THE TWO SECRETS

Published in the U.K. Vanity Fair

London, England

2 December 1908

(page 728)

She used to lie, superbly bare,

Wrapped in her harvest flame of hair,

And shooting from her steely-grey eyes

Inexorable destinies:

Mute oracles—mysterious—

A soul in a sarcophagus!

For I, though all my life abstain,

Through all the pulsing of my brain,

Through all the wisdom I have won

From this one and the other one

Saw nothing. Nothing. Had I known

And loved some Sphinx of steel and stone

While countless chiliads rolled, may be

I had not guessed her mystery

So there she lay, regarding me.

And I?—I gave the riddle up.

I drank the wine, admired the cup

As I suppose a wise man does

Unless he be the man of Uz

To scrape with shards a sore that grows

The more he irks it. I suppose

All men are fools who seek the truth

At such a price as joy and youth.

So there she used to lie. May be

Correggio’s Antiope

Best paints you how she lay. And I

Loved her, and passed the matter by

Ending at last, one may dare say

In thinking that those eyes of grey

Meant naught, suspected naught, were bind,

Expressed the vacancy behind.

So life went on. One winter day

So silent and so still she lay

That I took cold regarding her.

I rose, I wrapped myself in fur;

Then came to her, my thoughts untold

Being that she, too, might be cold.

I laid my hand upon her breast.

Cold! Icy cold! Ah, you have guessed

Right. She was dead, quite dead.

And so,

You see, friend, I shall never know

She kept her secret.

—Leave me alone!

Or—I shall hardly keep my own!

Aleister Crowley