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From a London garden cover

From a London garden

Chapter 34: THE HAUNTED CITY

By Arthur St. John Adcock

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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.

THE HAUNTED CITY

Some heart’s remembrance and regret

Fill every street with life profound:

This corner where of old we met

To me has since been hallowed ground;

I never pass in sun or rain

Now, but I meet you here again.

We cannot go from where we dwell

And leave behind no lingering trace;

Where in the past our shadow fell

A shadow of us haunts the place;

Returning now, ourselves may there

Disturb some ghost of what we were.

The stones are thrilled by many a tread

That leaves no footprint where it strays;

Shades of the living and the dead

In silence throng the noisy ways:

Here where I meet in shower or shine

Your ghost, you haply meet with mine.

The air has sounds we cannot hear,

Is dim with shapes that none can see;

Though dear the living voice, and dear

The sight of living faces be,

With kindlier yearnings yet we greet

The friends we see not when we meet.