TANNHÄUSER
XVI
One is incisive, corrosive;
Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant;
Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive;
Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant:
Five ... O Danaides, O Sieve!
XVII
Now, they ply axes and crowbars;
Now, they prick pins at a tissue
Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar’s
Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue?
Where is our gain at the Two-bars?
XVIII
Est fuga, volvitur rota.
On we drift: where looms the dim port?
One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota;
Something is gained, if one caught but the import—
Show it us, Hughes of Saxe-Gotha!
R. Browning, Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha
TANNHÄUSER
A STORY OF ALL TIME
BY
ALEISTER CROWLEY
A New Edition
Price Fifteen Shillings
net to the trade
SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF
RELIGIOUS TRUTH
Boleskine, Foyers, Inverness
1907
All Rights Reserved
[Pg 5]
DEDICATION
I SHALL not tell thee that I love thee!
Nay! by the Star in Heaven burning,
Its ray to me at midnight turning
To tell me that it beams above thee—
Nay! though thou wert, as I am, yearning,
I should not tell thee that I love thee!
I know what secret thought once blossomed
Into a blush that seemed a kiss,
Some swift suppressed extreme of bliss
In thy most fearful sigh embosomed.
What oracle should prate of this?
I know the secret thought that blossomed!
Extol the truth of love’s disdain!
Love, daring by no glance to gladden
A heart that waits but that to madden [Pg 6]
In purple pleasure plucked of pain.
Nay! let our tears, t
...