Star In the West TNR.pdf - The Hermetic Library

And lily garment that from sight
Half hides the ivory throne,
Lay in my arms the livelong night
To call my soul her own.*
* Songs of the Spirit, vol. i, p. 53.
Whilst parts of the poem “Messaline” with which “Alice” opens remind us
of poor “Jenny.”
Tennyson, if we are to judge from the introduction to “Alice,” does not seem
to hold a very high position in the opinion of Aleister Crowley. “He is a
neurasthenic counter-jumper” certainly would not have pleased Poe, who
regarded him as the noblest poet that ever lived. Nevertheless we find traces
of the great laureate’s work in these poems, such as the idea contained in the
following verse of “De Profundis”:
I have dreamed life a circle or a line,
Called God, and Fate, and Chance, and Man, divine.
I know not all I say, but through it all
Mark the dim hint of ultimate sunshine!*
*Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic, vol. i, p. 113.
which is almost identical with that in Canto LIV of “In Memoriam.” A poem
written in the metre of Tennyson’s most famous work, yet differing in
cadence, is “The Blood Lotus.”
Quaint carven vampire bats, unseen in curious hollows of the
trees,
Or deadlier serpents coiled at ease round carcases of birds
unclean;
All wandering changeful spectre shapes that dance in slow
sweet measure round
And merge themselves in the profound, nude women and
distorted apes
Grotesque and hairy, in their rage more rampant than the
stallion steed;