Life poems
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The Mantra-Yoga
© Aleister Crowley
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?
The Ladder
© Aleister Crowley
Dark, dark all dark! I cower, I cringe.
Only ablove me is a citron tinge
As if some echo of red, gold and lue
Chimed on the night and let its shadow through.
Yet I who am thus prisoned and exiled
Am the right heir of glory, the crowned child.
Photo, Brownie Troop, St. Louis, 1949 by Margaret Kaufman : American Life in Poetry #225 Ted Kooser
© Ted Kooser
There have been many poems written in which a photograph is described in detail, and this one by Margaret Kaufman, of the Bay Area in California, uses the snapshot to carry her further, into the details of memory.
Photo, Brownie Troop, St. Louis, 1949
The Interpreter
© Aleister Crowley
By the Wand and the Cup I conjure; by the Dagger and
Disk I constrain;
I am he that is sworn to endure; make thy music again!
I am Lord of the Star and the Seal; I am Lord of the Snake
and the Sword;
Reveal us the riddle, reveal! Bring us the word of the Lord!
Rembrandts
© Madison Julius Cawein
I shall not soon forget her and her eyes,
The haunts of hate, where suffering seemed to write
Its own dark name, whose syllables are sighs,
In strange and starless night.
The Garden of Janus
© Aleister Crowley
IThe cloud my bed is tinged with blood and foam.
The vault yet blazes with the sun
Writhing above the West, brave hippodrome
Whose gladiators shock and shun
The Traveled Man
© Wilcox Ella Wheeler
Sometimes I wish the railroads all were torn out,
The ships all sunk among the coral strands.
I am so very weary, yea, so worn out,
With tales of those who visit foreign lands.
The Four Winds
© Aleister Crowley
The South wind said to the palms:
My lovers sing me psalms;
But are they as warm as those
That Laylah's lover knows?
The Red Lily
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
I CALL her the Red Lily. Lo! she stands
From all her milder sister flowers apart;
A conscious grace in those fair-folded hands,
Pressed on the guileful throbbings of her heart!
The Buddhist
© Aleister Crowley
There never was a face as fair as yours,
A heart as true, a love as pure and keen.
These things endure, if anything endures.
But, in this jungle, what high heaven immures
After
© William Ernest Henley
Like as a flamelet blanketed in smoke,
So through the anaesthetic shows my life;
Thanatos Basileos
© Aleister Crowley
The serpent dips his head beneath the sea
His mother, source of all his energy
Eternal, thence to draw the strength he needs
On earth to do indomitable dees
A Psalm Of The Unseen Altar
© Henry Van Dyke
Man the maker of cities is also a builder of altars:
Among his habitations he setteth tables for his god.
No Children, No Pets by Sue Ellen Thompson: American Life in Poetry #89 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laurea
© Ted Kooser
Loss can defeat us or serve as the impetus for positive change. Here, Sue Ellen Thompson of Connecticut shows us how to mourn inevitable changes, tuck the memories away, then go on to see the possibility of a new and promising chapter in one's life.
Lyric of Love to Leah
© Aleister Crowley
Come, my darling, let us dance
To the moon that beckons us
To dissolve our love in trance
Heedless of the hideous
Heat & hate of Sirius-
Shun his baneful brilliance!
Logos
© Aleister Crowley
Out of the night forth flamed a star -mine own!
Now seventy light-years nearer as I urge
Constant my heart through the abyss unknown,
Its glory my sole guide while space surge
A Defence Of English Spring
© Alfred Austin
Unnamed, unknown, but surely bred
Where Thames, once silver, now runs lead,
Linoz Isidoz
© Aleister Crowley
Lo! I lament. Fallen is the sixfold Star:
Slain is Asar.
O twinned with me in the womb of Night!
O son of my bowels to the Lord of Light!
Independence
© Aleister Crowley
Come to my arms --- is it eve? is it morn?
Is Apollo awake? Is Diana reborn?
Are the streams in full song? Do the woods whisper hush
Is it the nightingale? Is it the thrush?
Hymn to Lucifer
© Aleister Crowley
Ware, nor of good nor ill, what aim hath act?
Without its climax, death, what savour hath
Life? an impeccable machine, exact
He paces an inane and pointless path
