Arlo Will speaks like someone looking back from beyond life, asking whether you have known those strange moments when the ordinary world shimmers: an alligator surfacing blindly, horses flinching at a lantern, a dark doorway suddenly glowing like candlelight. These images share a feeling of being startled into wonder—fear and beauty at once. The second half turns direct and encouraging. He tells the “strong of soul” that life means moving out of mud again and again, through doors and fields of light, toward a final blazing encounter. The mood is hushed and visionary, not gloomy. There is awe, even tenderness, in the way he describes “soundless glory” falling around a person’s steps. The poem reads like an invitation to see earthly struggle as part of a larger, luminous journey.
Arlo Will — Summary
Did you ever see an alligator Come up to the air from the mud, Staring blindly under the full glare of noon? Have you seen the stabled horses at night Tremble and start back at the sight of a lantern? Have you ever walked in darkness When an unknown door was open before you And you stood, it seemed, in the light of a thousand candles Of delicate wax? Have you walked with the wind in your ears And the sunlight about you And found it suddenly shine with an inner splendor? Out of the mud many times Before many doors of light Through many fields of splendor, Where around your steps a soundless glory scatters Like new-fallen snow, Will you go through earth, O strong of soul, And through unnumbered heavens To the final flame!