|
|
|
|
| Alexandria’s was a beacon tower, and Babylon’s |
| An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the
sun’s journey and the moon’s; |
| And Shelley had his towers, thought’s crowned powers he called them
once. |
|
|
|
|
| I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare |
| This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my
ancestral stair; |
| That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have travelled there. |
|
|
|
|
| Swift beating
on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind |
| Because the heart in his blood-sodden breast had dragged him
down into mankind, |
| Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his mind, |
|
|
|
|
| And haughtier-headed
Burke that proved the State a tree, |
| That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, century after century, |
| Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality; |
|
|
|
|
| And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a
dream, |
| That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its farrow that so solid seem, |
| Must vanish
on the instant if the mind but change its theme; |
|
|
|
|
| Saeva Indignatio and the labourer’s hire, |
| The strength
that gives our blood and state magnanimity of its own desire; |
| Everything that is not God consumed with
intellectual fire. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| The purity of the unclouded moon |
| Has flung its arrowy shaft upon the floor. |
| Seven
centuries have passed and it is pure, |
| The blood of innocence has left no stain. |
| There, on blood-saturated
ground, have stood |
| Soldier, assassin, executioner, |
| Whether for daily pittance or in blind fear |
| Or out of
abstract hatred, and shed blood, |
| But could not cast a single jet thereon. |
| Odour of blood on the ancestral
stair! |
| And we that have shed none must gather there |
| And clamour in drunken frenzy for the moon. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Upon the dusty, glittering windows cling, |
| And seem to cling upon the moonlit skies, |
| Tortoiseshell butterflies,
peacock butterflies, |
| A couple of night-moths are on the wing. |
| Is every modern nation like the tower, |
| Half
dead at the top? No matter what I said, |
| For wisdom is the property of the dead, |
| A something incompatible
with life; and power, |
| Like everything that has the stain of blood, |
| A property of the living; but no stain |
| Can
come upon the visage of the moon |
| When it has looked in glory from a cloud. |