This is not Love perhaps – Love that lays down
Its life, that many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, –
But something written in lighter ink, said in a lower tone;
Something perhaps especially our own:
A need at times to be together and talk –
And then the finding we can walk
More firmly through dark narrow places,
And meet more easily nightmare faces;
A need to reach out sometimes hand to hand –
And then find Earth less like an alien land;
A need for alliance to defeat
The whisperers at the corner of the street;
A need for inns on roads, islands in seas, halts for discoveries to be shared,
Maps checked, notes compared;
A need at times of each for each
Direct as the need of throat and tongue for speech.
Arthur Seymour John Tessimond (1902 -1962) was an English poet. He had a tumultuous childhood, ran from boarding school, went to work, somehow attended the University of Liverpool, avoided service in WWI and then discovered that he is unfit for military service after he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which in those days was known as manic depression. A.S. Tessimond is a wonderful poet though maybe somewhat underappreciated poet. He died from in 1962 from a brain haemorrhage.