Hugh MacDiarmid
Of Certain Dead Friends
The soul of man became in them a dominant thing,
Its indestructibility in a world falling in ruins
Among scenes of indescribable horror
A thing to be held on to passionately.
They rang true. Is there more than one man
In a hundred thousand anywhere else
Of whom it is possible to say that
Courage and honesty
Are the foundations of his nature?
It is very rarely that a man loves
And when he does it is nearly always fatal.
The fire of life woke and burnt in these men
With that clear and passionate flame
That can only burn in those whose hearts are clean.
Love and Pain, Terror and Ecstasy,
Strife and Fulfilment, Blasphemy and Prayer
Were one another's shadows.
Meeting and fading in a single radiance
That was not light nor heat,
But a movement, a flowing, that carried us along
And yet left us steadier,
More certain than we ever were before.
Page(s) 216
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