THE BIRMINGHAM DAILY POST

Birmingham, Warwickshire, England

8 August 1910

(page 4)

SOME NOTABLE VERSE.

Ambergris. By Aleister Crowley. (Mathews.) 3s. 6d. net.

Mr. Aleister Crowley is a poet who would receive no quarter from the revolutionaries. They would be all for damning him, and they would be wrong, because he is a poet. Many of the poems in “Ambergris”, which is a selection from a formidable list of larger works, are more Swinburnian echoes, e.g.:

In the ways of the depth and the height,

Where the multitude stars are at ease,

There is music and terrible light,

And the violent song of the seas.

Truth to tell, however, they are pleasanter echoes than is commonly the case. On the other hand, Mr. Crowley has much to say that is passionate and largely conceived, and frequently says it in a memorable way. “The Reaper” is a poem which is in itself enough to silence any criticism that complains of a poet working frankly under the definite influence of his ancestry.