Explore "Babylon" by George William Russell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The blue dusk ran between the streets; my love was winged within my mind; / It left to-day and yesterday and thrice a thousand years behind.
To-day was past and dead for me for from to-day my feet had run / Through thrice a thousand years to walk the ways of ancient Babylon.
On temple top and palace roof the burnished gold flung back the rays / Of a red sunset that was dead and lost beyond a million days.
The tower of heaven turns darker blue; a starry sparkle now begins; / The mystery and magnificence, the myriad beauty and the sins / Come back to me. I walk beneath the shadowy multitude of towers; / Within the gloom the fountain jets its pallid mist in lily flowers.
The waters lull me, and the scent of many gardens, and I hear / Familiar voices, and the voice I love is whispering in my ear.
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.