TO ONE I LOVE

As I walked along the passage, in the night, beyond the stairs,

In the dark,

I was afraid,

Suddenly,

As will happen you know, my dear, it will often happen.

I knew the walls at my side,

Knew the drawings hanging there, the order of their placing,

And the door where my bed lay beyond,

And the window on the landing —

There was even a little ray of moonlight through it —

All was known, familiar, my comfortable home;

And yet I was afraid,

Suddenly,

In the dark, like a child, of nothing,

Of vastness, of eternity, of the queer pains of thought,

Such as used to trouble me when I heard,

When I was little, the people talk

On Sundays of “As it was in the Beginning,

Is Now, and Ever Shall Be....”

I am thirty-six years old,

And folk are friendly to me,

And there are no ghosts that should have reason to haunt me,

And I have tempted no magical happenings

By forsaking the clear noons of thought

For the wizardries that the credulous take

To be golden roads to revelation.

I knew all was simplicity there,

Without conspiracy, without antagonism,

And yet I was afraid,

Suddenly,

A child, in the dark, forlorn....

And then, as suddenly,

I was aware of a profound, a miraculous understanding,

Knowledge that comes to a man

But once or twice, as a bird’ s note

In the still depth of the night

Striking upon the silence...

I stood at the door, and there

Was mellow candle-light,

And companionship, and comfort,

And I knew

That it was even so,

That it must be even so

With death.

I knew

That no harm could have touched me out of my fear,

Because I had no grudge against anything,

Because I had desired

In the darkness, when fear came,

Love only, and pity, and fellowship,

And it would have been a thing monstrous,

Something defying nature

And all the simple universal fitness

For any force there to have come evilly

Upon me, who had no evil in my heart,

But only trust, and tenderness

For every presence about me in the air,

For the very shadow about me,

Being a little child for no one’ s envy.

And I knew that God

Must understand that we go

To death as little children,

Desiring love so simply, and love’ s defence,

And that he would be a barren God, without humour,

To cheat so little, so wistful, a desire,

That he created

In us, in our childishness...

And I may never again be sure of this,

But there, for a moment,

In the candle-light,

Standing at the door,

I knew.