Diotimos Library · Literary Fiction Collection · English Edition
The Mask of Apollo and Other Stories
Swipe or use the arrow keys.
English Edition · Branch 21 of 22
The Childhood of Apollo · ¶¶ 9–16
The Mask of Apollo and Other Stories
p. 23Then other sweet speakers from beneath the earth, and from the distant waters and air, followed in benediction, and a last voice like a murmur from universal nature:
Line MOA-CA-P0010: Now the buried stars beneath the mountainsLine MOA-CA-P0010: And the vales their life renew,Line MOA-CA-P0010: Jetting rainbow blooms from tiny fountains,Line MOA-CA-P0010: Child, for you.Line MOA-CA-P0011: As within our quiet waters passingLine MOA-CA-P0011: Sun and moon and stars we view,Line MOA-CA-P0011: So the loveliness of life is glassing,Line MOA-CA-P0011: Child, in you.Line MOA-CA-P0012: In the diamond air the sun-star glowingLine MOA-CA-P0012: Up its feathered radiance threw;Line MOA-CA-P0012: All the jewel glory there was flowing,Line MOA-CA-P0012: Child, for you.Line MOA-CA-P0013: And the fire divine in all things burningLine MOA-CA-P0013: Yearns for home and rest anew,Line MOA-CA-P0013: From its wanderings far again returning,Line MOA-CA-P0013: Child, to you."Oh, voices, voices," cried the child, "what you say I know not, but I give back love for love. Father, what is it they tell me? They enfold me in light, and I am far away even though I hold your hand."
"The gods are about us. Heaven mingles with the earth," said Admetus, trembling. "Let us go to Diotima. She has grown wise brooding for many a year where the great caves lead to the underworld. She sees the bright ones as they pass by, though she sits with shut eyes, her drowsy lips murmuring as nature's self."
That night the island seemed no more earth set in sea, but a music encircled by the silence. The trees, long rooted in antique slumber, were throbbing with rich life; through glimmering bark and drooping leaf a light fell on the old man and boy as they passed, and vague figures nodded at them. These were the hamadryad souls of the wood. They were bathed in tender colors and shimmering lights draping them from root to leaf. A murmur came from the heart of every one, a low enchantment breathing joy and peace. It grew and swelled until at last it seemed as if through a myriad pipes Pan the earth spirit was fluting his magical creative song.
Socrates
Reading The Mask of Apollo and Other Stories · The Childhood of Apollo · ¶¶ 9–16
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Æ’s The Mask of Apollo and Other Stories gathers seven visionary tales in which Greek gods, Celtic memory, Indian wisdom, cosmic birth, and the moral power of imagination cross the borders between ordinary life and spiritual perception. This single-language Literary Fiction edition presents the complete supplied English working text in a continuous reader.
Historical Text
The stories were first gathered in Dublin by Whaley in an undated edition conventionally assigned to 1904. The reading text follows the seven tales as supplied in an editable transcription derived from Project Gutenberg eBook No. 8105, Imaginations and Reveries (1915). The transcription restores the collection’s compact form while noting that the later collected text may contain revisions and has not been line-by-line collated against every first-edition page image.
About This Edition
This English Edition preserves the supplied story sequence, paragraph boundaries, verse lineation, scene breaks, and authorial note. Its twenty-two branches follow the numbered working-text pages for comfortable reading and stable saved places; those page references are approximate rather than claims of facsimile-exact first-edition pagination.
Rights
The collection was published no later than 1905, and George William Russell died in 1935. The underlying English-language text is in the public domain in the United States and in jurisdictions using an ordinary life-plus-70 term.