Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. OUT OF THE HOUSE OF CHILDHOOD, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. OUT OF THE HOUSE OF CHILDHOOD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: To take by leaving, to hold by letting go
Last Line: But who is ready to die to life now, he even now possesses it.
Subject(s): Aging; Children; Childhood


TO take by leaving, to hold by letting go.
Now, when out of the house of your childhood you are departing,
Where you suffered, where you joyed, in the old confused childish way, not
certainly distinguishing things,
Now suddenly, as you leave, how it all becomes clear, as in a kind of new
and incomparable light!
This is the corner where your little bed stood against the wall, this the
window where the moon peeped, and the white and ghostly dawn came;
These are the closed rooms and chests into which you were so seldom
permitted to look; this was the daily routine of life which for some inscrutable
reason was so rigidly adhered to;
These are the stairs where up and down moved such queer
processions—funerals and weddings, and bustling visitors and elderly aunts
and uncles, and the parson and the doctor in their turn;
And you were bade stand aside since you could not understand—
But now you understand it all.

Now, leaving it all,
The window truly for you will never stand open again, nor the sweet
night-air through it blow—never again for you on the little coverlet of
your bed will the moonlight fall;
And yet mayhap for the first time will the wind really blow and the
moonlight fall,
For the first time shall you really see the face of your father whom you
used to meet so often on the stairs.
All the spaces and corners of the house, and the swinging of the doors, and
the tones and voices of those behind them, shall be full of meanings which were
hidden from you while you dwelt among them.

Nor shall they ever leave you.
Never so long as yourself lasts shall you forget your mother smoothing out
the pillow under your head, last thing at night, and kissing you as you slept;
Nay, every year so long as you live shall you understand that act
better—shall you come closer in reality to her whom as a child you saw but
through a glass darkly.

Leaving and again leaving, and ever leaving go of the surfaces of objects,
So taking the heart of them with us,
This is the law.

The beauty of a certain scene in Nature,
The beauty, the incomparable beauty of the face and presence of the loved
one;
The sweetness of pleasure—of food, of music, of exercise, or of rest
and sleep;
All these are good to obtain and to hold;
Yet (when the need arises) to be able to dispense with them—that is
indeed to hold and to realise them even more deeply.

When at last Death comes, then all of Life shall be to us as the house of
our childhood—
For the first time we shall really possess it.
But who is ready to die to life now, he even now possesses it.





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