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The Joy of Earth
© George William Russell
OH, the sudden wings arising from the ploughed fields brown
Showered aloft in spray of song the wild-bird twitter floats
Oer the unseen fount awhile, and then comes dropping down
Nigh the cool brown earth to hush enraptured notes.
Children of Lir
© George William Russell
WE woke from our sleep in the bosom where cradled together we lay:
The love of the dark hidden Father went with us upon our way.
And gay was the breath in our being, and never a sorrow or fear
Was on us as, singing together, we flew from the infinite Lir.
The Child of Destiny
© George William Russell
THIS is the hero-heart of the enchanted isle,
Whom now the twilight children tenderly enfold,
Pat with their pearly palms and crown with elfin gold,
While in the mountains breast his brothers watch and smile.
Fantasy
© George William Russell
OVER all the dream-built margin, flushed with grey and hoary light,
Glint the bubble planets tossing in the dead black sea of night.
Immemorial face, how many faces look from out thy skies,
Now with ghostly eyes of wonder rimmed around with rainbow dyes:
The Master Singer
© George William Russell
A LAUGHTER in the diamond air, a music in the trembling grass;
And one by one the words of light as joydrops through my being pass:
I am the sunlight in the heart, the silver moon-glow in the mind;
My laughter runs and ripples through the wavy tresses of the wind.
An Irish Face
© George William Russell
NOT her own sorrow only that hath place
Upon yon gentle face.
Too slight have been her childhoods years to gain
The imprint of such pain.
A Summer Night
© George William Russell
HER mist of primroses within her breast
Twilight hath folded up, and oer the west,
Seeking remoter valleys long hath gone,
Not yet hath come her sister of the dawn.
Age and Youth
© George William Russell
WE have left our youth behind:
Earth is in its baby years:
Void of wisdom cries the wind,
And the sunlight knows no tears.
By the Margin of the Great Deep
© George William Russell
WHEN the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies,
All its vaporous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam
With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes;
I am one with the twilights dream.
Love
© George William Russell
ERE I lose myself in the vastness and drowse myself with the peace,
While I gaze on the light and the beauty afar from the dim homes of men,
May I still feel the heart-pang and pity, love-ties that I would not release;
May the voices of sorrow appealing call me back to their succour again.
A Memory
© George William Russell
YOU remember, dear, together
Two children, you and I,
Sat once in the autumn weather,
Watching the autumn sky.
Tragedy
© George William Russell
A MAN went forth one day at eve:
The long days toil for him was done:
The eye that scanned the page could leave
Its task until tomorrows sun.
Epilogue
© George William Russell
WELL, when all is said and done
Best within my narrow way,
May some angel of the sun
Muse memorial oer my clay:
The Message
© George William Russell
DO you not feel the white glow in your breast, my bird?
That is the flame of love I send to you from afar:
Not a wafted kiss, hardly a whispered word,
But love itself that flies as a white-winged star.
Rest
© George William Russell
ON me to rest, my bird, my bird:
The swaying branches of my heart
Are blown by every wind toward
The home whereto their wings depart.
The Last Hero
© George William Russell
WE laid him to rest with tenderness;
Homeward we turned in the twilights gold;
We thought in ourselves with dumb distress
All the story of earth is told.
The Gift
© George William Russell
I THOUGHT, beloved, to have brought to you
A gift of quietness and ease and peace,
Cooling your brow as with the mystic dew
Dropping from twilight trees.
Symbolism
© George William Russell
Nearer to Thee, not by delusion led,
Though there no house fires burn nor bright eyes gaze:
We rise, but by the symbol charioted,
Through loved things rising up to Loves own ways:
By these the soul unto the vast has wings
And sets the seal celestial on all mortal things.
Felixstowe, or The Last of Her Order
© John Betjeman
With one consuming roar along the shingle
The long wave claws and rakes the pebbles down
To where its backwash and the next wave mingle,
A mounting arch of water weedy-brown
Against the tide the off-shore breezes blow.
Oh wind and water, this is Felixstowe.
Back From Australia
© John Betjeman
At home in Cornwall hurrying autumn skies
Leave Bray Hill barren, Stepper jutting bare,
And hold the moon above the sea-wet sand.
The very last of late September dies
In frosty silence and the hills declare
How vast the sky is, looked at from the land.
