Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DIVISIONS ON A GROUND: 2, by ARTHUR WILLIAM SYMONS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DIVISIONS ON A GROUND: 2, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The sorrowful, who have loved, I pity not
Last Line: From earth made ready for eternity.
Subject(s): Grief; Sorrow; Sadness


The sorrowful, who have loved, I pity not;
But those, not having loved, who do rejoice
To have escaped the cruelty of love,
I pity, as I pity the unborn.
Love is, indeed, as life is, full of care,
The tyrant of the soul, the death of peace,
Rash father and blind parricide of joy;
And it were better never to have been,
If slothful ease, calm hours, are all of life,
Than to have chosen such a bedfellow.
Yet, if not rest, but rapture, and to attain
The wisdom that is silence in the stars
When the great morning-song is quieted,
Be more of life than these, and worth the pain
Of living, then choose love, although he bring
Mountainous griefs, griefs that have made men mad.
Be sorrowful, all ye that have not loved,
Bow down, be sorrowful exceedingly,
Cover your heads from the embracing air,
And from the eye of the sun, lest ye be shamed;
Earth would be naked of you; ye have known
Only to hide from living; life rejects
The burden of your uncompanioned days.
This is of all things saddest in the world,
Not that men love, not that men die for love,
But that they dare be cowards of their joy,
Even unto death; who, dying without love,
Drop into narrow graves to shiver there
Among the winds of time, till time's last wind
Cleanse off the poor, lonely, and finite dust
From earth made ready for eternity.





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