  Poetry
This week: George William Russel Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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The Parting of Ways
by George William Russell
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.
George William Russell was born April 10, 1867 in Armagh, Ireland. Russell’s father was Thomas Elias Russell and his mother was Mary Anne Armstrong. The couple had three children of which Russell was the second son. Russell attended the Metropolitan School of Art, Dublin. While in school he met and became friends with fellow poet William Butler Yeats. Upon graduation Russell became an account clerk at drapery store. Though he was employed as an accounting clerk Russell still wrote and dabbled in painting. He published the first books of verse, “Homeward: Songs by the Way” in 1894. Russell married Violet North in 1898.
Russell published “The Nuts of Knowledge” in 1903 followed by “The Divine Vision and Other Poems” in 1904. He also became editor of the “The Irish Homestead” that same year. Where he remained editor for the next twenty years. He continued writing his poetry and published several more volumes during this time there, including “Collected Poems” in 1913, “Gods of War, with Other Poems” in 1915 and “The Candle of Vision” in 1918 describing his religious beliefs.
In 1923 Russell became the editor for “The Irish Statesman” his dislike for the New Ireland had begun to to grow and by the 1930’s he felt uncomfortable in Dublin and that Ireland had given too much power to the church. Russell’s wife passed away in 1932 and with her passing Russell moved to London. In the few years that followed his wife’s death, Russell traveled and lectured. While travelling in the USA in 1935 he became very and cancelled his lectures short to travel back home. He underwent surgery for severe abdominal pain, and went into a nursing home upon the doctor's recommendation do to his declining health.
George William Russell died on July 17, 1935 in a nursing home in Bournemouth. His body was brought back to Ireland where it was laid to rest in state in Plunkett House in Merrion Square. Friends at funeral service included W.B.Yeats, De Valera and Oliver Grogarty.
The Voice of the Waters
by George William Russell
Where the Greyhound River windeth through a loneliness so deep,
Scarce a wild fowl shakes the quiet that the purple boglands keep,
Only God exults in silence over fields no man may reap.
Where the silver wave with sweetness fed the tiny lives of grass
I was bent above, my image mirrored in the fleeting glass,
And a voice from out the water through my being seemed to pass.
“Still above the waters brooding, spirit, in thy timeless quest;
Was the glory of thine image trembling over east and west
Not divine enough when mirrored in the morning water’s breast?”
With the sighing voice that murmured I was borne to ages dim
Ere the void was lit with beauty breathed upon by seraphim,
We were cradled there together folded in the peace in Him.
One to be the master spirit, one to be the slave awoke,
One to shape itself obedient to the fiery words we spoke,
Flame and flood and stars and mountains from the primal waters broke.
I was huddled in the heather when the vision failed its light,
Still and blue and vast above me towered aloft the solemn height,
Where the stars like dewdrops glistened on the mountain slope of night.
The Hour of Twilight
by George William Russell
When the unquiet hours depart
And far away their tumults cease,
Within the twilight of the heart
We bathe in peace, are stilled with peace.
The fire that slew us through the day
For angry deed or sin of sense
Now is the star and homeward ray
To us who bow in penitence.
We kiss the lips of bygone pain
And find a secret sweet in them:
The thorns once dripped with shadowy rain
Are bright upon each diadem.
Ceases the old pathetic strife,
The struggle with the scarlet sin:
The mad enchanted laugh of life
Tempts not the soul that sees within.
No riotous and fairy song
Allures the prodigals who bow
Within the home of law, and throng
Before the mystic Father now,
Where faces of the elder years,
High souls absolved from grief and sin,
Leaning from out ancestral spheres
Beckon the wounded spirit in.
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
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The woman at the bar who
wears the pink crystal jewel
sits stoically poised on her
tattered round bar stool.
Suddenly, her feminine manners, one-by-one they slip.
Left with facial features of rage,
her beauty has been stripped.
At first, she's a lamp of iron
with a twinkle none can measure.
All the men wish they could be
the one that she will treasure.
A wicked foreboding dances quiet through the smoky air
as, alas, she releases her flowing curly locks of auburn hair.
The evil looms.
The scratching begins.
Her mind in doom.
Satan is sin.
Her throne is torn apart when her thrashing body prevails.
There is no doubt she is without the company of a male.
The ordeal has ended in a
gem-confiscating conclusion.
Evil has won and the devil
plants a puzzling illusion.
The pink crystal jewel now clutched tightly in his hand.
He waves his arm and depression shadows the witness' promised land.
Smog covers the room and everything is veiled,
but if you listen closely you hear
her cry of how she failed.
Honorable mention:
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Poetry: March 04, 2015 Issue [#6863]
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