George William Russell Poems
A collection of select George William Russell famous poems that were written by George William Russell or written about the poet by other famous poets. PoetrySoup is a comprehensive educational resource of the greatest poems and poets on history.
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by
George William Russell
FROM the cool and dark-lipped furrows
Breathes a dim delight
Through the woodland’s purple plumage
To the diamond night.
Aureoles of joy encircle
Every blade of grass
Where the dew-fed creatures silent
And enraptured pass.
And the restless ploughman pauses,
Turns and, wondering,
Deep beneath his rustic habit
Finds himself a king;
For a fiery moment looking
With the eyes of God
Over fields a slave...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
TARRY thou yet, late lingerer in the twilight’s glory:
Gay are the hills with song: earth’s faery children leave
More dim abodes to roam the primrose-hearted eve,
Opening their glimmering lips to breathe some wondrous story.
Hush, not a whisper! Let your heart alone go dreaming.
Dream unto dream may pass: deep in the heart alone
Murmurs the Mighty One his solemn undertone.
Canst thou not...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
I WHO had sought afar from earth
The faery land to meet,
Now find content within its girth
And wonder nigh my feet.
To-day a nearer love I choose
And seek no distant sphere;
For aureoled by faery dews
The dear brown breasts appear.
With rainbow radiance come and go
The airy breaths of day;
And eve is all a pearly glow
With moonlit...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
NOT the soul that’s whitest
Wakens love the sweetest:
When the heart is lightest
Oft the charm is fleetest.
While the snow-frail maiden,
Waits the time of learning,
To the passion laden
Turn with eager yearning.
While the heart is burning
Heaven with earth is banded:
To the stars returning
Go not empty-handed.
Ah, the snow-frail maiden!
Somehow truth has missed her,
Left the heart unladen
...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
THERE in her old-world garden smiles
A symbol of the world’s desire,
Striving with quaint and lovely wiles
To bind to earth the soul of fire.
And while I sit and listen there,
The robe of Beauty falls away
From universal things to where
Its image dazzles for a day.
Away! the great life calls; I leave
For Beauty, Beauty’s rarest flower;
For Truth, the lips that ne’er deceive;
For...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
YOU and I have found the secret way,
None can bar our love or say us nay:
All the world may stare and never know
You and I are twined together so.
You and I for all his vaunted width
Know the giant Space is but a myth;
Over miles and miles of pure deceit
You and I have found our lips can meet.
You and I...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
WHO is that goddess to whom men should pray,
But her from whom their hearts have turned away,
Out of whose virgin being they were born,
Whose mother nature they have named with scorn
Calling its holy substance common clay.
Yet from this so despised earth was made
The milky whiteness of those queens who swayed
Their generations with a light caress,
And from some image of...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
I BEGIN through the grass once again to be bound to the Lord;
I can see, through a face that has faded, the face full of rest
Of the earth, of the mother, my heart with her heart in accord,
As I lie ’mid the cool green tresses that mantle her breast
I begin with the grass once again to be...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
OUT of the dusky chamber of the brain
Flows the imperial will through dream on dream:
The fires of life around it tempt and gleam;
The lights of earth behind it fade and wane.
Passed beyond beauty tempting dream on dream,
The pure will seeks the heart-hold of the light:
Sounds the deep OM, the mystic word of might:
Forth from the heart-hold breaks the living...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
DUSK its ash-grey blossoms sheds on violet skies,
Over twilight mountains where the heart songs rise,
Rise and fall and fade away from earth to air.
Earth renews the music sweeter. Oh, come there.
Come, acushla, come, as in ancient times
Rings aloud the underland with faery chimes.
Down the unseen ways as strays each tinkling fleece
Winding ever onward to a fold of peace,
So my...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
SHADOWWHO art thou, O Glory,
In flame from the deep
Where stars chant their story;
Why trouble my sleep?
I hardly had rested;
My dreams wither now.
Why comest thou crested
And gemmed on thy brow?
GLORYUp, Shadow, and follow
The way I will show:
The blue gleaming hollow
To-night we shall know:
And rise through the vast to
The fountain of days
From whence we had passed to
The parting of ways.
SHADOWI know...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
WITH eyes all untroubled she laughs as she passes,
Bending beneath the creel with the seaweed brown,
Till evening with pearl dew dims the shining grasses
And night lit with dreamlight enfolds the sleepy town.
Then she will wander, her heart all a laughter,
Tracking the dream star that lights the purple gloom.
She follows the proud and golden races after,
As...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
THE SWEETEST song was ever sung
May soothe you but a little while:
The gayest music ever rung
Shall yield you but a fleeting smile.
The well I digged you soon shall pass:
You may but rest with me an hour:
Yet drink, I offer you the glass,
A moment of sustaining power,
And give to you, if it be gain,
Whether in...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
ON the bird of air blue-breasted glint the rays of gold,
And its shadowy fleece above us waves the forest old,
Far through rumorous leagues of midnight stirred by breezes warm.
See the old ascetic yonder, ah, poor withered form,
Where he crouches wrinkled over by unnumbered years
Through the leaves the flakes of moon-fire fall like phantom tears.
At the dawn a kingly hunter...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
THE CHILDREN awoke in their dreaming
While earth lay dewy and still:
They followed the rill in its gleaming
To the heart-light of the hill.
Its sounds and sights were forsaking
The world as they faded in sleep,
When they heard a music breaking
Out from the heart-light deep.
It ran where the rill in its flowing
Under the star-light gay,
With wonderful colour...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
WHO would think this quiet breather
From the world had taken flight?
Yet within the form we see there
Wakes the Golden King to-night.
Out upon the face of faces
He looked forth before his sleep:
Now he knows the starry races
Haunters of the ancient deep.
On the Bird of Diamond Glory
Floats in mystic floods of song:
As he lists Time’s triple story
Seems but as a day...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
WE air tired who follow after
Phantasy and truth that flies:
You with only look and laughter
Stain our hearts with richest dyes.
When you break upon our study
Vanish all our frosty cares;
As the diamond deep grows ruddy,
Filled with morning unawares.
With the stuff that dreams are made of
But an empty house we build:
Glooms we are ourselves afraid of,
By the ancient starlight chilled.
All unwise...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
THEY bathed in the fire-flooded fountains:
Life girdled them round and about:
They slept in the clefts of the mountains:
The stars called them forth with a shout.
They prayed, but their worship was only
The wonder at nights and at days,
As still as the lips of the lonely
Though burning with dumbness of praise.
No sadness of earth ever captured
Their spirits who bowed at the...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
WE are desert leagues apart;
Time is misty ages now
Since the warmth of heart to heart
Chased the shadows from my brow.
Oh, I am so old, meseems
I am next of kin to Time,
The historian of her dreams
From the long-forgotten prime.
You have come a path of flowers.
What a way was mine to roam!
Many a fallen empire’s towers,
...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
NOT her own sorrow only that hath place
Upon yon gentle face.
Too slight have been her childhood’s years to gain
The imprint of such pain.
It hid behind her laughing hours, and wrought
Each curve in saddest thought
On brow and lips and eyes. With subtle art
It made that little heart
Through its young joyous beatings to prepare
A quiet shelter there,
Where the immortal sorrows might...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
A SHAFT of fire that falls like dew,
And melts and maddens all my blood,
From out thy spirit flashes through
The burning-glass of womanhood.
Only so far; here must I stay:
Nearer I miss the light, the fire;
I must endure the torturing ray,
And with all beauty, all desire.
Ah, time long must the effort be,
And far the way that...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
IN day from some titanic past it seems
As if a thread divine of memory runs;
Born ere the Mighty One began his dreams,
Or yet were stars and suns.
But here an iron will has fixed the bars;
Forgetfulness falls on earth’s myriad races:
No image of the proud and morning stars
Looks at us from their faces.
Yet yearning still to reach to...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
A FRIENDLY mountain I know;
As I lie on the green slope there
It sets my heart in a glow
And closes the door on care.
A thought I try to frame—
I was with you long ago;
My soul from your heart out-came;
Mountain, is that not so?
Take me again, dear hills,
Open the door to me
Where the magic murmur thrills
The halls I do not see,
The...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
OH, the sudden wings arising from the ploughed fields brown
Showered aloft in spray of song the wild-bird twitter floats
O’er the unseen fount awhile, and then comes dropping down
Nigh the cool brown earth to hush enraptured notes.
Far within a dome of trembling opal throbs the fire,
Mistily its rain of diamond lances shed below
Touches eyes and brows and...Read more of this...
by
George William Russell
Wind of the gentle summer night,
Dwell in the lilac tree,
Sway the blossoms clustered light,
Then blow over to me.
Wind, you are sometimes strong and great,
You frighten the ships at sea,
Now come floating your delicate freight
Out of the lilac tree,
Wind you must waver a gossamer sail
To ferry a scent so light,
Will you carry my love a message as frail
Through the hawk-haunted...Read more of this...