From a London garden

Chapter 17: THRENOS

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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.

THRENOS

There is nothing so beautiful now

As it used to be,

Something has gone from the grass,

And the flower, and the tree,

Something, O thou who art gone!

That faded with thee,

And there’s nothing so beautiful now

As it used to be.

Youth, with its faith in the world

And its dreams divine,

Youth, that is filled with delight

As the grape with wine,

Youth, like the moon from the night,

Has gone from me,

And there’s nothing so beautiful now

As it used to be.

A glory has passed from the sky,

And a joy from earth;

There are tears in the music that once

Spake only of mirth;

I know there is death in the world

Under all that I see,

And there’s nothing so beautiful now

As it used to be.