From a London garden

Chapter 26: UNTIL THE EVENING

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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.

UNTIL THE EVENING

Tired with the daily toil for daily bread,

The spirit slaving for the body’s needs,

The brain and nerve are dulled, and the heart bleeds

And breaks with grief of brooding thought unsaid:

Were we but born to labour and be fed?

To spend our souls in lowly, trivial deeds,

Mere sordid coin the guerdon God concedes?

Ah, yet press on though with a fainting tread—

Till evening ends our work and stills our cries:

Then we may find our lowness is our height,

Our crown the tasks we wrought with sobbing breath;

As common things a sunset glorifies,

This life, at last, may robe itself in light

And stand transfigured at the touch of Death.