In 1898 the Wickedest Man in the World was feeling thoroughly sorry for himself. The occultist Aleister Crowley’s first great love affair, with fellow Cambridge undergraduate Herbert Jerome Pollitt, was in ruins, and he took to poetry as his only solace.”When my sick body in his love lies drowned/ And he lies corpse-wise on me, nor will rise/ Though my breath shudders, and my soul be dead,” he wrote – and much, much more – in a tiny notebook of unpublished manuscript poems which has recently resurfaced.

read more Black magician Aleister Crowley’s early gay verse comes to light | Books | The Guardian.