From a London garden

Chapter 19: OUTSIDE THE CHURCH

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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.

OUTSIDE THE CHURCH

I passed without, what time the organ pealed

The last high rapture of a stately hymn,

And lingering where upon the twilight dim

The storied windows, rich with warmth, revealed

A pitying Christ ’mid humble shapes that kneeled,

Heard the punctilious Priest intone a grim

Creed-curse of some dead, earthly sanhedrim,

As if it opened all that God has sealed.

Not mine that perfect faith which strangely soothes

The world’s disquiet where it enters in,

And yet I bear, through every night of doubt,

A heart of hope made glad by simple truths:

No door, O Priest! shuts all God’s light within,

His stars are with me in the dark without.