MOON-WANE

By Michael Fairfax [Aleister Crowley]

Published in the English Review

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

October 1922

(pages 283-285)

Hush! the moon dazzles. In her virgin light

The carnival of day

Is shrouded, the nun’s sharp-cut black and white

For the dancer’s tinsel and feathers, glowing gay

In the spot-light. Hush! No sound

Perfume the enchanted ground,

But this hymn’s ebb, this incantation’s wane,

For I must lull the fairies, and strike dumb

Satyr and Ægipan, restrain

Even the nymphs, till earth became

A shrine of silence—then

Let my voice cease to offend the ears of God and men!

Hush! the moon dazzles! As I pace nine times

The circle in her praise,

My steps uncertain as my soul sublimes

Its instrument; voice trembles as I raise

The spell. Mist gathers, clouds

Mine eyes with gossamer shrouds.

I am drunken on her purity, distraught

By her divinity, made blind

By the intense light of her thought

—It is not lawful for mankind

To drink of the hidden springs

With unchaste lips, with hands impure to touch true things.

She hath made me mad. She hath kindled a cold fire

Upon the altar-stone

Of my dead heart, no incense of desire

To burn, but with my life to feed it, thrown

For fuel to its sterile splendour,

No swordsman to defend her,

No priest to worship her, no pythoness,

No prophet, will she, but a mirror-soul

By light received to express

Her virtue, to shine sole

True witness to her cult

That looks not back to cause, nor forward to result.

My soul is sundered by her sickle. Each nerve

Each cell exactly chosen

Feeds, but not surfeits, the one need, to serve

That sublime altar, that flame fixed and frozen.

Flowers in my soul that bloomed

Ye are utterly consumed

Even as the weeds and herbs of pestilence,

Her soul esteeming hate

And love alike offence

To silence, the pure state

Of virtue that would live

Perfect with all, unsoiled by self’s initiative.

Hush! the moon dazzles. But a meteor streaks

The midnight. Sudden I see

The sky her glamour hid. The Pole Star speaks

Firmness, the Great Bear signals Loyalty.

Sirius blazes: “None

Of us but whirls a sun,

Shepherd of systems! none but plays his part

Minute in some august

Galaxy, brain and heart

Aflame, yet with no lust

One state to gain, to shirk

Another, but—huge joy for the work’s sake, to work.”

Io Paian! The moon dazzles not. Dead globe,

Cast clout of Mother Earth,

Her lackey, flaunting our great Father’s robe

Of light, an insolent wench vaunting her girth,

The pettiest satellite

In heaven! The slut of night!

To work! Sweep well our doorsteps with the tides!

Rule sailors, hunters, witches,

Lovers and other lunatics, wide’s

The scope! be bayed by bitches,

But ask no hymns from one

Who knows Mother Earth’s breast shades his sleep from Father Sun.

I am a star! I whirl and blaze! I set

Planets above me, play

My part in the great game of life, though yet

I hardly know the rules, and day by day

Pain purges ignorance!

The captain? Fate or Chance?

The end? The plan? If end or plan there be!

I know not, nor can know;

Why worry? I cannot see

Whence came I, whither I go.

I know not who I am,

Nor what, but Will’s my lance, and Love’s my oriflamme.

A star, adrift in space! A soul, afloat

In the æther! Absolute,

Unique, eternal, God and man, a mote,

May be, but free my will to execute.

Love is my charioteer:

With the whip of Pride and Fear,

Wisdom and understanding for his reins,

He masters the wild horses

Bred of my heart and brain,

The incalculable forces

Of a man—drive on! we’ll race

The Sun from Here to Now to the end of Time and Space!