Poetry
Appearance and Reality Re-dedicated to the Spirit of Armistice Day, 1926.
IN those great realms of light— From which our rounded skies, the wide, the deep, Seem but a small dark cloud, a sphere of night Where embryonic lives are drowned in sleep— They that were born through death To life at last, and have stripped off all dreams, Draw with new joy their deep untroubled breath Walk on firm ground, and swim in living streams.
We are the ghosts, not they ; Ghosts with a cheating cloud-wrack round us furled, Theirs is the substance ; theirs the shining day ; Theirs are the ringing high-roads of the world ; Theirs the strong hills to range ; Valleys of Beauty ; bare scarred rocks of Truth ; Theirs the full life that uses time and change To wing with music an eternal youth.
Theirs the great company, too, The century-peopled cities, the world's boast ; Ours the dark dwellings ; ours an earth-bound few ; Theirs is the central, universal host, And when we too are born, And join that general concourse of mankind ; When these blind gates burst open to that morn, And these blind eyes perceive that they were blind ; When this dream-burial ends And all the sensuous veils of colour and sound That will not let us near our unseen friends From our true selves like sere-cloths are unwound ; In the first wonder and awe, When the dread seals are shattered and we see Light beyond light, freedom at one with law, Thought, passion, will, one absolute harmony ; 0, what shall be our due, On our first waking, to that exquisite maze ? One living truth that even on earth we knew In human form shall meet our wildered gaze ; A voice ; a living hand ; The known transfiguring all that vast unknown ; Then the full memory ; eyes that understand ; And the inarticulate love that claims its own.
-ALFRED Novae.
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