Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. A GLIMPSE, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. A GLIMPSE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Here at last having arrived I take my rest
Last Line: I depart and am gone my way.
Subject(s): Spring


HERE at last having arrived I take my rest, my long long fill of rest, no
more to move;
The roaring subsides, the wheels cease to go round, a calm falls on
all—the stars and the daisies shine out visibly from the bosom of God.

You cannot baulk me of my true life.
Climbing over the barriers of pain—of my own weaknesses and
sins—I escape.
Where will you hold me? by the feet, hands? by my personal vanity? would
you shut me in the mirror-lined prison of self-consciousness?

Behold! I acknowledge all my defects—you cannot snap the handcuffs
faster on me than I snap them myself I am vain, deceitful, cowardly—yet I
escape.
The handcuffs hold me not, out of my own hands I draw myself as out of a
glove; from behind the empty mask of my reputed qualities I depart, and am gone
my way,
Unconcerned what I leave behind me.

Into the high air which surrounds and sustains the world,
Breathing life, intoxicating, with joy unutterable, radiant,
As the wind of Spring when the dead leaves fly before it—
I depart and am gone my way.





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