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Spender, Stephen - At the end of two months’ holiday
Identifier
029157
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
At the end of two months’ holiday
At the end of two months’ holiday there came a night
When I lay awake and the sea’s distant fretless scansion
By imagination scourged rose to a fight
Like the town’s roar, pouring out apprehension.
I was in a train. Like the quick spool of a film
I watched hasten away the simple green which can heal
All sadness. Abruptly the sign Ferry to Wilm
And the cottage by the lake, were vivid, but unreal.
Real were iron lines, and, smashing the glass
The cars in which we ride, and real our compelled time:
Painted on enamel beneath the moving glass
Unreal were cows, the wave-winged storks, the line.*
These burned in a clear world from which we pass
Like rose and love in a forgotten rhyme.