"The Tide of Sorrow" by A.E.

Image by Denise Sallee. © Denise Sallee 2016

The Tide of Sorrow
By: George William (“A. E.”) Russell (1867–1935).
From:  Collected Poems by A.E.  1913.

















ON the twilight-burnished hills I lie and long and gaze
Where below the grey-lipped sands drink in the flowing tides,
Drink, and fade and disappear: interpreting their ways
       A seer in my heart abides.

Once the diamond dancing day-waves laved thy thirsty lips:
Now they drink the dusky night-tide running cold and fleet,
Drink, and as the chilly brilliance o’er their pallor slips
        They fade in the touch they meet.

Wave on wave of pain where leaped of old the billowy joys:
Hush and still thee now unmoved to drink the bitter sea,
Drink with equal heart: be brave; and life with laughing voice
          And death will be one for thee.

Ere my mortal days pass by and life in the world be done,
Oh, to know what world shall rise within the spirit’s ken
When it grows into the peace where light and dark are one!
           What voice for the world of men?

A Hillside in Ireland

I found this essay by A.E. today and I realized, though for only a year, I was blessed in having lived myself on a hillside in the northwest of Ireland. I would have stayed there for an eternity, but Fate had her own plans.

Now I watch the waves as I walk on the sand of a beach far, far from Ireland. It is Ireland that is in my heart. In my blood.

ON AN IRISH HILL

It has been my dream for many years that I might at some time dwell in a cabin on the hill-side in this dear and living land of ours, and there I would lay my head in the lap of a serene nature, and be on friendly terms with the winds and mountains who hold enough of unexplored mystery and infinitude to engage me at present. I would not dwell too far from men, for above an enchanted valley, only a morning's walk from the city, is the mountain of my dream. Here, between heaven and earth and my brothers, there might come on me some foretaste of the destiny which the great powers are shaping for us in this isle, the mingling of God and nature and man in a being, one, yet infinite in number. Old tradition has it that there was in our mysterious past such a union, a sympathy between man and the elements so complete, that at every great deed of hero or king the three swelling waves of Fohla responded : the wave of Toth, the wave of Rury, and the long, slow, white, foaming wave of Cleena.
 - A.E. from The Tower Press Booklet, January 1906

Photograph © Denise Sallee 2012