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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. THE DREAM GOES BY, by EDWARD CARPENTER Poet's Biography First Line: The dream goes by, touches men's hearts, and floats and fades again Last Line: And floats, and waits, again. Subject(s): Dreams; Labor & Laborers; Nightmares; Work; Workers | |||
THE dream goes by, touches men's hearts, and floats and fades again Far on the hills away from this nightmare of modern cheap-jack life: The finished free Society. Finished and done with so much that clogs to-day the weary spirit, weary body; Finished and done with all the old cumbersome apparatus of Law and Authority, with the endless meanness of 'business' and money-making, with the silly paraphernalia of distinction and respectability, with the terrible struggle of each against all, and the trampling of the weak underfoot by the strong; Done with the endless joyless labors for the bread that perisheth, for clothing which keeps not the heart warm, for possessions which only weigh their owners to the ground; With envies, greeds, jealousiesloads and burdens of life too great to be borneSisyphus toils that bring no nearer to the goal. The grown man hand in hand with his little girl, walking the woodland path, With brown uncovered bodies, both of them, so glad, content, unconscious; And all the wealth and beauty of the world is theirs; The Sun shining on their limbs; and in their minds the long results of human culture. The simple dresses of the public thoroughfare, used of not used with quiet sense of fitness; The simple diet so easily won, so gladly shared; The stores of human science, human knowledge, acces sible to allfor all to use. And Death no longer terrible, but full Of poignant strange Expansion; Labor too (Which is our daily death And resurrection in the thing created) An ever-abiding joy. A life so near to Nature, all at one with bird and plant and beast and swimming thing, So near to all its fellows in sweet love In joy unbounded and undying love. The dream goes by, touches and stirs men's hearts, And floats, and waits, again. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AFTER WORKING SIXTY HOURS AGAIN FOR WHAT REASON by HICOK. BOB DAY JOB AND NIGHT JOB by ANDREW HUDGINS BIXBY'S LANDING by ROBINSON JEFFERS ON BUILDING WITH STONE by ROBINSON JEFFERS LINES FROM A PLUTOCRATIC POETASTER TO A DITCH-DIGGER by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS IN CALIFORNIA: MORNING, EVENING, LATE JANUARY by DENISE LEVERTOV AS A MOULD FOR SOME FAIR FORM by EDWARD CARPENTER |
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