Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 2. BY THIS HEART, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 2. BY THIS HEART, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: By this heart sacred for you o children - for you a few years beating
Last Line: Shall your spirit sublimely sing.
Subject(s): Children; Hearts; Love; Childhood


BY this heart sacred for you O children—for you a few years beating;
By the deep yearnings of it, flowing, following you—and the world made
holy wherever you have trod;
By the firm pulse of it, and by its silent-dropping dark tears;
By its weakness and by its immortal strength;
By the love with which it encloses, in which it continually laves you;
By you greater yourselves; and by the love which I see flowing surely from
you to me;
By these I put all evil aside.
And I approach you, nearer, nearer—even so nearer than all
thought—
And remain with you, doubting fearing nothing.

For fear I put away from you, and the wretched unrest of the world;
And from the Maya of appearances I deliver you: believe me here is
deliverance;
[And not here only, in this inch of space and time, but wherever .. ]—

And I show you the inheritance of the riches of all time.

Yet sorrow, the gift of gifts, revealer of eternal joy, I give you not;
But One shall come in the night-time, bringing it, to transmute the world
for you,
Taking you by the hand, even while you live, through the great gate of
Death into Elysian fields.
There as the nightingale through the night beside his mate sings,
In the soft dark—filled with the spirit of the stars and of the
flowing river and the wafted fragrance of the field: the sunlit memories of the
day about him, and above him his own voice in the clear height poised
unfaltering—
So in perfect contentment thro' all your mortal work
Shall your spirit sublimely sing.





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