OUT of deep tubes and tunnels When I to open air Up a round shaft am carried Or climb a spiral stair, The calm evening twilight Catches me unaware. In the deep tubes and tunnels That cross and slope and wind, In catacombs and caverns And subways of the mind, Journeying goes my spirit Where is no peace to find. Roaring upon its trackway My swaying will returns, Where crowding thoughts, as strangers, Press on their hid concerns, While in a blaze above them My arc'd self-knowledge burns. Within my earth deep-hidden, Shrieking, the tumult goes, From darkness into darkness Plunging without repose, Piercing black tubes and tunnels, Or checked where knowledge glows. But here the open twilight Breaks on me unaware: The pavement, the tall houses, The trees and the fresh air, The carts, the folk, the voices, And all things everywhere. The faint moon in the heaven, The sun with his gold fleece, The dust beneath my footfall, In one great flood of peace Flow down their silent channel And deepen and increase. With Time and Space for borders Lest any wave disperse, Flows forward, without eddy, The holy universe, As to its own broad music Moves a high poet's verse. But I stand up within it, In separation clad, As they who once in Jordan A dry footing had, Or he who trod in Ganges, Woe-stricken Ladurlad. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE DEPARTED by JOHN BANISTER TABB ONE'S-SELF I SING by WALT WHITMAN AT LAST by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 7. AL-MAUMIN by EDWIN ARNOLD THE SHEPHERD'S PIPE: THIRD ECLOGUE by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) THE WANDERER: 2. IN FRANCE: AU CAFE *** by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON ON THE LATE CAPT. GROSE'S PEREGRINATIONS THRO' SCOTLAND by ROBERT BURNS |