Poems

Chapter 106: RENUNCIATION

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About This Book

A varied collection of lyric and narrative verse that moves between short songs, sonnets, rondels, and longer meditative pieces. Many poems use pastoral and seasonal imagery to celebrate fields, harvest, and the sensory life of the natural world while also acknowledging the hardships and dignity of rural labor. Recurring themes include love, absence, memory, and spiritual longing, treated with formal variety and musical language. The tone alternates between celebratory, elegiac, and reflective, blending vivid description with moral and emotional observation.

RENUNCIATION

I have not ever reached for Paradise;

Nor sought beyond my fellows to be blessed.

Nor hoped where all men fail;—but quick confessed

The Limit, and the taunting Mark that flies.

But since I’ve seen thy soul without disguise;

And dreamed thy love’s great passion once expressed;

I’ve known my portion’s good in one sole best:—

Thy love and thee,—strong Spirit pure and wise!

To read thro’ tortuous lines, at length to see

What is the single goal, the heart’s desire,

And then without possession learn to live,—

Is Life...! Toward this, my chastened mind I give,

And thro’ Renunciation dare aspire

To reach God’s light, thro’ love and loss of thee.