Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. AFTER FIFTY YEARS, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. AFTER FIFTY YEARS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Looking back now, after fifty years and more when the main work of life is done
Last Line: My lovers, and they me, for evermore.
Subject(s): Memory; Old Age; Weariness; Fatigue


LOOKING back now, after fifty years and more, when the main work of life is
done,
When its acquisitions, its results, its alliances, are before me, and but
few new elements remain to be added,
I ask myself: What is the gist, what the end, what the gain of it all?
What shall I take with me now when Death comes—as one coming homeward
takes a flower in his hand for a token that he has strayed in gracious fields?

Is it applause and fame? But this, if it came to me, were only as a little
stir of wind might be, to one seeking his lover in the night: a pleasant
breeze—that yet might blow his lamp out!
Is it all the pleasure of life that I have had—in the beautiful woods
and on the mountains, in the sun and in the waters, in social life and jollity,
in my actual work?
Yea, these things were beautiful, but I have passed and left them and can
return no more. The fields remain, but the flowers I plucked there are fading
already on my bosom
Is it all my acquisitions—of goods, of skill, of knowledge, of
character—but what are they for myself but weariness, save I can yield them
to the hands of one I love?

O little heart, where my friends my dear ones live, thou alone remainest!
While I live thou livest, and while thou livest they live, whose home is
within thy walls.
Methinks that when I die I still shall hold Thee;
Methinks that when the world fades my little heart shall grow,
And grow and grow into another World,
And be my Paradise where I shall find
My lovers, and they me, for evermore.





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