Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. INTO THE REGIONS OF THE SUN, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. INTO THE REGIONS OF THE SUN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: So at last passing (the great sea stilled, the raging ocean) - passing away
Last Line: Lo! The dead we leave behind, and pass to the realms of the living.
Subject(s): Absence; Love; Separation; Isolation


SO at last passing (the great sea stilled, the raging ocean)—passing
away,
All sorrow left behind, the great intolerable burdens which men vainly try
to carry,
All all abandoned, left there lying—
Suddenly lightened, like a bird that shakes itself free from the limed
twigs,
Soaring, soaring, into joy supernal passing,
Lo! the dead we leave behind and pass to the realms of the living.

And not we alone.
By our love poured out, by the manifold threads and strands of attachment
to others—which cannot now be severed;
By not one inwardly refused or disowned whom we have ever met;
By the dear arms of lovers circling each other all night long, by their
kisses and mingled breath,
And love by night and day—thinking of each other when absent,
rejoicing so to be near;
By tramps over the hills, and days spent together in the woods and by
watersides;
By our life-long faithful love—(ah! what more beautiful, what in all
this world more precious!)
By the life-long faithful comradeship now springing on all sides, the
Theban band henceforth to overcome the world—its heroisms and deaths—
And him who gave the calamus-token first;
By all these—
Not alone, no longer alone—

But drawing an innumerable multitude with us,
Into the regions of the sun, into the supernal aether,
With love perfected, bodies changed, and joy—ah! joy on earth
unutterable—
Lo! the dead we leave behind, and pass to the realms of the living.





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