The Voice from Over Yonder
The Voice from Over Yonder - meaning Summary
A Refrain: Ive Been There
The poem is a series of anguished questions about love, poverty, despair, and faith answered by a repeated, weary response. The speaker asks whether love was mutual, what it means to be destitute and forgotten, and whether life has purpose; each time a distant voice replies that it has shared those sufferings. The effect is communal loneliness and resigned understanding rather than resolution or consolation.
Read Complete AnalysesDid she care as much as I did When our paths of Fate divided? Was the love, then, all onesided Did she understand or care? Slowly fall the moments leaden, And the silence seems to deaden And a voice from over yonder answers sadly: I’ve been there. Have you tramped the streets of cities Poor? And do you know what it is While no mortal cares or pities To have drifted past ambition; To have sunk below despair? Doomed to slave and stint and borrow; Ever haunted in your sorrow By the spectre of To-morrow? And the voice from over yonder answers sadly: I’ve been there. Surely in the wide Hereafter There’s a land of love and laughter? Say: Is this life all we live for Say it! think it, if you dare! Have you ever thought or wondered Why the Man and God were sundered? Do you think the Maker blundered? And the voice, in mocking accents, answered only: I’ve been there.
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