Today I present an erotic poem, probably full of hidden sexual meanings. Maybe the title refers to the Mons Veneris, and the four last verses of the first stanza also seem to hint at some sexual acts whose description was considered too obscene to be told explicitly in the early 20th century. The poem ends in ecstasy with a reference to Satan and Hell, as the latter seems to be more pleasurable than the Heaven of religion.

THE SUMMIT OF THE AMOROUS MOUNTAIN
by Aleister Crowley

TO love you, Love, is all my happiness;
To kill you with my kisses; to devour
Your whole ripe beauty in the perfect hour
That mingles us in one supreme caress;
To drink the purple of your thighs; to press
Your beating bosom like a living flower;
To die in your embraces, in the shower
That dews like death your swooning loveliness

To know you love me; that your body leaps
Withthe quick passion of your soul; to know
Your fragrant kisses sting my spirit so;
To be one soul where Satan smiles and sleeps;—
Ah! in the very triumph-hour of Hell
Satan himself remembers whence he fell!

Source: The Temple of the Holy Ghost, I, The Court of the Profane, in The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, Volume I (1905). See the digitisation of the original on the IAPSOP site, and the simple text online version by The Hermetic Library.

Previously published on Agapeta, 2017/06/25.