Explore "Aphrodite" by George William Russell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Not unremembering we pass our exile from the starry ways: / One timeless hour in time we caught from the long night of endless days.
With solemn gaiety the stars danced far withdrawn on elfin heights: / The lilac breathed amid the shade of green and blue and citron lights.
But yet the close enfolding night seemed on the phantom verge of things, / For our adoring hearts had turned within from all their wanderings: / For beauty called to beauty and there thronged at the enchanter's will / The vanished hours of love that burn within the Ever-living still.
And sweet eternal faces put the shadows of the earth to rout, / And faint and fragile as a moth your white hand fluttered and went out.
Oh, who am I who tower beside this goddess of the twilight air?
The burning doves fly from my heart and melt within her bosom there.
I know the sacrifice of old they offered to the mighty queen, / And this adoring love has brought us back the beauty that has been.
As to her worshippers she came descending from her glowing skies / So Aphrodite I have seen with shining eyes look through your eyes: / One gleam of the ancestral face which lighted up the dawn for me: / One fiery visitation of the love the gods desire in thee!