lyrics are good, though we praise them with the reserve due to imitations. They are gentle flatteries of distinguished modern writers. No man has ever paid a more subtle tribute to the beauty of “Ave atque Vale” than the following, the Orpheus song, from Act IV.:

Light shed from seaward over breakers bending

Kiss-wise to the emerald hollows: light divine

Whereof the sun is God, the sea His shrine;

Light in vibrations rhythmic; light unending:

Light sideways from the girdling crags extending

Unto this lone and languid head of mine;

Light that fulfils creation as with wine,

Flows in the channels of the deep: light rending

The adamantine columns of the night,

Is laden with the lovesong of the light.

A page or two further on Mr. Crowley gives Orpheus a second lyric, which is less derivative, more individual, and more beautiful, though too long to quote in its entirety. We quote the first two stanzas:

I hear the waters faint and far,

And look to where the Polar star,

Half hidden in the haze, divides

The double chanting of the tides;

But, where the harbour’s gloomy mouth

Welcomes the stranger to the south,

The water shakes, and all the sea

Grows silver suddenly.

As one who standing on the moon

Sees the vast horns in silver hewn,

Himself in darkness, and beholds

How silently all space unfolds

Into her shapeless breast the spark

And sacred phantom of the dark;

So in the harbor horns I stand

Till I forget the land.

We have mentioned the remarkable dedications in this volume. Each act is dedicated, for stated reasons, to some person or persons, though as yet we have failed to discover the hidden, and perhaps religious, truth these dedications would convey. Their symbolism escapes us, though we think them, on the whole, the most successful portions of the book. What could be subtler than the following:

To

Whomsoever

And

The British Army

ON

The occasion

Of

reading “Man and Superman.”