Children Of Lir

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Title:     Children Of Lir
Author: George William Russell [More Titles by Russell]

We woke from our sleep in the bosom where cradled together we lay:
The love of the Dark Hidden Father went with us upon our way.
And gay was the breath in our being, and never a sorrow or fear
Was on us, as singing together, we flew from the infinite Lir [*].

Through nights lit with diamond and sapphire we raced with the Children of Dawn,
A chain that was silver and golden linked spirit to spirit, my swan.
Till day in the heavens passed over, and still grew the beat of our wings,
And the Breath of the Darkness enfolded to teach us unspeakable things.

Yet lower we fell and for comfort our pinionless spirits had now
The leaning of bosom to bosom, the lifting of lip unto brow.
Though chained to the earth yet we mourned not the loss of our heaven above,
But passed from the vision of Beauty to the fathomless being of Love.

Still gay is the breath in our being, we wait for the Bell Branch to ring
To call us away to the Father, and then we will rise on the wing,
And fly through the twilights of time till the home lights of heaven appear;
Our spirits through love and through longing made one in the infinite Lir.

[Note: Lir, the Oceanus of Celtic mythology. Probably the Great Deep or original divinity from whom all sprang. His son Mananan MacLir was the most spiritual divinity known to the ancient Gael. Lir is more familiar as the father of the children who were changed into swans by magic, and who lived for long ages on the waters around the Irish coast. The story of the fate of the children of Lir was probably in its earliest form a mythological account of the descent of the spirit from the Heaven-world to the Earth and its final redemption.]

[The end]
George William Russell's poem: Children Of Lir

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