Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 2. I COME FORTH FROM THE DARKNESS, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 2. I COME FORTH FROM THE DARKNESS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I come forth from the darkness to smite thee
Last Line: Joy, joy! The earth is thine.
Subject(s): Death, Return From; Shadows


I COME forth from the darkness to smite Thee.—
Who art thou, insolent of all the earth,
With thy faint sneer for him who wins thee bread,
And him who clothes thee, and for him who toils
Daylong and nightlong dark in the earth for thee?
Coward, without a name!
Ignorant curse!—and yet with names as many
Alas! almost as Wealth has. Unclean life
That makest a blight wherever thou alightest!
I smite thee back.
Darest thou yet be seen? (How long, how long,
O patient suffering men will ye endure?)
Darest thou yet be seen?
I smite thee back. Go, return whence thou camest.
The gardens and the beautiful terraces,
The palaces and theatres and halls
Of our fair cities shall not see thee more.

From this day the word is gone forth which waited long to be spoken.
Who walks the streets shall see the lightning which is not in the clouds
but in the eyes of men,
Poising itself to strike.

O shallow-pate, walking for ever in indifferent ignorance!
Thou with the languid averted eyes and impossible patronising airs,
Thou forged bank-note which the great winds will blow crackling into the
coping of heaven,
Hast thou yet never opened wide thine eyes?

Thou at thy club or country seat or in thy study, or sitting in the front
pew at church—so luxurious, refined, learned,
So pious—yet all out of other men's labor;
Thou eager after elegant recognitions through the street
hastening—
Vulgar and infidel—from her path the poor woman with her bundle
impatiently pushing;
Thou in the household, in the shop, on the railway, with nameless airs the
shameful difference marking;
Thou oily in the pulpit ever preaching: Peace, peace —where there is
no peace;
Hast thou yet never opened wide thine eyes—
To see and still to see—to stare with astonishment
Over this wide and troubled Ocean, washing so near importunate upon thee?
This strange thing that it throws up in thy path!
With wild eyes, bloodshot, haggard!
Hast thou observed it?—hast thou well regarded?
In thy smooth progress, say, hast well regarded?

What? and thou seest nothing?—O look look!
The grey old Ocean shivers in his sleep:
Dreamwalker by the perilous brink, O look!
The grey old Ocean shivers, turns his lids
Whose lashes are the lightning, and arises
Staggering from his hollows (Hear, O hear
The hoarse wolf-howling in the pitchy night).
The thunder of his footsteps shakes the interminable shore:
Dream-walker, look!
This white thing in thy path!
Art mad? O look!—the wild eyes seest thou not?
The warning arm?—no flimsy phantom this,
No pale stray figment of thy brain: but He.

Thus by the shore continually,
Pale spectral close-lipped haggard full in thy path warning He stands,
And thou complacent languid with averted eyes passest by him and onward,
continually, to thy doom.

Thou shalt never open thine eyes: (deep flashes to deep:)
But the lightning which thou seest not shall wither thee up,
And suddenly, in a moment, the flood uprising shall erase thee.

O Deep flashing upward continually,
Wild beautiful Ocean of faces!
Ocean of glittering salt spray of tears!
Of proud perpetual faith glooming through the long night!
Ocean of day and night!
With white waves riding up continually,
White faces nearing through the gloom—eager in endless beauty!
Not lightnings only:
Tenderest phosphorescence over the wide-heaving surface gleaming,
This also is thine.

O pity! pity!
And it might draw the heart of a man in pity from him!
If he had eyes—to see, and still to see—
To and fro through the streets wandering starless,
Faces not charged with lightning, but with sorrow, voiceless unsmiting
distant-luminous,
(Auroral surely towards some greater day,)
Eyes wistful-ignorant—the bloom of youth so fast going never to
return—
From dirt-bespattered countenances pathetically looking,
Trustful reliant eyes—and whom to rely on?
(Whom, these dumb thousands of years?)
Parted lips yearning,
Pale woman lips mute-appealing,
Through the gay street unnoticed passing,
From the haunts of fashion flying, from the blank stare of the houses of
wealth and refinement,
To hide their sorrow where none shall understand,
Joyless, unaccusing.
(O lips, your accusation is it not heard in the top most heaven?)

Faces of the world's deliberate refusal;
Dead-pale faces, shrunken, as of leaves that the frost kills,
Going about to hide themselves from the sun, to lie rotting and rotting in
the dark, like the leaves—
In the dark soil which their generations enrich.

Face of the stedfast eyes, growing ever paler—of the weary human
shuttle,
Swift between factory and slum to the terrible engine pulse of necessity
alternating.
Sacred pathetic face of the aged slave, out of the world descending,
Of the old woman, mender of carpets—giver of much and receiver of
little in this life;
Face of unquestioning submission, kindly consecrating face, out of the
world at length with farewell benedictions descending,
Sublimely ignorant of all offence.
Weak face of the drunkard—soon to be labeled suicide;
Pale covert-eyed face of the thief;
Faces ever, faces riding up continually, eager in endless beauty,
O it might draw the heart of a man from him with pity to behold you.

But the world which has deliberately refused you, how shall it dare to pity
you?
[O vulgar and infidel and shallow and insolent of all the earth, and ye who
have taught yourselves so that ye can give no help,
Come ye not here. Is it not sacred ground?
Come ye not here. Defile not with your pity.
Nay, for ye are smitten back and gone whence ye shall never return—
You and your pity—abolished into the void.]
Dumb awful prisoners! who except Death shall dare to pity you?
To kiss you with the close kiss of deliverance?
To take you up unto the mountain tops and show you the country you have
conquered for men?

The word which waited so long to be spoken, behold it is gone forth.
Lo! shooting of swift auroral gleams,
Thoughts hither and thither spreading, coherent,
Words, hark! babbling multitudinous,
Waves to and fro in the sunlight flowing, lisping—
Louder and louder lisping—into one consent waking!

O hearts, not in vain!
Joy, joy—so long a stranger upon earth—
Joy is come up! see the great laughing Ocean!
The deep floor paved with flowers!
Joy is come up. Its waves flow over the world!
To and fro, to and fro, tossing, tumultuously dancing,
The sunlight-smitten waves flow over the world!
How is the great deep changed! Joy is come up.
Wealth the great gloom, the last worst tyranny,
Sinks—is gone down for ever. Arise! arise!
The gardens and the beautiful terraces,
The palaces and theatres and halls
Of our fair cities await your smiles, O Man.
Your solemn love which is their dignity,
Your earnest solemn love, their sacrament,
With outstretched arms they wait.
Arise, O Man!
The long inheritance of the ages waits:
Lo! the fair earth is thine—at length is thine.
Joy! Joy!
The light air and the nimble winds, the blue
Cloud-islanded seas of heaven, the great glad fields
Waving with golden grain, green orchards dusk
With pensive shadows—all the round earth is thine.

Child that shalt bless thy mother,
Joy, joy! The earth is thine.





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