From a London garden

Chapter 30: ENOUGH

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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.

ENOUGH

Men there be who lose their days

Toiling after empty praise,

All they do they count as vain

Should the world their work disdain;

If I hear but praise from thee,

That is praise enough for me.

Shall I flatter high or low

Fearful lest I make a foe?

Shall I sorrow without end

For the falseness of a friend?—

If I win but love from thee,

That is love enough for me.

Other worlds afar may rise

Somewhere under other skies,

Other worlds and fairer still—

Sail and seek them they that will!

Wheresoe’er I walk with thee

There is world enough for me.

Wiser men than I may say

Heaven is high and far away,

Or may prove with reasonings rare

Heaven is neither here nor there;

Here where thou art, I with thee,

This is heaven enough for me.