Home ⇒ 📌George William Russell ⇒ Heroic Love
Heroic Love
WHEN our glowing dreams were dead,
Ruined our heroic piles,
Something in your dark eyes said:
“Think no more of love or smiles.”
Something in me still would say,
“Though our dreamland palace goes,
I have seen how in decay
Still the wild rose clings and blows.”
But your dark eyes willed it thus:
“Build our lofty dream again:
Let our palace rise o’er us:
Love can never be till then.”
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- Heroic Stanzas Consecrated to the Glorious Memory of His Most Serene and Renowned Highness, Oliver, Late Lord Protector of This Commonwealth, etc. (Oliver Cromwell) Written After the Celebration of his Funeral 1 And now ’tis time; for their officious haste, Who would before have borne him to the sky, Like eager Romans ere all rites were past […]...
- Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
- The Assault Heroic Down in the mud I lay, Tired out by my long day Of five damned days and nights, Five sleepless days and nights,… Dream-snatched, and set me where The dungeon of Despair Looms over Desolate Sea, Frowning and threatening me With aspect high and steep – A most malignant keep. My foes that lay within […]...
- Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend, To welcome home mankind’s mysterious friend Wine, true begetter of all arts that be; Wine, privilege of the completely free; Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong; Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong, Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song! Sing how the Charioteer from Asia came, And […]...
- Love and the Gentle Heart Love and the gentle heart are one thing, Just as the poet says in his verse, Each from the other one as well divorced As reason from the mind’s reasoning. Nature craves love, and then creates love king, And makes the heart a palace where he’ll stay, Perhaps a shorter or a longer day, Breathing […]...
- On a Hill-top BEARDED with dewy grass the mountains thrust Their blackness high into the still grey light, Deepening to blue: far up the glimmering height In silver transience shines the starry dust. Silent the sheep about me; fleece by fleece They sleep and stir not: I with awe around Wander uncertain o’er the giant mound, A fire […]...
- Still I Rise You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like […]...
- Houses (For Aline) When you shall die and to the sky Serenely, delicately go, Saint Peter, when he sees you there, Will clash his keys and say: “Now talk to her, Sir Christopher! And hurry, Michelangelo! She wants to play at building, And you’ve got to help her play!” Every architect will help erect A palace […]...
- "I Love You Sweatheart" A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
- Imagination A gaunt and hoary slab of stone I found in desert place, And wondered why it lay alone In that abandoned place. Said I: ‘Maybe a Palace stood Where now the lizards crawl, With courts of musky quietude And turrets tall. Maybe where low the vultures wing ‘Mid mosque and minaret, The proud pavilion of […]...
- Magic OUT of the dusky chamber of the brain Flows the imperial will through dream on dream: The fires of life around it tempt and gleam; The lights of earth behind it fade and wane. Passed beyond beauty tempting dream on dream, The pure will seeks the heart-hold of the light: Sounds the deep OM, the […]...
- The Palace When I was a King and a Mason a Master proven and skilled I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build. I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt, I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built. There was no […]...
- Dream Love I DID not deem it half so sweet To feel thy gentle hand, As in a dream thy soul to greet Across wide leagues of land. Untouched more near to draw to you Where, amid radiant skies, Glimmered thy plumes of iris hue, My Bird of Paradise. Let me dream only with my heart, Love […]...
- Block City What are you able to build with your blocks? Castles and palaces, temples and docks. Rain may keep raining, and others go roam, But I can be happy and building at home. Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea, There I’ll establish a city for me: A kirk and a mill and a […]...
- Love Is Not All Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet […]...
- Love is enough LOVE is enough: though the World be a-waning, And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining, Though the sky be too dark for dim eyes to discover The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder, Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder, And this day draw a veil […]...
- The Vision of Love THE TWILIGHT fleeted away in pearl on the stream, And night, like a diamond done, stood still in our dream. Your eyes like burnished stones or as stars were bright With the sudden vision that made us one with the night. We loved in infinite spaces, forgetting here The breasts that were lit with life […]...
- The Gardener XXVII: Trust Love “Trust love even if it brings sorrow. Do not close up your heart.” “Ah no, my friend, your words are Dark, I cannot understand them.” “Pleasure is frail like a dewdrop, While it laughs it dies. But sorrow is Strong and abiding. Let sorrowful Love wake in your eyes.” “Ah no, my friend, your words […]...
- Love Let me but love my love without disguise, Nor wear a mask of fashion old or new, Nor wait to speak till I can hear a clue, Nor play a part to shine in others’ eyes, Nor bow my knees to what my heart denies; But what I am, to that let me be true, […]...
- Sonnet 36 – When we met first and loved, I did not build When we met first and loved, I did not build Upon the event with marble. Could it mean To last, a love set pendulous between Sorrow and sorrow? Nay, I rather thrilled, Distrusting every light that seemed to gild The onward path, and feared to overlean A finger even. And, though I have grown serene […]...
- The Gardener XXXIV: Do Not Go, My Love Do not go, my love, without asking My leave. I have watched all night, and now My eyes are heavy with sleep. I fear lest I lose you when I’m Sleeping. Do not go, my love, without asking My leave. I start up and stretch my hands to Touch you. I ask myself, “Is it […]...
- The Trumpet Rise up, rise up, And, as the trumpet blowing Chases the dreams of men, As the dawn glowing The stars that left unlit The land and water, Rise up and scatter The dew that covers The print of last night’s lovers – Scatter it, scatter it! While you are listening To the clear horn, Forget, […]...
- Love's Young Dream Oh! the days are gone, when Beauty bright My heart’s chain wove; When my dream of life, from morn till night, Was love, still love. New hope may bloom, And days may come, Of milder calmer beam, But there’s nothing half so sweet in life As love’s young dream: No, there’s nothing half so sweet […]...
- Love and the Novice “Here we dwell, in holiest bowers, Where angels of light o’er our orisans bend; Where sighs of devotion and breathings of flowers To heaven in mingled odour ascend. Do not disturb our calm, oh Love! So like is thy form to the cherubs above, It well might deceive such hearts as ours.” Love stood near […]...
- You love the Lord you cannot see You love the Lord you cannot see You write Him every day A little note when you awake And further in the Day. An Ample Letter How you miss And would delight to see But then His House is but a Step And Mine’s in Heaven You see....
- Recollections Of Love I How warm this woodland wild Recess! Love surely hath been breathing here ; And this sweet bed of heath, my dear! Swells up, then sinks with faint caress, As if to have you yet more near. II Eight springs have flown, since last I lay On sea-ward Quantock’s heathy hills, Where quiet sounds from […]...
- Love Sonnet XVII I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz Or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, In secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms But carries in itself […]...
- XVII (I do not love you…) I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, Or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, In secret, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that never blooms But carries in itself the light […]...
- Love's Deity I long to talk with some old lover’s ghost, Who died before the God of Love was born: I cannot think that he, who then loved most, Sunk so low as to love one which did scorn. But since this god produced a destiny, And that vice-nature, Custom, lets it be, I must love her […]...
- The Scribe What lovely things Thy hand hath made: The smooth-plumed bird In its emerald shade, The seed of the grass, The speck of the stone Which the wayfaring ant Stirs and hastes on! Though I should sit By some tarn in thy hills, Using its ink As the spirit wills To write of Earth’s wonders, Its […]...
- Sonnet XXXVIII: Sitting Alone, Love Sitting alone, Love bids me go and write; Reason plucks back, commanding me to stay, Boasting that she doth still direct the way, Or else Love were unable to endite. Love, growing angry, vexed at the spleen And scorning Reason’s maimed argument, Straight taxeth Reason, wanting to invent, Where she with Love conversing hath not […]...
- The Defective Record Cut the bank for the fill. Dump sand Pumped out of the river Into the old swale Killing whatever was There before-including Even the muskrats. Who did it? There’s the guy. Him in the blue shirt and Turquoise skullcap. Level it down For him to build a house On to build a House on to […]...
- Finding From the candles and dumb shadows, And the house where love had died, I stole to the vast moonlight And the whispering life outside. But I found no lips of comfort, No home in the moon’s light (I, little and lone and frightened In the unfriendly night), And no meaning in the voices. . . […]...
- Alone in the Wind, on the Prairie I know a seraph who has golden eyes, And hair of gold, and body like the snow. Here in the wind I dream her unbound hair Is blowing round me, that desire’s sweet glow Has touched her pale keen face, and willful mien. And though she steps as one in manner born To tread the […]...
- A Map Of Love Your face more than others’ faces Maps the half-remembered places I have come to I while I slept- Continents a dream had kept Secret from all waking folk Till to your face I awoke, And remembered then the shore, And the dark interior....
- Sonnet 10 – Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: And love is fire. And when I say at need I love thee. . . mark! . . . I love thee-in thy sight I […]...
- Love Of Jerusalem There is a street where they sell only red meat And there is a street where they sell only clothes and perfumes. And there Is a day when I see only cripples and the blind And those covered with leprosy, and spastics and those with twisted lips. Here they build a house and there they […]...
- Before The Flood Why did he promise me That we would build ourselves An ark all by ourselves Out in back of the house On New York Avenue In Union City New Jersey To the singing of the streetcars After the story Of Noah whom nobody Believed about the waters That would rise over everything When I told […]...
- Modern Love XXX: What Are We First What are we first? First, animals; and next Intelligences at a leap; on whom Pale lies the distant shadow of the tomb, And all that draweth on the tomb for text. Into which state comes Love, the crowning sun: Beneath whose light the shadow loses form. We are the lords of life, and life is […]...
- And love has changed to kindliness When love has changed to kindliness Oh, love, our hungry lips, that press So tight that Time’s an old god’s dream Nodding in heaven, and whisper stuff Seven million years were not enough To think on after, make it seem Less than the breath of children playing, A blasphemy scarce worth the saying, A sorry […]...