Poetry Revisited: There Is No Age by Eva Gore-Booth

There Is No Age

(from Poems of Eva Gore-Booth: 1929)

There is no age, this darkness and decay
Is by a radiant spirit cast aside,
Young with the ageless youth that yesterday
Bent to the yoke of flesh immortal pride.

What though in time of thunder and black cloud
The Spirit of the Innermost recedes
Into the depths of Being, stormy browed,
Obscured by a long life of dreams and deeds –

There is no age – the swiftly passing hour
That measures out our days of pilgrimage
And breaks the heart of every summer flower,
Shall find again the child’s soul in the sage.

There is no age, for youth is the divine;
And the white radiance of the timeless soul
Burns like a silver lamp in that dark shrine
That is the tired pilgrim’s ultimate goal.

Eva Gore-Booth (1870-1926)
Irish poet and dramatist, suffragist, social worker and labour activist