Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. A COTTAGE AMONG THE HILLS, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. A COTTAGE AMONG THE HILLS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Outside, the winter moonlight shines so peacefully
Last Line: Most like the moonlight shining there without.
Subject(s): Children; Christmas; Grandparents; Melodies; Singing & Singers; Childhood; Nativity, The; Grandmothers; Grandfathers; Great Grandfathers; Great Grandmothers; Songs


OUTSIDE, the winter moonlight shines so peacefully upon the little cottage
far away among the hills—
Where within the old human drama repeats itself.
The aged grandmother sits in the ruddy glow by the chimney-corner—her
little grandson leans against her knee;
The other children (for some have come in from a neighboring cottage, and
Christmas is now approaching) sing hymn after hymn in tireless trebles, and the
old grand-dad tones the bass in now and then with still melodious voice;
While silent, with tired and suffering face (thinking of the week's work,
and of her runaway drunken husband) the mother strips her youngest naked in the
firelight.

Ah! the tender dreams, the griefs, the passions, and the shattered hopes!
The long culminating experience!
The slow change of the words the children sing—to meanings unimagined!


The flickering light on joists and rafters of the low ceiling;
The old man bent with toil (road-mending now these fifty years);
The rosy children with wide open mouths; the dear god whom they sing
of—ever-coming, ever-expected;
The rose-bud black-eyed boy against his granny's knee;
And she—her white white hair, high brows, and pale transparent
face—so sacred, calm,
Most like the moonlight shining there without.





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