Poem by Aleister Crowley

The Hermit

AN ATTACK ON BARBERCRAFT

[Dedicated to George Cecil Jones]


At last an end of all I hoped and feared!
Muttered the hermit through his elfin beard.

Then what art thou? the evil whisper whirred.
I doubt me soerly if the hermit heard.

To all God's questions never a word he said,
But simply shook his venerable head.

God sent all plagues; he laughed and heeded not,
Till people certified him insane.

But somehow all his fellow-luntaics
Began to imitate his silly ticks.

And stranger still, their prospects so enlarged
That one by one the patients were discharged.

God asked him by what right he interfered;
He only laughed and into his elfin beard.

When God revealed Himself to mortal prayer
He gave a fatal opening to Voltaire.

Our Hermi had dispensed with Sinai's thunder,
But on the other hand he made no blunder;

He knew ( no doubt) that any axiom
Would furnish bricks to build some Donkeydom.

But!-all who urged that hermit to confess
Caught the infection of his happiness.

I would it were my fate to dree his weird;
I think that I will grow an elfin beard.

1. Prologue To Rodin In Rime
2. The Buddhist
3. The Five Adorations
4. Thanatos Basileos
5. Long Odds

Anonymous The Hermit ("For years, upon a mountain’s brow") Notes to the People, 1851, v. I, p. 423

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