WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
From a London garden cover

From a London garden

Chapter 32: A SONG OF SHADOWS
Open in WeRead

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.

A SONG OF SHADOWS

The city is weird with shadows,
In the shine of a sunny day
You may see them darken the pavements—
Furtive, and hushed, and grey,
They crouch by the brooding houses,
They flit through the streets below:
Every man has his shadow
That follows him to and fro.
And still when the day is sunless
They haunt the heart of the din,
They dance at the heels of pleasure,
They run before folly and sin,
Love, and honour, and beauty
They follow without a sound—If
the sun shine out but a moment
You may see them darken the ground.
The city is weird with shadows,
And fear or thought of them lies
On pallid and weary faces,
In hungry and wistful eyes,
In brains that madden with sorrow,
In hearts that sadden and break—
Shadows of day and darkness
Nor sun nor moon ever make.
Heedless each of the other,
We people the crowded way,
We are shadows born of the daylight
And pass and fade with the day,
And the glory and gold we garner,
What is it when all is done?—
Every man has his shadow,
Though he walk in the shade or the sun.