Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. I HEAR THY CALL, MYSTERIOUS BEING, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. I HEAR THY CALL, MYSTERIOUS BEING, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I hear thy call, mysterious being
Last Line: I hear thy call—I come.
Subject(s): Creation


I HEAR thy call, Mysterious Being;
In the dead of night, when the stars float grey overhead, and the Northern
lights flicker faintly,
In the blazing noon when the sunlight rims with a luminous ring the wide
horizon,
Flooding, enfolding all—
I hear thy call.
In the hollow depths below—I hear thee, Mysterious Being.

[I am swept out, as the tide to the call of the Moon is swept out from the
shores it knows—to wonderful other shores;
I am carried away, away, in a swoon to the ends of Creation.]

Deep, deep is Thy heart. As I sink in it, lo! there is nothing, nothing
which is not held by thy love.
On the surface there is rejection and discrimination, but in the depth lo!
everything is held by it.
Swift, swift is Thy flight. In an instant now here, now there—it is
all the same to Thee.
As the lambent fire of sex within the body, as the Northern lights with
luminous fingers over the sky—
So Thou through all creation.
As the great Sun blazing down at noon on the Himalayan forests, and bathing
each leaf the same for hundreds, thousands, of miles—
So Thou through all creation.

[Flutter on little leaves—ye that break the light into a million
beautiful forms!
Flutter on little worlds, that float in the ether of space!
Flutter on little hearts, whom the great Heart feeds and encloses!]

And thou, O stranger who dwellest perchance in yonder star, or globe that
circles dark about yon star,
Or thou, dear lover that on this earth of ours holdest my heart in thine,
Can Death, I say, or Space or Time or Worlds avail in the end against us?
Take me, great Life—O take me, long-delaying.
Unloose these chains, unbind these clogs and fetters;
I hear thy call—so strange—Mysterious Being,
I hear thy call—I come.





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