Explore "Dana" by George William Russell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I am the tender voice calling 'Away,' / Whispering between the beatings of the heart, / And inaccessible in dewy eyes / I dwell, and all unkissed on lovely lips, / Lingering between white breasts inviolate, / And fleeting ever from the passionate touch, / I shine afar, till men may not divine / Whether it is the stars or the beloved / They follow with wrapt spirit. And I weave / My spells at evening, folding with dim caress, / Aerial arms and twilight dropping hair, / The lonely wanderer by wood or shore, / Till, filled with some deep tenderness, he yields, / Feeling in dreams for the dear mother heart / He knew, ere he forsook the starry way, / And clings there, pillowed far above the smoke / And the dim murmur from the duns of men.
I can enchant the trees and rocks, and fill / The dumb brown lips of earth with mystery, / Make them reveal or hide the god. I breathe / A deeper pity than all love, myself / Mother of all, but without hands to heal: / Too vast and vague, they know me not. But yet / I am the heartbreak over fallen things, / The sudden gentleness that stays the blow, / And I am in the kiss that foemen give / Pausing in battle, and in the tears that fall / Over the vanquished foe, and in the highest; / Among the Danaan gods, I am the last / Council of mercy in their hearts where they / Mete justice from a thousand starry thrones.