Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DIVISIONS ON A GROUND: 1, by ARTHUR WILLIAM SYMONS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DIVISIONS ON A GROUND: 1, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Beloved, there is a sorrow in the world
Last Line: Which beauty cannot lift from tired men.
Subject(s): Grief; Sorrow; Sadness


Beloved, there is a sorrow in the world
Too aged to remember its own birth,
A grey, old, weary, and immortal sorrow.
The sorrow of our love is as a breath
Sighed heavily by a sleeper in a dream;
But this great sorrow of the world endures,
Sleepless, the alternation of the stars,
Beholding death, and crying upon death,
Sad with old age, and weary of the sun,
And deathless; and shall not be wearier
When time has rusted your bright hair's fine gold.
Think what a little sorrow have we had
Who have seen beauty with the eyes of love,
Who have seen knowledge, wisdom, evil and good,
With the eyes of beauty, having felt the flame
Cleanse, sacrifice, illuminate us with joy!
Think on all lovers who have never met,
Wandering in the exile of the world,
Remembering they know not what, some voice,
Unheard and yet remembered, or some face
Which shines beyond a cloud and waits for them.
Think then how little sorrow we have had!
All the uncomely evil of the earth
Has passed us by; sorrow has been no clown
Forcing our gates with riotous mirth, but grave
As the unwilling herald of a king.
And we, have we not willed that this should be,
Somewhere, when naked soul by naked soul
The fashioner of the world arraigns his work,
Bidding each living thing behold, and choose,
Beholding, his own lot; have we not willed
That all this should be thus, willing our fate?
O blind, old, weary sorrow of the world,
Receive my pity, though from this day forth
I have said farewell to joy! I have within
A memory which is more than happiness;
I have seen the glory, and am henceforth blind
That I may feast on sight. Alas for those
On whom no unendurable glory shone,
Blind from the birth, who labour and behold
No shining on the sea or in the sky
When the long day is over, but endure
The weight of that old sorrow of the world
Which beauty cannot lift from tired men.





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