Selected Poems (A.E.)

“Yet, bathed in gloom too long, we might / Forget how we imagined light.” – The Twilight of Earth

Published in September 1935, just two months after his death, A.E wrote of Selected Poems, “If I should be remembered I would like it to be for the verses in this book. They are my choice out of the poetry I have written.” A.E’s life-long friend and sometimes rival, W.B. Yeats, observed that his poetry expresses “something that lies beyond the range of expression”, and that he has within him “the vast and vague extravagance that lies at the bottom of the Celtic heart.” To commemorate the 150th anniversary of A.E.’s birth, Swan River Press is pleased to reissue this career-spanning collection of poems from a key artist of the Celtic Revival. This volume includes selections from The Earth Breath, Voices of the Stones, The House of the Titans, and others, introducing a new generation to Ireland’s foremost mystical poet.

Contents

"A Visionary" by W.B. Yeats
Selections from Homeward, Songs by the Way
Selections from The Earth Breath
Selections from The Divine Vision
Poems 1903-1920
Selections from Voices of the Stones
Selections from Vale and Other Poems
Selections from The House of the Titans
"An Evening with A.E." by Edgar DeWitt Jones
"Poet, Painter, Seer" by Daniel Mulhall
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgements

George William Russell (1867-1935) — who published as “A.E.” — was a poet, painter, economist, and mystic. In 1897 he started work with Sir Horace Plunkett’s Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, editing their journal The Irish Homestead. In addition to numerous volumes of poetry, essays, and mystical writings, A.E. also nurtured the careers of Ireland’s most important writers, including Patrick Kavanagh, James Stephens, and James Joyce. Highly regarded in life, on his death A.E.’s funeral cortège was over a mile long.

Daniel Mulhall has maintained a lifelong interest in the life and work of A.E. He has written extensively on Irish history and literature and co-edited The Shaping of Modern Ireland: A Centenary Assessment (Irish Academic Press, 2016). He has spent his professional career in the Department of Foreign Affairs and is currently Ireland’s Ambassador in London.