Lo! were it otherwise, mere banishment,
I deem he had feared more! He had an heir.
This was a boy of strength with ardour blent,
High hope embowered in a body fair.
Him had he watched with eager eye, aware
Of misery occult in youth, awake
At the first touch of the diviner air
Of manhood, that could bane and blessing make,
The Lord of Life and Death, the secret of the Snake.

Aleister Crowley, Why Jesus Wept

Hermetic quote Crowley Why Jesus Wept banishment feared boy strength ardour blent misery occult youth awake life death secret snake

Consider also:

  1. “Smitten by Beauty down I fell as dead– So strikes the sunlight on a miner’s head. Blind, stricken, crushed! That vast effulgence stole, Flooded the caverns of my secret soul, And gushed in waves of weeping. I was wed Unto a part, and could not grasp the whole.”
  2. “In middle music of Apollo’s corn She stood, the reaper, challenging a kiss; The lips of her were fresher than the morn, The perfume of her skin was ambergris; The sun had kissed her body into brown; Ripe breasts thrown forward to the summer breeze; Warm tints of red lead fancy to the crown, Her coils of chestnut, in abundant ease, That bound the stately head. What joy of youth Lifted her nostril to respire the wind? What pride of being? What triumphal truth Acclaimed her queen to her imperial mind?”
  3. “Then, one immaculate divinest whole, Plunge, fire, within all fire, dive far to death; Till, like king Satan’s sympathetic breath, Burn on us as a voice from far above Strange nameless elements of fire and love; And we, one mouth to kiss, one soul to lure, For ever, wedded, one, divine, endure Far from sun, sea, and spring from love or light, Imbedded in impenetrable night; Deeper than ocean, higher than the sky, Vaster than petty loves that dream and die, Insatiate, angry, terrible for lust, Who shrivel God to adamantine dust By our fierce gaze upon him, who would strive Under our wrath, to flee away, to dive Into the deep recesses of his heaven.”
  4. “O little root of nobleness left thus Dead since it has no power to grow, to bloom; Live, since I may not bury it within The gaping tomb Where virtue lies, that I, imperious, Long since interred with hope, and all life’s joy save sin.”
  5. Mathematical Circus