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From a London garden cover

From a London garden

Chapter 10: THE CITY ASLEEP
By Arthur St. John Adcock
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About This Book

A collected series of lyrical poems moves between urban and rural imagery to reflect on love, mortality, time, memory, and moral growth. The poet uses concise, imagistic language and varied meters to meditate on human experience: longing and loss, pride and humility, the rhythms of city life and quiet country scenes, the passage of days and seasons, death and consolation. Voices range from personal confession to philosophical observation, with elegiac tones, religious reflection, and celebration of steadfastness. Recurring motifs—light and shadow, dawn and evening, gardens and streets—bind individual pieces into a contemplative portrait of inner life amid modern surroundings.

THE CITY ASLEEP

Darkly, under a drifting moon,
The streets lie empty of sound and life;
Dawn of to-morrow come not soon!
Silent afar is yesterday’s noon,
And the city forgets its sorrow and strife:
Oh, weary eyes and hearts that ache,
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.
Here, where all day the air was loud
With a rattle of carts and jingle of cars
And the murmur and laughter and tread of the crowd,
Are only the ruts that the wheels have ploughed,
And rails that gleam with a glint of the stars,
And dreaming streets that the crowd forsake:
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.
Toil and care to the day belong;
To-morrow their tears shall fall again,
But now for a little the weak are strong;
Sleep knows nothing of right or wrong,
To-night feels naught of to-morrow’s pain.
Sleep has a cup all thirst to slake:
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.
Bare little feet grown hard on the stones,
Gaunt little hands that work has worn—
Oh, children, whom man enslaves or disowns,
Christ in His heaven has heard your moans
And touched you with happy death till morn.
Children, to-morrow your hearts shall ache:
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.
Sorrow and sin crouch side by side,
Stived in their slum as swine in their pen;
Sin?—is it sorrow too sorely tried?
A birth of the ashes where hope has died?
Weary and outcast women and men,
Is it God that mars what His own hands make?
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.
Wealth that dwells on the heights serene,
Virtue a-dream in your blissful bower,
With the blood of the poor are your walls unclean,
Your pleasures are dredged from their woes obscene;
Could ye smell the filth of the root in the flower,
What joy in the scent thereof would ye take?
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.
Palace and hovel, the prince and the throng,
Are one in sleep ’neath the drifting moon;
Now for a little the weak are strong,
Sleep knows nothing of right or wrong:
Dawn of to-morrow, come not soon!
Eyes that are tearless and hearts that break,
Sleep!—it is better to sleep than wake.