Explore "The Parting of Ways" by George William Russell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The skies from black to pearly grey / Had veered without a star or sun; / Only a burning opal ray / Fell on your brow when all was done.
Aye, after victory, the crown; / Yet through the fight no word of cheer; / And what would win and what go down / No word could help, no light make clear.
A thousand ages onward led / Their joys and sorrows to that hour; / No wisdom weighed, no word was said, / For only what we were had power.
There was no tender leaning there / Of brow to brow in loving mood; / For we were rapt apart, and were / In elemental solitude.
We knew not in redeeming day / Whether our spirits would be found / Floating along the starry way, / Or in the earthly vapours drowned.
Brought by the sunrise-coloured flame / To earth, uncertain yet, the while / I looked at you, there slowly came, / Noble and sisterly, your smile.
We bade adieu to love the old; / We heard another lover then, / Whose forms are myriad and untold, / Sigh to us from the hearts of men.