Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. UNDERNEATH AND AFTER ALL, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 3. UNDERNEATH AND AFTER ALL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: There is no peace except where I am, saith the lord
Last Line: Experience emancipated.
Subject(s): Equality; Love


THERE is no peace except where I am, saith the Lord.
Though you have health—that which is called health-yet without me it
is only the fair covering of disease;
Though you have love, yet if I be not between and around the lovers, is
their love only torment and unrest;
Though you have wealth and friends and home—all these shall come and
go—there is nothing stable or secure, which shall not be taken away;
But I alone remain—I do not change.
As space spreads everywhere, and all things move and change within it, but
it moves not nor changes,
So I am the space within the soul, of which the space without is but the
similitude and mental image;
Comest thou to inhabit me, thou hast the entrance to all life—death
shall no longer divide thee from whom thou ovest.
I am the sun that shines upon all creatures from within—gazest thou
upon me thou shalt be filled with joy eternal
Be not deceived. Soon this outer world shall drop off—thou shalt
slough it away as a man sloughs his mortal body.
Learn even now to spread thy wings in that other world—the world of
Equality—to swim in the ocean, my child, of Me and my love.
[Ah! have I not taught thee by the semblances of this outer world, by its
alienations and deaths and mortal sufferings—all for this?
For joy, ah! joy unutterable!]

Him who is not detained by mortal adhesions, who walks in this world yet
not of it,
Taking part in everything with equal mind, with free limbs and senses
unentangled—
Giving all, accepting all, using all, enjoying all, asking nothing, shocked
at nothing—
Whom love follows everywhere, but he follows not it—
Him all creatures worship, all men and women bless.

It is for this that the body exercises its tremendous attraction—that
mortal love torments and tears asunder the successive generations of
mankind—
That underneath and after all the true men and women may appear, by long
experience emancipated.





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