The Breath of Light

From the cool and dark-lipped furrows breathes a dim delight Aureoles of joy encircle every blade of gra.s.s Where the dew-fed creatures silent and enraptured pa.s.s: 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e: 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

W. Q. J. *

O hero of the iron age, Upon thy grave we will not weep, Nor yet consume away in rage For thee and thy untimely sleep.

Our hearts a burning silence keep.

O martyr, in these iron days One fate was sure for soul like thine: Well you foreknew but went your ways.

The crucifixion is the sign, The meed of all the kingly line.

We may not mourn--though such a night Has fallen on our earthly spheres Bereft of love and truth and light As never since the dawn of years;-- For tears give birth alone to tears.

One wreath upon they grave we lay (The silence of our bitter thought, Words that would scorch their hearts of clay), And turn to learn what thou has taught, To shape our lives as thine was wrought.

--April 15, 1896

[* This is unsigned but is very possibly G.W. Russell's. It was a memoriam to William Quan Judge (W.Q.J), the leader of the American and European Theosophical Societies at the time, one of the original founders of the Theosophical Society, and close co-worker with H.P. Blavatsky.]

Fron the Book of the Eagle --[St. John, i. 1-33]

In the mighty Mother's bosom was the Wise With the mystic Father in aeonian night; Aye, for ever one with them though it arise Going forth to sound its hymn of light.

At its incantation rose the starry fane; At its magic thronged the myriad race of men; Life awoke that in the womb so long had lain To its cyclic labours once again.

'Tis the soul of fire within the heart of life; From its fiery fountain spring the will and thought; All the strength of man for deeds of love or strife, Though the darkness comprehend it not.

In the mystery written here John is but the life, the seer; Outcast from the life of light, Inly with reverted sight Still he scans with eager eyes The celestial mysteries.

Poet of all far-seen things At his word the soul has wings, Revelations, symbols, dreams Of the inmost light which gleams.

The winds, the stars, and the skies though wrought By the one Fire-Self still know it not; And man who moves in the twilight dim Feels not the love that encircles him, Though in heart, on bosom, and eyelids press Lips of an infinite tenderness, He turns away through the dark to roam Nor heeds the fire in his hearth and home.

They whose wisdom everywhere Sees as through a crystal air The lamp by which the world is lit, And themselves as one with it; In whom the eye of vision swells, Who have in entranced hours Caught the word whose might compels All the elemental powers; They arise as G.o.ds from men Like the morning stars again.

They who seek the place of rest Quench the blood-heat of the breast, Grow ascetic, inward turning Trample down the l.u.s.t from burning, Silence in the self the will For a power diviner still; To the fire-born Self alone The ancestral spheres are known.