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 talkOn 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 happeningsBy forsaking the clear noons of thoughtFor the wizardries that the credulous takeTo 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 manBut once or twice, as a bird’s noteIn the still depth of the nightStriking upon the silence ...I stood at the door, and thereWas mellow candle-light,And companionship, and comfort,And I knewThat it was even so,That it must be even soWith death.I knewThat no harm could have touched me out of my fear,Because I had no grudge against anything,Because I had desiredIn the darkness, when fear came,Love only, and pity, and fellowship,And it would have been a thing monstrous,Something defying natureAnd all the simple universal fitnessFor any force there to have come evillyUpon me, who had no evil in my heart,But only trust, and tendernessFor 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 GodMust understand that we goTo 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 createdIn 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.