TO A NEW BORN CHILD

By Michael Fairfax [Aleister Crowley]

Published in the English Review

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

October 1922

(page 287)

On that intolerable planet

Whose nature and whose name is Hell,

There slants a path of polished granite

Straight to a scaffold from a cell.

With lids cut off and fettered hands.

Each shoots the inexorable slope

To where the hooded hangman stands

His fingers ready on the rope.

Didst thou not know by what black art

Malice fees Love for his attorney,

Whose sly words wheedle souls to start

That unintelligible journey?

Whence wast thou? Was that place unknown

Airless and abject, an abyss

Of agony, as this our own

Perdition of paralysis?

No more! Truth's withered in her well;

The dry pump Reason mocks our thirst.

All that we know is horror of hell,

And are we sure we know the worst?

With leaping lungs you got your grip

On air—“I will to live” your cry.

The white bark of the phrase may strip

To the black pith “I will to die.”

On this intolerable planet,

Earth's evil that exceedeth hell,

There slants a path of polished granite

Straight to a scaffold from a cell.

With eyelids clipt and fettered hands,

Thou also slidest on the slope

To where the hooded hangman stands,

His fingers ready on the rope.