Vassals of Despair

01 August 2025

https://poems.culturing.net/2025/08/vassals-of-despair/

God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,
And hell is more than half of paradise.
    - E.A. Robinson, Luke Havergal

What is our theme? Alert
while others dream, we see through all?
But then we start to fall,
and though the whispered words do call
through falling leaves, we hear them
not at all. It's too much trouble,
hearing, isn't it? I say awaken slowly
in your own time, not as words or leaves
or others make demands, but when the light
inspires in you that moving force, which drives
the bud to blossom. Only then can you
feel free.
                  Listen to me: there is a way out,
up through years of painful memories, to hope,
which sits enthroned upon the hearts of happy people,
who, like us, were once the vassals of despair.