Poems of London, and Other Verses

by John Presland

FINIS

Life, in its unimaginable heights,
When we may seize and apprehend the true
Soul essence, of one nature with the stars:
Rare moments when our senses are a mist
That the truth shines through:—oh, most strange and rare,
Such ecstasies as unimprisoned souls
Experience in that thin empyrean
Beyond the gross world; this we two have known
We two together. There are memories
Of such high happiness in a fence of pain
As martyrs in their fiery heart of death
Have blessed their God for; passion and holiness,
When all the body (sinew, bone, and brain)
Are like a harp, from which the spirit makes
Marvels of harmony; some sense too rare
To be called happiness, not to be named indeed
In human speech—this we have touched and known
Together, at some thrilling edge of time.

I fall away from it; the barriers close
About me; I descend from the clear heights
Into the plains and valleys of the world.
The traffic of the market-place is mine,
The heat and dust, the jostling and the noise,
The kindly challenge and the neighbour-talk,
All these may claim me, so that I forget
To lift my eyes and see the far-off peaks,
And the eternal splendour of the stars.

So be it; let the tide of men's affairs
Carry me back and forward; let the rub
Of greasy ha'pence passed from hand to hand,
In humble traffic of a bunch of herbs
Not pass me by; let me jog arm in arm,
Or cheek by jowl, the shady side o' the street,
With friends and neighbours, glad to know them there,
Imperfect, human, kind, and tolerant.

So may the years go. Yet, when the call comes,
And the world's colours fade before the eye
That turns for spiritual vision on itself;
When, from the four walls of the silent room,
The noises of the world fall back and fail
In that great silence which enrings the last
Ecstatic moment of experience,
Here on this earth—ah, then indeed I know
That I shall find you. All that lies behind
(The years of trivial experience)
Shall open and fall back from off my soul,
As falls the brown sheaf from the opening bud;
And in that poignant moment, that mere breath
Of temporal time, that aeon of the soul,
I shall reach out and know you, mix with you
As flame with flame, as ray with ray of light,
Be perfectly yourself, as you are me,
With all else fallen, gone, dispersed away
Save the pure drop of spiritual essence—Then
Let come what may, light or oblivion.

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