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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. LIFE BEHIND LIFE, by EDWARD CARPENTER Poet's Biography
First Line: What joys, what strange joys, lurk behind the actual
Last Line: Creating new joys, fiercer wilder than those of old.
Subject(s): Life
First Line: What joys, what strange joys, lurk behind the actual
Last Line: Creating new joys, fiercer wilder than those of old.
Subject(s): Life
WHAT joys, what strange joys, lurk behind the actual!
See how great the pleasures of the body, of eating drinking, resting; or of
the mind, of knowledge, ambition, power;
And yet behind these what strange pleasures:
Pleasures of fierce pain endured, pleasures of the body exposed to
bullet-wounds, scourges, fire—shattered and cast away;
Pleasures of pleasure refused, of simple withdrawnness and indifference, or
of mastery and ascendancy.
Ever breaking out behind the actual some unknown force or being,
Throwing the whilom body off like a husk, with its former capacities and
needs,
Creating new joys, fiercer wilder than those of old.
Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!
Other Poems of Interest...
PRIVILEGE OF BEING by ROBERT HASS
SEAWATER STIFFENS CLOTH by JANE HIRSHFIELD
SAYING YES TO LIVING by DAVID IGNATOW
THE WORLD IS SO DIFFICULT TO GIVE UP by DAVID IGNATOW
AS A MOULD FOR SOME FAIR FORM by EDWARD CARPENTER