Kathleen Norris - "Harriet and the Piper"

Horatio Alger - "Helping Himself"

W. S. Harris - "Mr. World and Miss Church Member"

Philip Gibbs - "Now It Can Be Told"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: AE in the Irish Theosophist

G >> George William Russell >> AE in the Irish Theosophist




The natural longing in every heart that its youth shall not perish
makes one ponder and sigh over this magical past when youth, ecstasy,
and beauty welled from a bountiful nature at the sung appeal of her
druid children holding hand in hand around the sacred cairn. Our
hearts remember:

A wind blows by us fleeting
Along the reedy strand:
And sudden our hearts are beating
Again in the druid-land.

All silver-pale, enchanted,
The air-world lies on the hills,
And the fields of light are planted
With the dawn-frail daffodils.

The yellow leaves are blowing
The hour when the wind-god weaves,
And hides the stars and their glowing
In a mist of daffodil leaves.

We stand in glimmering whiteness,
Each face like the day-star fair,
And rayed about in its brightness
With a dawn of daffodil air.

And through each white robe gleaming,
And under each snow-white breast,
Is a golden dream-light streaming
Like eve through an opal west.

One hand to the heart, another
We raise to the dawn on high;
For the sun in the heart is brother
To the sun-heart of the sky.

A light comes rising and falling,
As ringed in the druid choir
We sing to the sun-god, calling
By his name of yellow fire.

The touch of the dew-wet grasses,
The breath of the dawn-cool wind,
With the dawn of the god-light passes
And the world is left behind.

We drink of a fountain giving
The joy of the gods, and then--
The Land of the Ever-living
Has passed from us again.

Passed far beyond all saying,
For memory only weaves
On a silver dawn outraying
A cloud of daffodil leaves.

And not indirectly through remembrance only, but when touched
from within by the living beauty, the soul, the ancient druid in
man, renews its league with the elements; and sometimes as the
twilight vanishes and night lays on the earth her tender brow, the
woods, the mountains, the clouds that tinted like seraphim float
in the vast, and the murmur of water, wind and trees, melt from
the gaze and depart from the outward ear and become internal
reveries and contemplations of the spirit, and are no more separate
but are part of us. Yet these vanishings from us and movements in
worlds not realized, leave us only more thirsty to drink of a
deeper nature where all things are dissolved in ecstasy, and heaven
and earth are lost in God. So we turn seeking for the traces of
that earlier wisdom which guided man into the Land of Immortal Youth,
and assuaged his thirst at a more brimming flood of the Feast of Age,
the banquet which Manannan the Danann king instituted in the haunt
of the Fire-god, and whoever partook knew thereafter neither
weariness, decay, not death.

These mysteries, all that they led to, all that they promised for
the spirit of man, are opening today for us in clear light, their
fabulous distance lessens, and we hail these kingly ideals with
as intense a trust and with more joy, perhaps, than they did who
were born in those purple hours, because we are emerging from
centuries indescribably meagre and squalid in their thought, and
every new revelation has for us the sweetness of sunlight to one
after the tears and sorrow of a prison-house. The well at Ballykeele
is, perhaps, a humble starting-point for the contemplation of such
mighty mysteries; but here where the enchanted world lies so close
it is never safe to say what narrow path may not lead through a
visionary door into Moy Argatnel, the silver Cloudland of Manannan,
where

"Feet of white bronze
Glitter through beautiful ages."

The Danann king with a quaint particularity tells Bran in the poem
from which these lines are quoted, that

"There is a wood of beautiful fruit
Under the prow of thy little skiff."

What to Bran was a space of pale light was to the eye of the god
a land of pure glory, Ildathach the Many-coloured Land, rolling
with rivers of golden light and dropping with dews of silver flame.
In another poem the Brugh by the Boyne, outwardly a little hillock,
is thus described:

"Look, and you will see it is the palace of a god."

Perhaps the mystic warriors of the Red Branch saw supernatural
pillars blazoned like the sunset, and entered through great doors
and walked in lofty halls with sunset-tinted beings speaking a
more beautiful wisdom than earth's. And they there may have seen
those famous gods who had withdrawn generations before from visible
Eire: Manannan the dark blue king, Lu Lamfada with the sunrise on
his brow and his sling, a wreath of rainbow flame, coiled around him,
the Goddess Dana in ruby brilliance, Nuada silver-handed, the Dagda
with floating locks of light shaking from him radiance and song,
Angus Oge, around whose head the ever-winging birds made music,
and others in whose company these antique heroes must have felt
the deep joy of old companionship renewed, for were not the Danann
hosts men of more primeval cycles become divine and movers in a
divine world. In the Brugh too was a fountain, to what uses
applied the mystical imagination working on other legends may
make clearer.

The Well of Connla, the parent fountain of many streams visible and
invisible, was the most sacred well known in ancient Ireland. It
lay itself below deep waters at the source of the Shannon, and
these waters which hid it were also mystical, for they lay between
earth and the Land of the Gods. Here, when stricken suddenly by
an internal fire, the sacred hazels of wisdom and inspiration
unfolded at once their leaves and blossoms and their scarlet fruit,
which falling upon the waters dyed them of a royal purple; the
nuts were then devoured by Fintann the Salmon of Knowledge, and
the wisest of the druids partook also. This was perhaps the greatest
of the mysteries known to the ancient Gael, and in the bright
phantasmagoria conjured up there is a wild beauty which belongs to
all their tales. The suddenly arising dreams of a remote divinity,
the scarlet nuts tossing on the purple flood, the bright immortals
glancing hither and thither, are pictures left of some mystery we
may not now uncover, thought tomorrow may reveal it, for the dawn-
lights are glittering everywhere in Ireland. Perhaps the strange
woman who spoke of the well at Ballykeele, and the others like her,
may know more about these fountains than the legend-seekers who so
learnedly annoted their tales. They may have drunken in dreams of
the waters at Connla's well, for many go to the Tir-na-nog in sleep,
and some are said to have remained there, and only a vacant form
is left behind without the light in the eyes which marks the presence
of a soul. I make no pretence of knowledge concerning the things
which underlie their simple speech, but to me there seems to be
for ever escaping from legend and folk-tale, from word and custom,
some breath of a world of beauty I sigh for but am not nigh to as
these are. I think if that strange woman could have found a voice
for what was in her heart she would have completed her vague oracle
somewhat as I have done:

There's a cure for all things in the well at Ballykeele,
Where the scarlet cressets o'erhang from the rowan trees;
There's a joy-breath blowing from the Land of Youth I feel,
And earth with its heart at ease.

Many and many a sun-bright maiden saw the enchanted land
With star-faces glimmer up from the druid wave:
Many and many a pain of love was soothed by a faery hand
Or lost in the love it gave.

When the quiet with a ring of pearl shall wed the earth
And the scarlet berries burn dark by the stars in the pool,
Oh, its lost and deep I'll be in the joy-breath and the mirth,
My heart in the star-heart cool.

--September 15, 1897