THE NEW AGE

London, England

21 December 1911

(pages 183-184)

RECENT VERSE.

By Jack Collings Squire.

"Hail Mary." By Aleister Crowley. (The Equinox)

Mr. Crowley’s book was published two years ago anonymously. It consists of some three dozen poems to the glory of the blessed Virgin. They are all marked by that facility and freedom of diction and metrical fluency that are such striking features of the author’s profaner books. Some of them are rather like hymns; some are exquisite verses with a Yellow-Booky flavour; and others are somewhat unsatisfactory exercises in forms which are not customarily used for such subjects. Here is a specimen of the last sort:—

Enshrined in cloistral sanctity

I sit and worship solemnly;

Mary is everything to me;

I hail thee holy Mary.

By day and night I sit alone

Mute as a monument of stone

And meditate before the throne

Of bright and blessed Mary.

The lilt of this, and in places its phraseology, have in them something which scarcely bears witness to a humble and profound reverence for the mother of God on the steps to Heaven. Some of the poems are very much better than this, but all of them lack real fervour in respect of feeling just as in respect of form they lack that final touch which distinguishes the work of the born poet from that of the competent turner of verses. Personally, I find Mr. Crowley the devotee of Mary considerably less interesting and much less amusing than Mr. Crowley the singer of strange and obscure gods, Abracadabras, and things one doesn’t mention. “Hail Mary,” in fact, is dull.