THE MANTRA-YOGA


                                         I

     How should I seek to make a song for thee
         When all my music is to moan thy name?
         That long sad monotone --- the same --- the same ---
     Matching the mute insatiable sea
     That throbs with life's bewitching agony,
         Too long to measure and too fierce to tame!
         An hurtful joy, a fascinating shame
     Is this great ache that grips the heart of me.

     Even as a cancer, so this passion gnaws
     Away my soul, and will not ease its jaws
         Till I am dead.  Then let me die!  Who knows
     But that this corpse committed to the earth
     May be the occasion of some happier birth?
         Spring's earliest snowdrop?  Summer's latest rose?

                                        II

     Thou knowest what asp hath fixed its lethal tooth
         In the white breast that trembled like a flower
         At thy name whispered.  thou hast marked how hour
     By hour its poison hath dissolved my youth,               {275}
     Half skilled to agonise, half skilled to soothe
         This passion ineluctable, this power
         Slave to its single end, to storm the tower
     That holdeth thee, who art Authentic Truth.

     O golden hawk!  O lidless eye!  Behold
     How the grey creeps upon the shuddering gold!
         Still I will strive!  That thou mayst sweep
     Swift on the dead from thine all-seeing steep ---
         And the unutterable word by spoken.

                                                 ALEISTER CROWLEY.

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