Chapter 2

He bent above: so still her breath What air she breathed he could not say, Whether in worlds of life or death: So softly ebbed away, away The life that had been light to him, So fled her beauty leaving dim The emptying chambers of his heart Thrilled only by the pang and smart, The dull and throbbing agony That suffers still, yet knows not why. Love's immortality so blind Dreams that all things with it conjoined Must share with it immortal day: But not of this--but not of this-- The touch, the eyes, the laugh, the kiss, Fall from it and it goes its way. So blind he wept above her clay, 'I did not think that you could die. Only some veil would cover you Our loving eyes could still pierce through; And see through dusky shadows still Move as of old your wild sweet will, Impatient every heart to win And flash its heavenly radiance in.' Though all the worlds were sunk in rest The ruddy star within his breast Would croon its tale of ancient pain, Its sorrow that would never wane, Its memory of the days of yore Moulded in beauty evermore. Ah, immortality so blind, To dream all things with it conjoined Must follow it from star to star And share with it immortal years. The memory, yearning, grief, and tears, Fall from it and it goes afar. He walked at night along the sands, And saw the stars dance overhead, He had no memory of the dead, But lifted up exultant hands To hail the future like a boy, The myriad paths his feet might press. Unhaunted by old tenderness He felt an inner secret joy! A spirit of unfettered will Through light and darkness moving still Within the All to find its own, To be immortal and alone.

THE VESTURE OF THE SOUL

I pitied one whose tattered dress Was patched, and stained with dust and rain; He smiled on me; I could not guess The viewless spirit's wide domain.

He said, 'The royal robe I wear Trails all along the fields of light: Its silent blue and silver bear For gems the starry dust of night.'

'The breath of joy unceasingly Waves to and fro its folds starlit, And far beyond earth's misery I live and breathe the joy of it.'

THE TWILIGHT OF EARTH

The wonder of the world is o'er: The magic from the sea is gone: There is no unimagined shore, No islet yet to venture on. The Sacred Hazels' blooms are shed, The Nuts of Knowledge harvested.

Oh, what is worth this lore of age If time shall never bring us back Our battle with the gods to wage Reeling along the starry track. The battle rapture here goes by In warring upon things that die.

Let be the tale of him whose love Was sighed between white Deirdre's breasts, It will not lift the heart above The sodden clay on which it rests. Love once had power the gods to bring All rapt on its wild wandering.

We shiver in the falling dew, And seek a shelter from the storm: When man these elder brothers knew He found the mother nature warm, A hearth fire blazing through it all, A home without a circling wall.

We dwindle down beneath the skies, And from ourselves we pass away: The paradise of memories Grows ever fainter day by day. The shepherd stars have shrunk within, The world's great night will soon begin.

Will no one, ere it is too late, Ere fades the last memorial gleam, Recall for us our earlier state? For nothing but so vast a dream That it would scale the steeps of air Could rouse us from so vast despair.

The power is ours to make or mar Our fate as on the earliest morn, The Darkness and the Radiance are Creatures within the spirit born. Yet, bathed in gloom too long, we might Forget how we imagined light.

Not yet are fixed the prison bars: The hidden light the spirit owns If blown to flame would dim the stars And they who rule them from their thrones: And the proud sceptred spirits thence Would bow to pay us reverence.

Oh, while the glory sinks within Let us not wait on earth behind, But follow where it flies, and win The glow again, and we may find Beyond the Gateways of the Day Dominion and ancestral sway.

THE DREAM

I did not deem it half so sweet To feel thy gentle hand, As in a dream thy soul to greet Across wide leagues of land,

Untouched more near to draw to you Where, amid radiant skies, Glimmered thy plumes of iris hue, My Bird of Paradise.

Let me dream only with my heart, Love first, and after see: Know thy diviner counterpart Before I kneel to thee.

So in thy motions all expressed Thy angel I may view: I shall not on thy beauty rest, But Beauty's ray in you.

THE PARTING OF WAYS

The skies from black to pearly grey Had veered without a star or sun; Only a burning opal ray Fell on your brow when all was done.

Aye, after victory, the crown; Yet through the fight no word of cheer; And what would win and what go down No word could help, no light make clear.

A thousand ages onward led Their joys and sorrows to that hour; No wisdom weighed, no word was said, For only what we were had power.

There was no tender leaning there Of brow to brow in loving mood; For we were rapt apart, and were In elemental solitude.

We knew not in redeeming day Whether our spirits would be found Floating along the starry way, Or in the earthly vapours drowned.

Brought by the sunrise-coloured flame To earth, uncertain yet, the while I looked at you, there slowly came, Noble and sisterly, your smile.

We bade adieu to love the old; We heard another lover then, Whose forms are myriad and untold, Sigh to us from the hearts of men.

SONG

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 dreams go straying in a land more fair; Half I tread the dew-wet grasses, half wander there. Fade your glimmering eyes in a world grown cold; Come, acushla, with me to the mountains old. There the bright ones call us waving to and fro-- Come, my children, with me to the ancient go.

THE VIRGIN MOTHER

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 in 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 whose loveliness The heart built up high heaven when it prayed.

Lover, your heart, the heart on which it lies, Your eyes that gaze, and those alluring eyes, Your lips, the lips they kiss, alike had birth Within this dark divinity of earth, Within this mother being you despise.

Ah, when I think this earth on which we tread Hath borne these blossoms of the lovely dead, And made the living heart I love to beat, I look with sudden awe beneath my feet As you with erring reverence overhead.

Here ends By Still Waters, Lyrical Poems Old & New by A.E., printed upon paper made in Ireland, and published by Elizabeth C. Yeats at the Dun Emer Press, in the house of Evelyn Gleeson at Dundrum in the County of Dublin, Ireland, finished on All Soul's Eve, in the year 1906.

End of Project Gutenberg's By Still Waters, by George William Russell