The Nameless Quest in The Gate of the Sanctuary from The Temple of the Holy Ghost (Collected Works, Vol I) by Aleister Crowley.

“The plain is covered with a many dead.
Glisten white bone and salt-encrusted head,
Glazed eye imagined, of a crystal built.
And see! dark patches, as of murder spilt.
Ugh! ‘So thy fellows of the quest are sped!
Thou shall be with them: onward, if thou wilt!’
So was the chilling whisper at my side,
Or in my brain.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “THE king was silent. In the blazoned hall Shadows, more mute than at a funeral True mourners, waited, waited in the gloom; Waited to hear what child was in the womb Of his high thoughts. As dead men were we all; As dead men wait the trumpet in the tomb. The king was silent. Tense the high-strung air Must save itself by trembling–if it dare. Then a lone shudder ran across the space; Each man ashamed to see his fellow’s face, Each troubled and confused. He did not spare Our fear–he spake not yet a little space.”
  2. “I turned–the path? My horror was complete– A flaming sword across the earthquake gap. I cried aloud to God in my despair. ‘The quest of quests! I seek it, for I dare! Moonward! on, moonward!'”
  3. “Mine eyes had fixed them on the sphinx, the sky. ‘Is then this quest of immortality?’ And echo answered from some unseen caves: Mortality! I shrink, and wonder why. Strange I am nothing tainted with this fear Now, that had touched me first. For I am here Half-way I reckon to the field of salt, The pillar, and the bones—it was a fault I am cured of! praise to God!”
  4. “My voice–ah! flashes out the word of flame: ‘Eternal Beauty, One and absolute!'”
  5. “Up rears the pillar. Quaintly shaped and hued, It focussed all the sky and all the plain To its own ugliness. I looked again, And saw its magic in another mood. A shapeless truth took image in my brain.”