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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=339799" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Hand In The Dark</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">How calm the spangled city spread below!<br>How cool the night! How fair the starry skies!<br>How sweet the dewy breezes! But I know<br>What, under all their seeming beauty, lies.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That million-fibred heart, alive, is wrung<br>With every grief that human creatures fear.<br>Could its dumb anguish find a fitting tongue<br>The very dead within their graves would hear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It calls me from my rest, that voiceless wail<br>Of Lazarus at the gate — my kith and kin<br>Whose cruise and cake, and staff and beacon, fail —<br> The famished crowd, that cannot enter in.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How can I take my ease amid this pain,<br>These pangs, these tears, these crimes, that never cease?<br>While homeless children cry for bread in vain<br>How can I eat? How can I sleep in peace?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Poor comrades of the fight, that have no place!<br>Brothers and sisters, born to want and wrong.<br>Born weak and maimed, to run a hopeless race,<br>Lost at the start, against the hale and strong!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Poor scapegoats of the wilderness, that fast<br>For those who feast! And, ah, poor feasters too!<br>They also thirst and hunger at the last.<br>And this is Life — and all the Race can do.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Vain, vain the listening ear, the questioning gaze.<br>Shoreless, unplumbed, the ether-ocean lies<br>Above these roofs, beyond the smoke and haze —<br>The Infinite — alive with watching eyes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">To see our orb of sorrow whirling there —<br>The tiny swarm of struggling things, that curse<br>Their subject province, and yet calmly dare<br>To claim the kingship of the Universe.<br>Dread cloud of witnesses to earth's disgrace!<br>Earth is my trust — I am afraid to look<br>Those still and stern accusers in the face,<br>And haste to hide in my familiar nook.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My little nook — where is it? Have I none?<br>I grow confused betwixt the sea and shore.<br>I had some lamps to guide me — one by one<br>They flashed and failed, and now I have no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where am I? Oh, where am I? I can feel —<br>To feel my torment — but I cannot see,<br>I cannot hear. My brain begins to reel,<br>My heart to faint. Almighty, speak to me!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Help me! Or, in Thy pity, take me hence<br>While feeling heart and thinking brain are whole,<br>Or give me any rag of carnal sense,<br>So it suffice to wrap my naked soul!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> * * * * *<br>No word. No sign. Yet something in the air<br>Soothes, like a cool hand on a fevered brow.<br>Replenished, from the ashes of despair<br>I rise renewed. Belovèd, where art thou?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She sleeps. She stirs. She hears the lightest fall<br>Of foot familiar with her chamber floor.<br>Her spirit answers to my spirit's call:<br>Come home! Come home! And I am saved once more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bringing no leaf of hope, alone and late,<br>Spent and wing-weary, famished for a crumb,<br>The wandering dove heads back to nest and mate.<br> My Love and Comforter, I come! I come!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here is the welcome threshold of my ark,<br>My island-home amid the trackless flood.<br>Her hand shuts out the Silence and the Dark;<br>Her pulse thrills life into my fainting blood.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She draws me down upon that couch of bliss,<br> Her faithful arms, her tender mother-breast;<br>I clasp her close, those sweetest lips I kiss,<br>And, at long last, I have my hour of rest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> * * * * *<br>Thou, too, my love, hast wandered far and wide,<br>And hast come home, where all thy wanderings cease.<br>The door is shut. Thy mate is at thy side.<br>Here is thy long-sought pillow. Sleep in peace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Heed not the patter of the weeping eaves,<br>The groan of branches bending to the rain,<br>The sad tap-tapping of dead autumn leaves,<br>Like ghostly fingers, on the window-pane.<br>The wind-borne echoings, from east and west,<br>Of weeping woe and wailing agony;<br>All night they cry round thy beleaguered nest,<br>But fear them not, for thou art safe with me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let the sad world spin on, a trail of shame<br> Amongst the myriad worlds. Whate'er befalls,<br>The great God knows that we are not to blame.<br>Our world is here, within our chamber walls.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In this asylum, secret and apart,<br>Whereof we keep the one and only key,<br>Rest thee, poor tired heart, upon my heart,<br>As all my weary being rests in thee.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Good-night! Good-night! Sleep deep and well, my bride.<br>The fight goes on, but we have won release.<br>Our wounds are healed, our tears are shed and dried.<br>Let the storms rage — they cannot break our peace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> * * * * *<br>Peace — is it peace? What is that form of fear<br> That looms ahead? What distillation sours<br>The joy of life when thou, alive, art near,<br>And nought seems wanting to the perfect hours?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What chills my passion when I love thee most,<br>And dims my eyes, and veils thy face, and slips,<br>An unseen shadow, like a creeping ghost,<br>Betwixt my hungering kisses and thy lips?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What, amid richest plenty, starves me thus?<br>What is it steals my soul's content, and thine —<br>That sits a guest at marriage-feast with us,<br> And mixes poison with the food and wine?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> * * * * *<br>A vision comes. A graveyard, all alone,<br>A small green mound, a withered funeral wreath;<br>Love's last drear symbol of a graven stone,<br>And Life and I but worthless dust beneath.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There weep the dews, and winds of winter blow;<br>The soft breeze rustles in the bending grass;<br>The cold rain falls there, and the drifting snow.<br>But tears fall not, nor lover's footsteps pass.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bees hum all day amid the young spring leaves;<br>The rooks call loudly from the elm-tree bough;<br>The sparrows twitter in the old church eaves;<br>But no voice cries for me, or calls me, now.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bright beams of morning compass me about;<br>The stars shine o'er me, and the pale moonlight;<br>But I, that lit and warmed thee, am gone out<br>Like a burnt candle, in eternal night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Earth to the earth upon this churchyard slope,<br>Ashes to ashes, nothing to the nought;<br>No tryst between us, and no star of hope<br>To light the path so passionately sought.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And still the sands between thy fingers run —<br>Desires, delights, ambitions, days and years,<br>Rich hours of life for thee, though mine are done —<br>Too full for vain regrets, too brief for tears.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I have lost all, but thou dost hold and save,<br>Adding new treasure to thy rifled store;<br>While weeds grow long on the deserted grave<br>Where sleeps thy mate who may be thine no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> * * * * *<br>This is the fate I fear, the ghost I see,<br>The dream I dream at night, the thought I dread —<br>That thus 't'will be someday with thee and me,<br>Thou fain to live while I am doubly dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thou still defiant of our common foe,<br>I vanquished quite — the once-resplendent crown<br>Of all thy joys become a dragging woe,<br>To be lopped off lest it should weigh thee down.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I, once thy sap of life, a wasteful drain<br>On thy green vigour, like a rotten branch;<br>I, once thy health, a paralysing pain,<br> A bleeding wound, that thou must haste to stanch.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Because the dead are dead — the past is gone;<br>Because dear life is sweet and time is brief,<br>And some must fall, and some must still press on,<br>Nor waste scant strength in unavailing grief.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> * * * * *<br>I blame thee not. I know what must be must.<br>Nor shall I suffer when apart from thee.<br>I shall not care, when I am mouldering dust,<br>That once quick love is in the grave with me.<br>Cast me away — thou knowest I shall not fret;<br>Take thy due joys — I shall not bear the cost.<br>I, that am thus forgotten, shall forget,<br>Nor shed one tear for all that I have lost.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not then the sting of death, the day of dole,<br>When corpse of love lies under funeral pall;<br>'Tis now I wear the sackcloth on my soul,<br>Bereaved and lonely, while possessed of all.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> * * * * *<br>If thou wert dead, belovèd, should I turn<br>Deaf heart to memory when of thee she spake?<br>Should I, when this pure fire had ceased to burn,<br>Seek other hearths for sordid comfort's sake?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No, no! Yet I am mortal, I am weak,<br>And any fire is warm in wintry cold.<br>Alas! alas! The fateful years will wreak<br>Their own stern will on ours, when all is told.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Tell us, 0 Thou that canst behold us grope,<br>Whole-souled, incessant, through these realms unknown<br>For but one touch of a substantial hope,<br>How can we keep our dear selves for our own?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Whence did we come? And is it there we go?<br>We look behind — night hides our place of birth;<br>The blank ahead hides Heaven, for aught we know;<br>But what is Heaven to us, whose home is Earth?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Flesh may be gross — the husk that holds the seed;<br>Jewels of gold worth more than common bread;<br>But we are flesh, and common bread our need.<br>Angels in glory, we should still be dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What is the infinite Universe to him<br>Who has no home? Eternal Future seems,<br>Like the eternal Past, unreal and dim,<br>The airy region of a poet's dreams.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What spirit-essence, howsoe'er divine,<br>Can our lost selves restore from dusty grave?<br>Her mortal mind and body — hers and mine —<br>Make all the joys I know, and all I crave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No fair romance of transcendental bliss,<br>No tale of palms and crowns, my dull heart stirs,<br>That only hungers for a woman's kiss,<br>And asks no life that is not one with hers.<br>No such Hereafter do I ask to see;<br>No such pale hope my sinking soul exalts;<br>I want no sexless angel — only thee,<br>My human love, with all thy human faults.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Just as thou art — not beautiful or wise,<br>But prone to simple sins and sad unrest —<br>With thy warm lips and arms, and thy sweet eyes,<br>Sweeter for tears they weep upon my breast.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Just as thou art, with thy soft household ways,<br>Thy noble failures and thy poor success,<br>Thy love that fits me for my strenuous days;<br>A mortal woman — neither more nor less.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> * * * * *<br>And thou must pass, with these too rapid hours,<br>To that great deep wherefrom we both were brought;<br>Thy sentient flesh must turn to grass and flowers,<br>To birds and beasts, to dust — to air — to nought.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I know the parable. The great oaks grow<br>To their vast stature from an acorn grain,<br>And mightiest man was once an embryo.<br>But how can nothing bring thee forth again?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And is the new oak tree the old oak tree?<br>And is the son the father? And would'st thou,<br>If thou could'st rise from nothing, be to me<br>The precious self that satisfies me now?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Words! Words! A tale — a fairy legend, drawn<br>From lore of babes, that men must cast away;<br>Faith of the primal dreamer and the dawn,<br>Eluding vision in the light of day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here in our little island-home we bide<br>Our few brief years — the years that we possess.<br>Beyond, the Infinite on every side<br>Holds what no man may know, though all may guess.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We may remain — a lasting miracle. Ay, well we may. Our island-home is rife<br>With marvels greater than the tongue can tell,<br>And all things teem and travail with new life.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We may awake, ineffably alive,<br>Divinely perfect, in some higher sphere:<br>But still not we shall wake — the we who strive,<br>Who love and learn, who joy and suffer, here.<br>What then our hope, if any hope there be?<br>A something vague and formless and unknown,<br>That some strange beings, yet unborn, shall see.<br>Alas! And all we cry for is our own.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Only to be ourselves — not cast abroad<br>In space and time, for either bliss or woe;<br>Only to keep the treasures we have stored.<br>And they must pass away. And we must go.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How can we bear it? How can we submit?<br>Like a wild beast imprisoned, in our pain<br>We rave and rage for some way out of it,<br>And bruise and bleed against the bars in vain.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">All, all is dark. Beyond our birth and death —<br>At either end — the same unyielding door.<br>We live, we love, while we draw human breath;<br>And then we die. And then? We know no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> * * * * *<br>Ah, but look up, above these roofs and spires,<br>To where the stars shine down like watching eyes.<br>Conceive the tumult of those spinning fires!<br>Behold the vastness of those midnight skies!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And count the value of this speck of earth<br>Amid the countless Whole; and measure Man —<br>That on this speck but yesterday had birth,<br>And claims all God — with the prodigious plan.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Man, but a phase of planetary change,<br>That once was not, and will give place anon<br>To other forms, more beautiful and strange —<br>To pass in turn — till Earth herself is gone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Earth, that is next to nothing in the sum<br>Of things created — a brief mote in space,<br>With all her aeons past and yet to come.<br>How we miscalculate our size — our place!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yet are we men — details of the design,<br>Set to our course, like circling sun and star;<br>Mortal, infinitesimal, yet divine<br>Of that divine which made us what we are.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And yet this world, this microscopic ball,<br> This cast-up grain of sand upon the shore,<br>This trivial shred and atom of the ALL,<br> Is still our Trust, that we must answer for.<br>A lighthouse in the Infinite, with lamps<br>That we must trim and feed until we die;<br>A lonely outpost of the unseen camps<br>That we must keep, although we know not why.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The workman and the soldier have the word;<br>Theirs to obey, and not to question. Thus<br>We stand to orders that we never heard,<br>Bound to our little part. Enough for us.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The warm sap runs; the tender leaves unfold;<br>Ant helps his brother ant; birds build and sing;<br>The patient earthworm aids the pregnant mould<br>To fruit in autumn and to bud in spring.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Not less am I in wisdom and in will<br>Than ants and worms. I am full-furnished too<br>My arduous errand hither to fulfil.<br>I know my work, and what a man can do.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Maker of all! Enough that Thou hast given<br>This tempered mind, this brain without a flaw.<br>Enough for me to strive, as I have striven,<br>To make them serve their purpose and Thy law.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"> * * * * *<br>But, oh, my soul's companion! Thee I seek<br>For daily courage to support my lot.<br>In thee hath Nature made me strong or weak.<br>My human comforter, forsake me not!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My nobler self, in whom I live my best,<br>Strengthen me! Raise me! Lead me to the last!<br>Lay thy dear head upon my throbbing breast,<br>Give me thy hands, that I may hold thee fast!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Come close — come closer! Let me feel thy heart,<br>Thy pulsing heart, thy breathing lips, on mine.<br>0 love, let only death and graveyard part —<br>If they must part — my flesh and soul from thine!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Be thou my purer eyes, my keener ears,<br>My finer conscience, clean and unafraid,<br>Till these few, swift, inexorable years<br>Have borne us both beyond the reach of aid.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">My rod and staff upon this lonely way,<br>My beacon-lamp till need of light is past;<br>Till the great Shadow, lengthening day by day,<br>Spreads over all and quenches us at last.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Ada+Cambridge">Ada Cambridge</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=339799" data-title="The Hand In The Dark de Ada Cambridge" data-description="How calm the spangled city spread below!
How cool the night! How fair the starry skies!
How sweet the dewy breezes! But I know
What, under all their seeming beauty, lies.

That million-fibred heart, alive, is wrung
With every grief that human crea..."></div>
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