AE in the Irish Theosophist. George William Russell
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George William Russell
AE in the Irish Theosophist
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066199029
Table of Contents
If a thousand ages since
Hurled us from the throne:
Then a thousand ages wins
Back again our own.
Sad one, dry away your tears:
Sceptred you shall rise,
Equal mid the crystal spheres
With seraphs kingly wise.
—February, 1894
H. P. B.
(In Memoriam.)
Though swift the days flow from her day,
No one has left her day unnamed:
We know what light broke from her ray
On us, who in the truth proclaimed
Grew brother with the stars and powers
That stretch away—away to light,
And fade within the primal hours,
And in the wondrous First unite.
We lose with her the right to scorn
The voices scornful of her truth:
With her a deeper love was born
For those who filled her days with ruth.
To her they were not sordid things:
In them sometimes—her wisdom said—
The Bird of Paradise had wings;
It only dreams, it is not dead.
We cannot for forgetfulness
Forego the reverence due to them,
Who wear at times they do not guess
The sceptre and the diadem.
With wisdom of the olden time
She made the hearts of dust to flame;
And fired us with the hope sublime
Our ancient heritage to claim;
That turning from the visible,
By vastness unappalled nor stayed,
Our wills might rule beside that Will
By which the tribal stars are swayed;
And entering the heroic strife,
Tread in the way their feet have trod
Who move within a vaster life,
Sparks in the Fire—Gods amid God.
—August 15, 1894
By the Margin of the Great Deep
When the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies,
All its vapourous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam
With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes;
I am one with the twilight's dream.
When the trees and skies and fields are one in dusky mood,
Every heart of man is rapt within the mother's breast:
Full of peace and sleep and dreams in the vasty quietude,
I am one with their hearts at rest.
From our immemorial joys of hearth and home and love,
Strayed away along the margin of the unknown tide,
All its reach of soundless calm can thrill me far above
Word or touch from the lips beside.
Aye, and deep, and deep, and deeper let me drink and draw
From the olden Fountain more than light or peace or dream,
Such primeval being as o'erfills the heart with awe,
Growing one with its silent stream.
—March 15, 1894
The Secret
One thing in all things have I seen:
One thought has haunted earth and air;
Clangour and silence both have been
Its palace chambers. Everywhere
I saw the mystic vision flow,
And live in men, and woods, and streams,
Until I could no longer know
The dream of life from my own dreams.
Sometimes it rose like fire in me,
Within the depths of my own mind,
And spreading to infinity,
It took the voices of the wind.
It scrawled the human mystery,
Dim heraldry—on light and air;
Wavering along the starry sea,
I saw the flying vision there.
Each fire that in God's temple lit
Burns fierce before the inner shrine,
Dimmed as my fire grew near to it,
And darkened at the light of mine.
At last, at last, the meaning caught:
When spirit wears its diadem,
It shakes its wondrous plumes of thought,
And trails the stars along with them.
—April 15, 1894
Dust
I heard them in their sadness say,
"The earth rebukes the thought of God:
We are but embers wrapt in clay
A little nobler than the sod."
But I have touched the lips of clay—
Mother, thy rudest sod to me
Is thrilled with fire of hidden day,
And haunted by all mystery.
—May 15, 1894
Magic
—After