Thy tender kiss hath memory we are kings For all our wanderings. Thy shining eyes already see the after In hidden light and laughter. - George William Russell

Oh, I am so old, meseems
I am next of kin to Time,
The historian of her dreams
From the long forgotten prime.

In ancient shadows and twilights
Where childhood had strayed,
The world’s great sorrows were born
And its heroes were made. In the lost boyhood of Judas
Christ was betrayed.

Who is that goddess to whom men should pray
But her from whom their hearts have turned away,
Out of whose virgin being they were born,
Whose mother nature they have named in scorn
Calling its holy substance common clay.
Yet from this so despised earth was made
The milky whiteness of those queens who swayed
Their generations with a light caress,
And from some image of whose loveliness
The heart built up high heaven when it prayed.