A POEM

By ALEISTER CROWLEY

Published in the International

New York, New York, U.S.A.

February 1918

(page 46)

I have ransacked heaven and earth,

Hilarion, for gramarye

Of words to witness to thy worth.

For incense-clouds of poesy

I have ransacked heaven and earth.

God came, and Light and Love and Life;

The mystic Rose flowered fair and fain;

All skies ensphered the worshipped wife;

All failed in fragrance; all in vain

God came, and Light and Love and Life.

Jewels and snows and flowers and streams

Lent flashing beauties to my verse;

They are but phantoms fed on dreams

To thy reality—I curse

Jewels and snows and flowers and streams.

I sought for fancy’s witch-device;

Arabian fable, Indian hymn,

Chinese design and Persian spice—

Besides thy truth how ghostly dim

Is fancy’s bodiless witch-device!

I love the legends of the past;

Egypt, Assyria, Greece and Rome,

The Celtic rune, the saga blast—

Thou art the sea, and they the foam,

The lovely legends of the past.

In the heart’s wordless exaltation,

The silence of the depth of things,

There only sobs mine adoration;

There only may I wave my wings—

Silence, and love, and exaltation.