Poetry Day - They Desire a Better Country

Soph has been thinking about the eschatological nature of poetry, or the way that poetry is an expression of "the last things", of a longing for the eternal. I've no doubt this is buried in a good many poems, but it is something Christina Rossetti writes about quite explicitly at times, so here is one of those poems, full of longing for the eternal and glimpses of it, particularly in the third verse (which I took from here, rather than type out myself).

They Desire A Better Country

Christina Rossetti

I.

I would not if I could undo my past,

  Tho’ for its sake my future is a blank;

  My past for which I have myself to thank,

For all its faults and follies first and last.

I would not cast anew the lot once cast,

  Or launch a second ship for one that sank,

  Or drug with sweets the bitterness I drank,

Or break by feasting my perpetual fast.

I would not if I could: for much more dear

  Is one remembrance than a hundred joys,

    More than a thousand hopes in jubilee;

  Dearer the music of one tearful voice

    That unforgotten calls and calls to me,

“Follow me here, rise up, and follow here.”

II.

What seekest thou, far in the unknown land?

  In hope I follow joy gone on before;

  In hope and fear persistent more and more,

As the dry desert lengthens out its sand.

Whilst day and night I carry in my hand

  The golden key to ope the golden door

  Of golden home; yet mine eye weepeth sore,

For long the journey is that makes no stand.

And who is this that veiled doth walk with thee?

  Lo, this is Love that walketh at my right;

    One exile holds us both, and we are bound

  To selfsame home-joys in the land of light.

Weeping thou walkest with him; weepeth he?—

    Some sobbing weep, some weep and make no sound.

III.

A dimness of a glory glimmers here

  Thro’ veils and distance from the space remote,

  A faintest far vibration of a note

Reaches to us and seems to bring us near;

Causing our face to glow with braver cheer,

  Making the serried mist to stand afloat,

  Subduing languor with an antidote,

And strengthening love almost to cast out fear:

Till for one moment golden city walls

  Rise looming on us, golden walls of home,

Light of our eyes until the darkness falls;

  Then thro’ the outer darkness burdensome

I hear again the tender voice that calls,

  “Follow me hither, follow, rise, and come.”