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From a London garden cover

From a London garden

Chapter 15: THE CROWN OF FAILURE
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 CROWN OF FAILURE

When you have lived your life,
When you have fought your last good fight and won,
And the day’s work is finished, and the sun
Sets on your darkening world and all its strife—
Ere the worn hands are tired with all they’ve done,
Ere the mind’s strength begins to droop and wane,
Ere the first touch of sleep has dulled the brain,
Ere the heart’s springs are slow and running dry—
When you have lived your life,
’Twere good to die.
If it may not be so,
If you but fight a fight you may not win,
See the far goal but may not enter in,
’Twere better then to die and not to know
Defeat—to die amid the rush and din,
Still striving, while the heart beats high and fast
With glorious life: if you must fail, at last,
Such end were best, with all your hope and all
Your spirit in its youth,
Then, when you fall.
Far better so to die,
Still toiling upwards through the mists obscure,
With all things possible and nothing sure,
Than to be touched by glory and passed by,
To win, by chance, fame that may not endure,
That dies and leaves you living, while you strive
With wasted breath to keep its flame alive,
And fan, with empty boasts and proud regrets,
Remembrance of a name
The world forgets.