Читать книгу AE in the Irish Theosophist - George William Russell - Страница 3
ОглавлениеIf 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 reading the Upanishads
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 hearthold of the light;
Sounds the deep "OM," the mystic word of might;
Forth from the hearthold breaks the living stream.
Passed out beyond the deep heart music-filled,
The kingly Will sits on the ancient throne,
Wielding the sceptre, fearless, free, alone,
Knowing in Brahma all it dared and willed.
—June 15, 1894
Immortality
We must pass like smoke, or live within the spirits' fire;
For we can no more than smoke unto the flame return.
If our thought has changed to dream, or will into desire,
As smoke we vanish o'er the fires that burn.
Lights of infinite pity star the grey dusk of our days;
Surely here is soul; with it we have eternal breath;
In the fire of love we live or pass by many ways,
By unnumbered ways of dream to death.
—July 15, 1894
The Man to the Angel
I have wept a million tears;
Pure and proud one, where are thine?
What the gain of all your years
That undimmed in beauty shine?
All your beauty cannot win
Truth we learn in pain and sighs;
You can never enter in
To the Circle of the Wise.
They are but the slaves of light
Who have never known the gloom,
And between the dark and bright
Willed in freedom their own doom.
Think not in your pureness there
That our pain but follows sin;
There are fires for those who dare
Seek the Throne of Might to win.
Pure one, from your pride refrain;
Dark and lost amid the strife,
I am myriad years of pain
Nearer to the fount of life.
When defiance fierce is thrown
At the God to whom you bow,
Rest the lips of the Unknown
Tenderest upon the brow.
—September 15, 1894
Songs of Olden Magic—II.
The Robing of the King—"His candle shined upon my head, and by his light I walked through darkness."—Job, xxix. 3
On the bird of air blue-breasted
glint the rays of gold,
And a 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 moonfire
fall like phantom tears.
At the dawn a kingly hunter
passed proud disdain,
Like a rainbow-torrent scattered
flashed his royal train.
Now the lonely one unheeded
seeks earth's caverns dim,
Never king or princes will robe them
radiantly as him.
Mid the deep enfolding darkness,
follow him, oh seer,
While the arrow will is piercing
fiery sphere on sphere.
Through the blackness leaps and sparkles
gold and amethyst,
Curling, jetting and dissolving
in a rainbow mist.
In the jewel glow and lunar
radiance rise there
One, a morning star in beauty,
young, immortal, fair.
Sealed in heavy sleep, the spirit
leaves its faded dress,
Unto fiery youth returning
out of weariness.
Music as for one departing,
joy as for a king,
Sound and swell, and hark! above him
cymbals triumphing.
Fire an aureole encircling
suns his brow with gold
Like to one who hails the morning
on the mountains old.
Open mightier vistas changing
human loves to scorns,
And the spears of glory pierce him
like a Crown of Thorns.
As the sparry rays dilating
o'er his forehead climb
Once again he knows the Dragon
Wisdom of the prime.
High and yet more high to freedom
as a bird he springs,
And the aureole outbreathing,
gold and silver wings
Plume the brow and crown the seraph.
Soon his journey done
He will pass our eyes that follow,
sped beyond the sun.
None may know the darker radiance,
King, will there be thine.
Rapt above the Light and hidden
in the Dark Divine.
—September 15, 1895
Brotherhood
Twilight a blossom grey in shadowy valleys dwells:
Under the radiant dark the deep blue-tinted bells
In quietness reimage heaven within their blooms,
Sapphire and gold and mystery. What strange perfumes,
Out of what deeps arising, all the flower-bells fling,
Unknowing the enchanted odorous song they sing!
Oh, never was an eve so living yet: the wood
Stirs not but breathes enraptured quietude.
Here in these shades the Ancient knows itself, the Soul,
And out of slumber waking starts unto the goal.
What bright companions nod and go along with it!
Out of the teeming dark what dusky creatures flit,
That through the long leagues of the island night above
Come wandering by me, whispering and beseeching love—
As in the twilight children gather close and press
Nigh and more nigh with shadowy tenderness,
Feeling they know not what, with noiseless footsteps glide
Seeking familiar lips or hearts to dream beside.
Oh, voices, I would go with you, with you, away,
Facing once more the radiant gateways of the day;
With you, with you, what memories arise, and nigh
Trampling the crowded figures of the dawn go by;
Dread deities, the giant powers that warred on men
Grow tender brothers and gay children once again;
Fades every hate away before the Mother's breast
Where all the exiles of the heart return to rest.
—July 15, 1895
In the Womb
Still rests the heavy share on the dark soil:
Upon the dull black mould the dew-damp lies:
The horse waits patient: from his lonely toil
The ploughboy to the morning lifts his eyes.
The unbudding hedgerows, dark against day's fires,
Glitter with gold-lit crystals: on the rim
Over the unregarding city's spires
The lonely beauty shines alone for him.
And day by day the dawn or dark enfolds,
And feeds with beauty eyes that cannot see
How in her womb the Mighty Mother moulds
The infant spirit for Eternity.
—January 15, 1895
In the Garden of God
Within the iron cities
One walked unknown for years,
In his heart the pity of pities
That grew for human tears
When love and grief were ended
The flower of pity grew;
By unseen hands 'twas tended
And fed with holy dew.
Though in his heart were barred in
The blooms of beauty blown;
Yet he who grew the garden
Could call no flower his own.
For by the hands that watered,
The blooms that opened fair
Through frost and pain were scattered
To sweeten the dull air.
—February 15, 1895
The Breath of Light
From the cool and dark-lipped furrows
breathes a dim delight
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 at morning
bowed him to the sod.
Blind and dense with revelation
every moment flies,
And unto the Mighty Mother
gay, eternal, rise
All the hopes we hold, the gladness,
dreams of things to be.
One of all they generations,
Mother, hails to thee!
Hail! and hail! and hail for ever:
though I turn again
For they joy unto the human
vestures of pain.
I, thy child, who went forth radiant
in the golden prime
Find thee still the mother-hearted
through my night in time;
Find in thee the old enchantment,
there behind the veil
Where the Gods my brothers linger,
Hail! for ever, Hail!
—May 15, 1895
The Free
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 shrine;
They fled to the Lonely enraptured
And hid in the Darkness Divine.
At twilight as children may gather
They met at the doorway of death,
The smile of the dark hidden Father
The Mother with magical breath.
Untold of in song or in story,
In days long forgotten of men,
Their eyes were yet blind with a glory
Time will not remember again.
—November 15, 1895
Songs of Olden Magic—IV
The Magi
"The mountain was filled with the hosts of the Tuatha de Dannan."
—Old Celtic Poem
See where the auras from the olden fountain
Starward aspire;
The sacred sign upon the holy mountain
Shines in white fire:
Waving and flaming yonder o'er the snows
The diamond light
Melts into silver or to sapphire glows
Night beyond night;
And from the heaven of heavens descends on earth
A dew divine.
Come, let us mingle in the starry mirth
Around the shrine!
Enchantress, mighty mother, to our home
In thee we press,
Thrilled by the fiery breath and wrapt in some
Vast tenderness
The homeward birds uncertain o'er their nest
Wheel in the dome,
Fraught with dim dreams of more enraptured rest,
Wheel in the dome,
But gather ye to whose undarkened eyes
The night is day:
Leap forth, Immortals, Birds of Paradise,
In bright array
Robed like the shining tresses of the sun;
And by his name
Call from his haunt divine the ancient one
Our Father Flame.
Aye, from the wonder-light that wraps the star,
Come now, come now;
Sun-breathing Dragon, ray thy lights afar,
Thy children bow;
Hush with more awe the breath; the bright-browed races
Are nothing worth
By those dread gods from out whose awful faces
The earth looks forth
Infinite pity, set in calm; their vision cast
Adown the years
Beholds how beauty burns away at last
Their children's tears.
Now while our hearts the ancient quietness
Floods with its tide,
The things of air and fire and height no less
In it abide;
And from their wanderings over sea and shore
They rise as one
Unto the vastness and with us adore
The midnight sun;
And enter the innumerable All,
And shine like gold,
And starlike gleam in the immortals' hall,
The heavenly fold,
And drink the sun-breaths from the mother's lips
Awhile—and then
Fail from the light and drop in dark eclipse
To earth again,
Roaming along by heaven-hid promontory
And valley dim.
Weaving a phantom image of the glory
They knew in Him.
Out of the fulness flow the winds, their son
Is heard no more,
Or hardly breathes a mystic sound along
The dreamy shore:
Blindly they move unknowing as in trance,
Their wandering
Is half with us, and half an inner dance
Led by the King.
—January 15, 1896
