Poem Treasury

Nicholas Weeks

Nicholas Weeks

Bodhicitta
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Dusk

Dusk wraps the village in its dim caress ;
Each chimney's vapour, like a thin grey rod,
Mounting aloft through miles of quietness,
Pillars the skies of God.

Far up they break or seem to break their line,
Mingling their nebulous crests that bow and nod
Under the light of those fierce stars that shine
Out of the calm of God.

Only in clouds and dreams I felt those souls
In the abyss, each fire hid in its clod ;
From which in clouds and dreams the spirit rolls
Into the vast of God.

A.E. (George W. Russell)
 
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The Unknown God

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.

A.E.
 
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Oversoul

I am Beauty itself among beautiful things.
Bhagavad-Gita.

The East was crowned with snow-cold bloom
And hung with veils of pearly fleece :
They died away into the gloom,
Vistas of peace—and deeper peace.

And earth and air and wave and fire
In awe and breathless silence stood ;
For One who passed into their choir
Linked them in mystic brotherhood.

Twilight of amethyst, amid
Thy few strange stars that lit the heights,
Where was the secret spirit hid ?
Where was Thy place, O Light of Lights ?

The flame of Beauty far in space—
Where rose the fire : in Thee ? in Me ?
Which bowed the elemental race
To adoration silently ?

A.E.
 
Night

Heart-hidden from the outer things I rose ;
The spirit woke anew in nightly birth
Unto the vastness where forever glows
The star-soul of the earth.

There all alone in primal ecstasy,
Within her depths where revels never tire,
The olden Beauty shines : each thought of me
Is veined through with its fire.

And all my thoughts are throngs of living souls ;
They breathe in me, heart unto heart allied ;
Their joy undimmed, though when the morning tolls
The planets may divide.

A.E.
 
Dusk

Dusk wraps the village in its dim caress ;
Each chimney's vapour, like a thin grey rod,
Mounting aloft through miles of quietness,
Pillars the skies of God.

Far up they break or seem to break their line,
Mingling their nebulous crests that bow and nod
Under the light of those fierce stars that shine
Out of the calm of God.

Only in clouds and dreams I felt those souls
In the abyss, each fire hid in its clod ;
From which in clouds and dreams the spirit rolls
Into the vast of God.

A.E.
 
Dawn

Still as the holy of holies breathes the vast,
Within its crystal depths the stars grow dim ;
Fire on the altar of the hills at last
Burns on the shadowy rim.

Moment that holds all moments ; white upon
The verge it trembles ; then like mists of flowers
Break from the fairy fountain of the dawn
The hues of many hours.

Thrown downward from that high companionship
Of dreaming inmost heart with inmost heart,
Into the common daily ways I slip
My fire from theirs apart.

A.E.
 
When Russell wrote at first, he used the pen name Aeon. The typesetter did not know the word, so typeset A.E. Russell let it stand from then on.

As for more than six A.E. poems - keep watching and all will see.

Anyone can add favorites of their own.
 
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Not harsh or grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Wordsworth, from Lines Above Tintern Abbey
 

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud​

BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
 
TAO YAO

The peach tree is young and elegant;
Brilliant are its flowers.
This young lady is going to her future home,
And will order well her chamber and house.

The peach tree is young and elegant;
Abundant will be its fruits.
This young lady is going to her future home,
And will order well her chamber and house.

The peach tree is young and elegant;
Luxuriant are its leaves.
This young lady is going to her future home,
And will order well her family.

Book of Odes compiled by Confucius
 
The consciousness of good, which neither gold,
Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss,
Can purchase; but a life of resolute good,
Unalterable will, quenchless desire
Of universal happiness; the heart
That beats with it in unison; the brain
Whose ever-wakeful wisdom toils to change
Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal.
This "commerce" of sincerest virtue needs
No mediative signs of selfishness,
No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,
No balancings of prudence, cold and long: —
In just and equal measure all is weighed;
One scale contains the sum of human weal,
And one, The Good Man's Heart!

— Shelley, Queen Mab, pt V
 
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Hymn to Apollo

I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself, and knows it is divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophecy, all medicine, is mine,
All light of art or nature; - to my song
Victory and praise in its own right belong.

Shelley
 
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