Prologue: The Nuts of Knowledge

FOR BRIAN WHEN HE IS GROWN UP THIS HANDFUL OF THE NUTS OF KNOWLEDGE I HAVE GATHERED ON THE SECRET STREAMS.




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.

Homeward I go not yet; the darkness grows;
Not mine the voice to still with peace divine:
From the first fount the stream of quiet flows
Through other hearts than mine.

Yet of my night I give to you the stars,
And of my sorrow here the sweetest gains,
And out of hell, beyond its iron bars,
My scorn of all its pains.

George William Russell

George William Russell, who wrote under the pseudonym 'AE,' was an Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and painter. As a prominent mystical writer, he contributed significantly to the Irish Literary Revival. He also played a vital role in the cooperative movement in Ireland and was a close associate of notable literary figures like W.B. Yeats.

George William Russell

Desire

George William Russell, Simple Poetry

The Voice of the Wise

George William Russell, Simple Poetry

Magic

George William Russell, Simple Poetry

Day

George William Russell, Simple Poetry

English

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The Nuts Of Knowledge

A cabin on the mountain side hid in a grassy nook
Where door and windows open wide that friendly stars may look.
The rabbit shy can patter in, the winds may enter free,
Who throng around the mountain throne in living ecstasy.

And when the sun sets dimmed in eve and purple fills the air,
I think the sacred Hazel Tree is dropping berries there
From starry fruitage waved aloft where Connla's Well o'erflows;
For sure the enchanted waters pour through every wind that blows.

I think when night towers up aloft and shakes the trembling dew
How every high and lonely thought that thrills my being through
Is but a ruddy berry dropped down through the purple air,
And from the magic tree of life the fruit falls everywhere.

George William Russell

The Nuts Of Knowledge

'Sinend daughter of Lodan Lucharglan, son of Lir, out of the
Land of Promise went to Connlas' Well which is under the
sea, to behold it. That is a well at which are the hazels of
wisdom and inspiration that is, the hazels of the science of
poetry; and in the same hour their fruit and their blossom &
their foliage break forth, and then fall upon the well in
the same shower, which raises upon the water a royal surge
of purple.'

George William Russell

A Summer Night

Her mist of primroses within her breast
Twilight hath folded up, and o'er the west,
Seeking remoter valleys long hath gone,
Not yet hath come her sister of the dawn.
Silence and coolness now the earth enfold:
Jewels of glittering green, long mists of gold,
Hazes of nebulous silver veil the height,
And shake in tremors through the shadowy night.
Heard through the stillness, as in whispered words,
The wandering God-guided wings of birds
Ruffle the dark. The little lives that lie
Deep hid in grass join in a long-drawn sigh
More softly still; and unheard through the blue
The falling of innumerable dew,
Lifts with grey fingers all the leaves that lay
Burned in the heat of the consuming day.
The lawns and lakes lie in this night of love,
Admitted to the majesty...

George William Russell

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 ...

George William Russell

The Earth Breath

From the cool and dark-lipped furrow breathes a dim delight
Through the woodland's purple plumage to the diamond night.
Aureoles of joy encircle every blade of grass
Where the dew-fed creatures silent and enraptured pass.
And the restless ploughman pauses, turns, and wondering,
Deep beneath his rustic habit finds himself a king;
For a fiery moment looking with the eyes of God
Over fields a slave at morning bowed him to the sod.
Blind and dense with revelation every moment flies.
And unto the mighty mother, gay, eternal, rise
All the hopes we hold, the gladness, dreams of things to be.
One of all thy generations, mother, hails to thee.
Hail, and hail, and hail for ever, though I turn again
From thy joy unto the human vestiture of pain.
I, thy child who went forth radiant...

George William Russell

My Room. To G.E.M.

'Tis a little room, my friend;
A baby-walk from end to end;
All the things look sadly real,
This hot noontide's Unideal.
Seek not refuge at the casement,
There's no pasture for amazement
But a house most dim and rusty,
And a street most dry and dusty;
Seldom here more happy vision
Than water-cart's blest apparition,
We'll shut out the staring space,
Draw the curtains in its face.

Close the eyelids of the room,
Fill it with a scarlet gloom:
Lo! the walls on every side
Are transformed and glorified;
Ceiled as with a rosy cloud
Furthest eastward of the crowd,
Blushing faintly at the bliss
Of the Titan's good-night kiss,
Which her westward sisters share,--
Crimson they from breast to hair.
'Tis the faintest lends its dye
To...

George MacDonald