Explore "The Man to the Angel" by George William Russell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I have wept a million tears: / Pure and proud one, where are thine, / What the gain though all thy years / In unbroken beauty shine?
All your beauty cannot win / Truth we learn in pain and sighs: / You can never enter in / To the circle of the wise.
They are but the slaves of light / Who have never known the gloom, / And between the dark and bright / Willed in freedom their own doom.
Think not in your pureness there, / That our pain but follows sin: / There are fires for those who dare / Seek the throne of might to win.
Pure one, from your pride refrain: / Dark and lost amid the strife / I am myriad years of pain / Nearer to the fount of life.
When defiance fierce is thrown / At the God to whom you bow, / Rest the lips of the Unknown / Tenderest upon my brow.