George William Russell

“ It is the Comforter, but it waves away our joys and hopes like the angel with the flaming sword. Though it is the Resting-place, it stirs to all heroic strife, to outgoing, to conquest. It is the Friend indeed, but it will not yield to our desires. Is it this strange, unfathomable self we think to know, and awaken to, by what is written, or by study of it as so many planes of consciousness. But in vain we store the upper chambers of the mind with such quaint furniture of thought. No archangel makes his abode therein. They abide only in the shining. ”

“ We may satisfy people's minds with a sense correspondence, and their souls may yet hold aloof. We shall only inspire by the magic of a superior beauty. Yet this too has its dangers. "Thou has corrupted thy wisdom by reason of they brightness," continues the seer. If we follow too much the elusive beauty of form we will miss the spirit. The last secrets are for those who translate vision into being. Does the glory fade away before thee? Say truly in they heart, "I care not. I will wear the robes I am endowed with today." Thou are already become beautiful, being beyond desire and free. ”

“ The gifts of the heart are too sacred to be laid before a closed door. Your mood, I know, will pass, and tomorrow we shall have this bond between us. I wait, for it can be said but once: I cannot commune magically twice on the same theme with you. I do not propose we should be opportunists, nor lay down a formula; but to be skillful in action we must work with and comprehend the ebb and flow of power. Mystery and gloom, dark blue and starshine, doubt and feebleness alternate with the clear and shining, opal skies and sunglow, heroic ardor and the exultation of power. ”

“ It is sadder than sorrow to think that pity with no hands to heal, that love without a voice to speak, should helplessly heap their pain upon pain while earth shall endure. But there is a truth about sorrow which I think may make it seem not so hopeless. There are fewer barriers than we think: there is, in fact, an inner alliance between the soul who would fain give and the soul who is in need. Nature has well provided that not one golden ray of all our thoughts is sped ineffective through the dark; not one drop of the magical elixirs love distills is wasted. ”

“ The birds were a winging rapture in the twilight. White wings, grey wings, brown wings, fluttered around and over the pine trees that crowned the grassy dun. The highest wings flashed with a golden light. At the sound of voices they vanished.
"How then shall we go to the plains of Murthemney? We ought not to be known. Shall we go invisibly, or in other forms? We must also fly as swiftly as the birds go."
"Fly! yes, yes, we shall—fly as the birds. But we shall choose fairer forms than these. I know where the Birds of Angus flock. Come, Liban, come!" ”

“ It is better to have a little knowledge and know that little than to have only hearsay of myriads of Gods. So I say, lay down your books for a while and try the magic of thought. "What a man thinks, that he is; that is the old secret." I utter, I know, but a partial voice of the soul with many needs. But I say, forget for a while that you are student, forget your name and time. Think of yourself within as the titan, the Demi-god, the flaming hero with the form of beauty, the heart of love. And of those divine spheres forget the nomenclature ”

“ Within me I felt the answering ecstasy that illuminated with vistas of dawn and rest, it seemed to say:
"Our spring and our summer are unfolding into light and form, and our autumn and winter are a fading into the infinite soul."
I thought, "To what end is this life poured forth and withdrawn?"
He came nearer and touched me; once more I felt the thrill of being that changed itself into vision.
"The end is creation, and creation is joy: the One awakens out of quiescence as we come forth, and knows itself in us; as we return we enter it in gladness, knowing ourselves. ”

“ There is part of ourselves whose progress we do not comprehend. There are deeds done in unremembered dream, and a deeper meditation in the further unrecorded silences of slumber. Downward from sphere to sphere the Immortal works its way into the flesh, and the soul has adventures in dream whose resultant wisdom is not lost because memory is lacking here. Yet enough has been said to give us the hint, the clue to trace backwards the streams of force to their fount. We wake in some dawn and there is morning also in our hearts, a love, a fiery vigor, a magnetic sweetness in the blood. ”

“ What was this old wisdom-religion? It was the belief that life is one; that nature is not dead but living; the surface but a veil tremulous with light—lifting that veil hero and sage of old time went outwards into the vast and looked on the original. All that they beheld they once were, and it was again their heritage, for in essence they were one with it—children of Deity. The One gave birth to the many, imagining within itself the heaven of heavens, and the heavens, and spheres more shadowy and dim, growing distant from the light. ”

“ It will surely come to those who wait in trust, a glow, a heat in the heart announcing the awakening of the Fire. And, as it blows with its mystic breath into the brain, there is a hurtling of visions, a brilliance of lights, a sound as of great waters vibrant and musical in their flowing, and murmurs from a single yet multitudinous being. In such a mood, when the far becomes near, the strange familiar, and the infinite possible, he wrote from whose words we get the inspiration:
"To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings and never be quiet again." ”

“ It was the phantom form of the child of Aed Abrait, with dark flowing tresses, mystic eyes, her face breathing the sweetness of the sun, with all the old nobility of earth, but elate and apart, as one who had been in the crystal spheres of the unseen and bathed in its immortalizing rivers and drunk the starry dews.
Come, Cu. Come, O hero," she whispered. "There are fiery fountains of life which will renew thee. We will go where the Sidhe dwell, where the golden life-breath flows up from the mountains in a dazzling radiance to the ever-shining regions of azure and pearl under the stars. ”

“ As in our past the bards gave way before the heroes, so in any national ideal worthy the name, all must give way in its hopes, wealth, literature, art, everything before manhood itself. If our humanity fails us or become degraded, of what value are the rest? What use would it be to you or to me if our ships sailed on every sea and our wealth rivaled the antique Ind, if we ourselves were unchanged, had no more kingly consciousness of life, nor that overtopping grandeur of soul indifferent whether it dwells in a palace or a cottage? ”

“ Can we let this most ancient light which again returns to us be felt by them only as a vague emotion, a little peace of uncertain duration, a passing sweetness of the heart? Can we not do something to allay the sorrow of the world? My brothers, the time of opportunity has come. One day in the long-marshaled line of endless days has dawned for our race, and the buried treasure-houses in the bosom of the deep have been opened to endow it with more light, to fill it with more power. The divine ascetics stand with torches lit before the temple of wisdom. ”

“ Ah, may darlings, you will have to fight and suffer: you must endure loneliness, the coldness of friends, the alienation of love; warmed only by the bright interior hope of a future you must toil for but may never see, letting the deed be its own reward; laying in dark places the foundations of that high and holy Eri of prophecy, the isle of enchantment, burning with druidic splendours, bright with immortal presences, with the face of the everlasting Beauty looking in upon all its ways, divine with terrestrial mingling till God and the world are one. ”

“ She half chanted, the passion of her speech not yet fallen away from her. "And where go the fires of men when they despair"? She was silent; then he continued half in scorn, "Your priestess is the priestess of ghouls and fays rather than a priestess of men; her wisdom is not for you; the spirits that haunt the elements are hostile because they see you full of fear; do not dread them and their hatred will vanish. The great heart of the earth is full of laughter; do not put yourselves apart from its joy, for its soul is your soul and its joy is your true being." ”

“ Cuchullain and Laeg passed out silently into the night. At the door of the dun a voice they knew not spake:
"So, warrior, you return. It is well. Not yet for thee is the brotherhood of the Sidhe, and thy destiny and Fand's lie far apart. Thine is not so great but it will be greater, in ages yet to come, in other lands, among other peoples, when the battle fury in thee shall have turned to wisdom and anger to compassion. Nations that lie hidden in the womb of time shall hail thee as friend, deliverer and saviour. ”

“ But who is there may set apart his destiny from the earth which bore him? I am one of those who would bring back the old reverence for the Mother, the magic, the love. I think, metaphysician, you have gone astray. You would seek within yourself for the fountain of life. Yes, there is the true, the only light. But do not dream it will lead you further away from the earth, but rather deeper into its heart. By it you are nourished with those living waters you would drink. You are yet in the womb and unborn, and the Mother breathes for thee the diviner airs. ”

“ I often doubt if the barbarities in eastern lands which we shudder at are in reality half so cruel, if they mean so much anguish as this threat of after-torture does to those who believe in the power of another to inflict it. It wounds the spirit to the heart: its consciousness of its own immortality becomes entwined with the terror of as long enduring pain. It is a lie which the all- compassionate Father-Spirit never breathed into the ears of his children, a lie which has been told here century after century with such insistence that half the nation has the manhood cowed out of it. ”

“ And this always takes place when all is fashioned to our liking: then into our dream strides the wielder of the lightning: we get glimpse of the great beyond thronged with mighty, exultant, radiant beings: our own deeds become infinitesimal to us: the colours of our imagination, once so shining, grow pale as the living lights of God glow upon them. We find a little honey in the heart which we make sweeter for some one, and then another lover, whose forms are legion, sighs to us out of its multitudinous being: we know that the old love is gone. ”

“ He will read not alone of Oisin, but of many an old hero, who, hailed by the faery (divine) voice, went away to live in the heart of green hills (to be initiated) or to these strange worlds.
Dear children of Eire, not alone to the past but to today belong such destinies. For if we will we can enter the enchanted land. The Golden Age is all about us, and heroic forms and imperishable love. In that mystic light rolled round our hills and valleys hang deed and memories which yet live and inspire. The Gods have not deserted us. ”

“ The gods are ourselves beyond the changes of time which harass and vex us here. They do not demand adoration but an equal will to bind us consciously in unity with themselves. The heresy of separateness cuts us asunder in these enraptured moments; but when thrilled by the deepest breath, when the silent, unseen, uncomprehended takes possession of thee, think "Thou art That," and something of thee will abide for ever in It. All thought not based on this is a weaving of new bonds, of illusions more difficult to break; it begets only more passionate longing and pain. ”

“ Truly my days were full of Mayas, and my work-a-day city life was no more real to me than one of those bright, brief glimpses of things long past. I talk of the past, and yet these moments taught me how false our ideas of time are. In the ever-living yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow are words of no meaning. I know I fell into what we call the past and the things I counted as dead for ever were the things I had yet to endure. Out of the old age of earth I stepped into its childhood, and received once more the primal blessing of youth, ecstasy, and beauty. ”

“ Eri, hearth and home of so many mystic races, Isle of Destiny, there shall yet return to thee the spiritual magic that thrilled thee long ago. As we descend and go back to a life, not the life we would will, not the life we will have, we think with sorrow of the pain, the passion, the partings, through which our race will once more return to nature, spirit and freedom. ”

“ We endure physical and moral suffering; but, fortunately or unfortunately, we are oblivious of the sorrow of all sorrows—the Spiritual Tragedy. Such a rust has come over the pure and ancient spirit of life, that the sceptre and the diadem and the starry sway we held are unremembered; and if anyone speaks of these things he is looked at strangely with blank eyes, or with eyes that suspect madness. I do not know whether to call him great, or pity him, who feels such anguish; for although it is the true agony of the crucifixion, it is only gods who are so martyred. ”

“ Yet men seem for ever to fly from their destiny of inevitable beauty; because of delay the power invites and lures no longer but goes out into the highways with a hand of iron. We look back cheerfully enough upon those old trials out of which we have passed; but we have gleaned only an aftermath of wisdom and missed the full harvest if the will has not risen royally at the moment in unison with the will of the Immortal, even though it comes rolled round with terror and suffering and strikes at the heart of clay. ”

“ I felt, perhaps we all felt, a mystic unquiet rebelling against the slumbrous mood of nature rolled round her hills and valleys.
"You must explain to us, Bryan, why it is we can never attain a real quiet, even here where all things seem at peace."
"We are aliens here, and do not know ourselves. We are always dreaming of some other life. These dreams, if we could only rightly interpret them, would be the doors through which we might pass into a real knowledge of ourselves."
"I don't think I would get much wisdom out of my dreams," said Willie. ”