NOT unremembering we pass our exile from the starry ways: <br />One timeless hour in time we caught from the long night of endless days. <br />With solemn gaiety the stars danced far withdrawn on elfin heights: <br />The lilac breathed amid the shade of green and blue and citron lights. <br />But yet the close enfolding night seemed on the phantom verge of things, <br />For our adoring hearts had turned within from all their wanderings: <br />For beauty called to beauty, and there thronged at the enchanter's will <br />The vanished hours of love that burn within the Ever-living still. <br />And sweet eternal faces put the shadows of the earth to rout, <br />And faint and fragile as a moth your white hand fluttered and went out. <br />Oh, who am I who tower beside this goddess of the twilight air? <br />The burning doves fly from my heart, and melt within her bosom there. <br />I know the sacrifice of old they offered to the mighty queen, <br />And this adoring love has brought us back the beauty that has been. <br />As to her worshippers she came descending from her glowing skies, <br />So Aphrodite I have seen with shining eyes look through your eyes: <br />One gleam of the ancestral face which lighted up the dawn for me: <br />One fiery visitation of the love the gods desire in thee!<br /><br />George William Russell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/aphrodite-2/
