George William Russell: Quotes about light

George William Russell was Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter. Explore interesting quotes on light.
George William Russell: 268   quotes 1   like

“We and it and all together flashing through the starry spaces
In a tempest dream of beauty lighting up the place of places.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)
Context: We and it and all together flashing through the starry spaces
In a tempest dream of beauty lighting up the place of places.
Half our eyes behold the glory: half within the spirit's glow
Echoes of the noiseless revels and the will of beauty go.
By a hand of fire uplifted—to her star-strewn palace brought,
To the mystic heart of beauty and the secret of her thought:

Beauty , Dreams , Light

“The lights grew thicker unheeded,
For silent and still were we;
Our hearts were drunk with a beauty
Our eyes could never see.”

George William Russell

"The Unknown God" (1913) http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/350.html
Context: Far up the dim twilight fluttered
Moth-wings of vapour and flame:
The lights danced over the mountains,
Star after star they came. The lights grew thicker unheeded,
For silent and still were we;
Our hearts were drunk with a beauty
Our eyes could never see.

Beauty , Light , Heart

“He mingled with the multitude. I saw their brows were crowned and bright,
A light around the shadowy heads, a shadow round the head of light.”

George William Russell

By Still Waters (1906)
Context: We cannot for forgetfulness forego the reverence due to them
Who wear at times they do not guess the sceptre and the diadem.
As bright a crown as this was theirs when first they from the Father sped;
Yet look with deeper eyes and still the ancient beauty is not dead.
He mingled with the multitude. I saw their brows were crowned and bright,
A light around the shadowy heads, a shadow round the head of light.

Light

“When he wakes, the dreamy-hearted,
He will know not whence he came,
And the light from which he parted
Be the seraph's sword of flame,
And behind it hosts supernal
Guarding the lost paradise,
And the tree of life eternal
From the weeping human eyes.”

George William Russell

By Still Waters (1906)

Life , Tree , Light , Heart

“They knew me from the dawn of time: if Hermes beats his rainbow wings,
If Angus shakes his locks of light, or golden-haired Apollo sings,
It matters not the name, the land; my joy in all the gods abides:
Even in the cricket in the grass some dimness of me smiles and hides.
For joy of me the day star glows, and in delight and wild desire
The peacock twilight rays aloft its plumes and blooms of shadowy fire,
Where in the vastness too I burn through summer nights and ages long,
And with the fiery footed Watchers shake in myriad dance and song.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

God , Age , Smile , Star

“Here's to you, men I never met,
Yet hope to meet behind the veil,
Thronged on some starry parapet,
That looks down upon Innisfail,
And sees the confluence of dreams
That clashed together in our night,
One river, born from many streams,
Roll in one blaze of blinding light.”

George William Russell

To the Memory of Some I knew Who are Dead and Who Loved Ireland (1917)

Men , Dreams , Hope , Light

“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.”

George William Russell

By Still Waters (1906)

Life , Death , World , Beauty

“Where was the beauty that the Lord gave man when first he towered in pride?
But one came by me at whose word the bitter condemnation died.
His brows were crowned with thorns of light: his eyes were bright as one who sees
The starry palaces shine o'er the sparkle of the heavenly seas.
'Is it not beautiful?' he cried. Our Faery Land of Hearts' Desire
Is mingled through the mire and mist, yet stainless keeps its lovely fire.
The pearly phantoms with blown hair are dancing where the drunkards reel:
The cloud frail daffodils shine out where filth is splashing from the heel.
O sweet, and sweet, and sweet to hear, the melodies in rivers run:
The rapture of their crowded notes is yet the myriad voice of One.”

George William Russell

By Still Waters (1906)

Love , Beauty , Light , Heart

“Thy tender kiss hath memory we are kings
For all our wanderings.
Thy shining eyes already see the after
In hidden light and laughter.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Kiss , Laughter , Light , Memory

“Aye, and deep and deep and deeper let me drink and draw,
From the olden fountain more than light or peace or dream,
Such primeval being as o'erfills the heart with awe,
Growing one with its silent stream.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Peace , Dreams , Drink , Light

“Our true hearts are forever lonely:
A wistfulness is in our thought:
Our lights are like the dawns which only
Seem bright to us and yet are not.”

George William Russell

By Still Waters (1906)

Light , Heart

“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.”

George William Russell

By Still Waters (1906)

Light , Joy , Night

“Drink: the immortal waters quench the spirit's longing.
Art thou not now, bright one, all sorrow past, in elation,
Made young with joy, grown brother-hearted with the vast,
Whither thy spirit wending flits the dim stars past
Unto the Light of Lights in burning adoration.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Art , Star , Drink , Light

“Here the wild will woke within her lighting up her flying dreams,
Round and round the planets whirling break in woods and flowers and streams,
And the winds are shaken from them as the leaves from off the rose,
And the feet of earth go dancing in the way that beauty goes,
And the souls of earth are kindled by the incense of her breath
As her light alternate lures them through the gates of birth and death.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Death , Beauty , Dreams , Way

“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.”

George William Russell

By Still Waters (1906)

Men , Nature , Light , Heart

“I sometimes think a mighty lover
Takes every burning kiss we give:
His lights are those which round us hover:
For him alone our lives we live.”

George William Russell

By Still Waters (1906)

Lovers , Kiss , Thinking , Light

“As to her worshippers she came descending from her glowing skies
So Aphrodite I have seen with shining eyes look through your eyes:
One gleam of the ancestral face which lighted up the dawn for me:
One fiery visitation of the love the gods desire in thee!”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Love , God , Light

“Oh real as in dream all this; and then a hand on mine is laid:
The wave of phantom time withdraws; and that young Babylonian maid,
One drop of beauty left behind from all the flowing of that tide,
Is looking with the self-same eyes, and here in Ireland by my side.
Oh, light our life in Babylon, but Babylon has taken wings,
While we are in the calm and proud procession of eternal things.”

George William Russell

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Life , Beauty , Dreams , Light

“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.”

George William Russell

By Still Waters (1906)

Fate , Imagination , Star , Light

“Each dream remembered is a burning-glass,
Where through to darkness from the Light of Lights
Its rays in splendour pass.”

George William Russell

"Day"
By Still Waters (1906)

Dreams , Light