Poetry Corner Archive

Poetry Corner

Posted September 9, 2016 By John C Wright

I thought this was apt, considering the conditions of the modern day:

Shorten Sail
Lord Melcombe (d. 1762)

LOVE thy country, wish it well,
Not with too intense a care;
‘Tis enough that, when it fell,
Thou its ruin didst not share.

Envy’s censure, Flattery’s praise,
With unmoved indifference view:
Learn to tread Life’s dangerous maze
With unerring Virtue’s clue.

Void of strong desire and fear,
Life’s wide ocean trust no more;
Strive thy little bark to steer
With the tide, but near the shore.

Thus prepared, thy shorten’d sail
Shall, whene’er the winds increase,
Seizing each propitious gale,
Waft thee to the port of Peace.

Keep thy conscience from offence
And tempestuous passions free,
So, when thou art call’d from hence,
Easy shall thy passage be.

—Easy shall thy passage be,
Cheerful thy allotted stay,
Short the account ‘twixt God and thee,
Hope shall meet thee on thy way.

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Poetry Corner

Posted August 26, 2015 By John C Wright

Lines to a Don

By Hilaire Belloc

Remote and ineffectual Don
That dared attack my Chesterton,
With that poor weapon, half-impelled,
Unlearnt, unsteady, hardly held,
Unworthy for a tilt with men—
Your quavering and corroded pen;
Don poor at Bed and worse at Table,
Don pinched, Don starved, Don miserable;
Don stuttering, Don with roving eyes,
Don nervous, Don of crudities;
Don clerical, Don ordinary,
Don self-absorbed and solitary;
Don here-and-there, Don epileptic;
Don puffed and empty, Don dyspeptic;
Don middle-class, Don sycophantic,
Don dull, Don brutish, Don pedantic;
Don hypocritical, Don bad,
Don furtive, Don three-quarters mad;
Don (since a man must make an end),
Don that shall never be my friend.
*       *       *
Don different from those regal Dons!
With hearts of gold and lungs of bronze,
Who shout and bang and roar and bawl
The Absolute across the hall,
Or sail in amply billowing gown
Enormous through the Sacred Town,
Bearing from College to their homes
Deep cargoes of gigantic tomes;
Dons admirable! Dons of Might!
Uprising on my inward sight
Compact of ancient tales, and port
And sleep—and learning of a sort.
Dons English, worthy of the land;
Dons rooted; Dons that understand.
Good Dons perpetual that remain
A landmark, walling in the plain—
The horizon of my memories—
Like large and comfortable trees.
*       *       *
Don very much apart from these,
Thou scapegoat Don, thou Don devoted,
Don to thine own damnation quoted,
Perplexed to find thy trivial name
Reared in my verse to lasting shame.
Don dreadful, rasping Don and wearing,
Repulsive Don—Don past all bearing.
Don of the cold and doubtful breath,
Don despicable, Don of death;
Don nasty, skimpy, silent, level;
Don evil; Don that serves the devil.
Don ugly—that makes fifty lines.
There is a Canon which confines
A Rhymed Octosyllabic Curse
If written in Iambic Verse
To fifty lines. I never cut;
I far prefer to end it—but
Believe me I shall soon return.
My fires are banked, but still they burn
To write some more about the Don
That dared attack my Chesterton.

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Poetry Corner

Posted August 28, 2014 By John C Wright

The Shooting of Dan McGrew

By Robert W. Service (1874–1958)

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o’-love, the lady that’s known as Lou.

 

When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.
There was none could place the stranger’s face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.

 

There’s men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;
With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,
As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.
Then I got to figgering who he was, and wondering what he’d do,
And I turned my head — and there watching him was the lady that’s known as Lou.

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Poetry Corner!

Posted August 10, 2014 By John C Wright

Ye holy angels bright Op 135
by Charles Villiers Stanford, Lyrics by Richard Baxter

Ye holy Angels bright,
Who wait at God’s right hand,
Or thro’ the realms of light
Fly at your Lord’s command,
Assist our song,
Or else the theme
Too high doth seem
For mortal tongue.

Ye blessed souls at rest,
Who ran this earthly race
And now, from sin released,
Behold your Savior’s face,
His praises sound,
As in his sight
With sweet delight
Ye do abound.

Ye saints, who toil below,
Adore your heav’nly King,
And onward as ye go
Some joyful anthem sing;
Take what he gives
And praise him still,
Through good or ill,
Who ever lives!

My soul, bear thou thy part,
Triumph in God above;
And with a well-tuned heart
Sing thou the songs of love!
Let all thy days
Till life shall end,
Whate’er He send,
Be fill’d with praise!

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Poetry Corner – The Kraken

Posted February 11, 2013 By John C Wright

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

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Poetry Corner

Posted October 15, 2012 By John C Wright
TO A POET A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE
by: James Elroy Flecker

I WHO am dead a thousand years,
And wrote this sweet archaic song,
Send you my words for messengers
The way I shall not pass along.

I care not if you bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the cruel sky,
Or build consummate palaces
Of metal or of masonry.

But have you wine and music still,
And statues and a bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts of good and ill,
And prayers to them who sit above?

How shall we conquer? Like a wind
That falls at eve our fancies blow,
And old Mæonides the blind
Said it three thousand years ago.

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.

Since I can never see your face,
And never shake you by the hand,
I send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.

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Poetry Corner — The Poet of the Law

Posted September 23, 2010 By John C Wright

This poem, entitled only ‘To Edmund Clerihew Bentley‘, appears in the front matter of G.K. Chesteron’s THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY, his droll and nightmarish fantasy of philosophical policework, and the poem is by his hand. Certain of the lines have a biting pertinence to the affairs of our day–I am thinking particularly of disnatured science, decayed art, laughterless lust, plumed cowardice, shamelessness honored.

A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity and art admired decay;
The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay;
Round us in antic order their crippled vices came —
Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.
Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom,
Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.
Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung;
The world was very old indeed when you and I were young.
They twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named:
Men were ashamed of honour; but we were not ashamed.
Weak if we were and foolish, not thus we failed, not thus;
When that black Baal blocked the heavens he had no hymns from us.
Children we were — our forts of sand were even as weak as we,
High as they went we piled them up to break that bitter sea.
Fools as we were in motley, all jangling and absurd,
When all church bells were silent our cap and bells were heard.

Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags unfurled;
Some giants laboured in that cloud to lift it from the world.
I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that flings
Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of cleaner things;
And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest fires that pass,
Roared in the wind of all the world ten million leaves of grass;
Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in the rain —
Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of pain.
Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in the grey,
Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day.
But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms.
God and the good Republic come riding back in arms:
We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved —
Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed.

This is a tale of those old fears, even of those emptied hells,
And none but you shall understand the true thing that it tells —
Of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet crash,
Of what huge devils hid the stars, yet fell at a pistol flash.
The doubts that were so plain to chase, so dreadful to withstand —
Oh, who shall understand but you; yea, who shall understand?
The doubts that drove us through the night as we two talked amain,
And day had broken on the streets e’er it broke upon the brain.
Between us, by the peace of God, such truth can now be told;
Yea, there is strength in striking root and good in growing old.
We have found common things at last and marriage and a creed,
And I may safely write it now, and you may safely read.

G. K. C.

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The Hashish Eater -or- the Apocalypse of Evil
Clark Ashton Smith

Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;
I crown me with the million-colored sun
Of secret worlds incredible, and take
Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar,
Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume
The spaceward-flown horizons infinite.
Like rampant monsters roaring for their glut,
The fiery-crested oceans rise and rise,
By jealous moons maleficently urged
To follow me for ever; mountains horned
With peaks of sharpest adamant, and mawed
With sulphur-lit volcanoes lava-langued,
Usurp the skies with thunder, but in vain;
And continents of serpent-shapen trees,
With slimy trunks that lengthen league by league,
Pursue my flight through ages spurned to fire
By that supreme ascendance; sorcerers,
And evil kings, predominanthly armed
With scrolls of fulvous dragon-skin whereon
Are worm-like runes of ever-twisting flame,
Would stay me; and the sirens of the stars,
With foam-like songs from silver fragrance wrought,
Would lure me to their crystal reefs; and moons
Where viper-eyed, senescent devils dwell,
With antic gnomes abominably wise,
Heave up their icy horns across my way.
But naught deters me from the goal ordained
By suns and eons and immortal wars,
And sung by moons and motes; the goal whose name
Is all the secret of forgotten glyphs
By sinful gods in torrid rubies writ
For ending of a brazen book; the goal
Whereat my soaring ecstasy may stand
In amplest heavens multiplied to hold
My hordes of thunder-vested avatars,
And Promethèan armies of my thought,
That brandish claspèd levins.

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Poetry Corner: O for that warning voice

Posted September 15, 2009 By John C Wright

With excuses to my Jesuit confessor, Fr. de Casuist, I would like to impose on my vow of restricting my posts to Friday in order to hear a quote from the devil.

Here is the Mount Niphates monologue in Milton’s PARADISE LOST. This is that speech which those in the camp of William Blake, who say that Milton unbeknownst was of the Devil’s party, have trouble to explain. (For those of you who are fans of THE INCREDIBLES, this is the first example of ‘monologing’, a practice many a lesser super-villain in after times was fain to copy.)

O for that warning voice, which he who saw

The Apocalypse heard cry in Heaven aloud,

Then when the Dragon, put to second rout,

Came furious down to be revenged on men,

Woe to the inhabitants on Earth! that now,

While time was, our first parents had been warned

The coming of their secret Foe, and scaped,

Haply so scaped, his mortal snare! For now

Satan, now first inflamed with rage, came down,

The tempter, ere the accuser, of mankind,

To wreak on innocent frail Man his loss

Of that first battle, and his flight to Hell.

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Poetry Corner

Posted July 17, 2008 By John C Wright

O God of Earth and Altar

by G. K. Chesterton:

O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us, But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches, From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation Of honor, and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation, Deliver us, good Lord!

Tie in a living tether The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together, Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation, A single sword to thee. Amen.

 

My comment: a darn fine poet, Chesterton. The man also writes murder mysteries, books on apologetic, biographies, essays…

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Poetry Corner: I crown me with the million-colored sun

Posted September 7, 2007 By John C Wright

Here is the anguish of Donald Wondrei contemplating the injustice of the obscurity of Clark Ashton Smith, whom he regards as a poet equal to Shelly or Byron.
http://www.eldritchdark.com/articles/reviews/71/the-emperor-of-dreams

I confess I am in agreement with Wondrei on this one. I cannot understand why the name of Clark Ashton Smith is not help up in equal reverence with the poets of the romantic school: to me he seems akin to them in approach and spirit, his lyrical command of the English language not inferior, the opulence of his imagery superior to that of Shelly, if not equal to Keats.

Perhaps his subject matter was too otherworldly, too science-fictional, futuristic? Perhaps he was too well suited, in other words to write the poetry of the modern age as it should be written, a poetry taking place in the titanic universe of Einstein, filled with blazing star-gulfs where time itself is astonished by the immensity, and myriads of galaxies stream from the unimaginable singularity of all-creation, and rush toward universal billion-year-long night? Dante’s careful crystalline globes of Ptolemaic regularity, or Milton’s earth that dangles like an ornament on a slender chain from the battlements of heaven, no bigger than a star next to the moon, are too small for the modern imagination to take seriously: give me galaxies, I say, give me superclusters, and we will see what gigantic angels of fire are grand enough to wheel among the colored nebulae of an ever-expanding cosmos.

The opening lines from one of Clark Ashton Smith’s longer poems:

Bow down: I am the emperor of dreams;
I crown me with the million-colored sun
Of secret worlds incredible, and take
Their trailing skies for vestment when I soar,
Throned on the mounting zenith, and illume
The spaceward-flown horizons infinite.
Like rampant monsters roaring for their glut,
The fiery-crested oceans rise and rise,
By jealous moons maleficently urged
To follow me for ever; mountains horned
With peaks of sharpest adamant, and mawed
With sulphur-lit volcanoes lava-langued,
Usurp the skies with thunder, but in vain;
And continents of serpent-shapen trees,
With slimy trunks that lengthen league by league,
Pursue my light through ages spurned to fire
By that supreme ascendance; sorcerers,
And evil kings, predominanthly armed
With scrolls of fulvous dragon-skin whereon
Are worm-like runes of ever-twisting flame,
Would stay me; and the sirens of the stars,
With foam-like songs from silver fragrance wrought,
Would lure me to their crystal reefs; and moons
Where viper-eyed, senescent devils dwell,
With antic gnomes abominably wise,
Heave up their icy horns across my way.
But naught deters me from the goal ordained
By suns and eons and immortal wars,
And sung by moons and motes; the goal whose name
Is all the secret of forgotten glyphs
By sinful gods in torrid rubies writ
For ending of a brazen book; the goal
Whereat my soaring ecstasy may stand
In amplest heavens multiplied to hold
My hordes of thunder-vested avatars,
And Promethèan armies of my thought,
That brandish claspèd levins. There I call
My memories, intolerably clad
In light the peaks of paradise may wear,
And lead the Armageddon of my dreams
Whose instant shout of triumph is become
Immensity’s own music: for their feet
Are founded on innumerable worlds,
Remote in alien epochs, and their arms
Upraised, are columns potent to exalt
With ease ineffable the countless thrones
Of all the gods that are or gods to be,
And bear the seats of Asmodai and Set
Above the seventh paradise.

Supreme
In culminant omniscience manifold,
And served by senses multitudinous,
Far-posted on the shifting walls of time,
With eyes that roam the star-unwinnowed fields
Of utter night and chaos, I convoke
The Babel of their visions, and attend
At once their myriad witness….

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Poetry Corner

Posted August 29, 2007 By John C Wright

The Donkey

G.K.Chesterton

When fishes flew and forests walked
    And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
    Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry
    And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
    On all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth,
    Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
    I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour;
    One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
    And palms before my feet.
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Poetry Corner

Posted May 16, 2007 By John C Wright

I came across this poem once in a comic book: a small child found the head of the defeated and deactivated Ultron, invincible robotic foe of the Avengers, lying in a rubbish heap: the boy, not knowing this to be the relic of a world-conquering super-machine, used the metal head for a soccer ball. Who says comics can’t teach fine literature?

Ozymandias

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

    I met a traveller from an antique land,     
      Who said–“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
      Stand in the desart….Near them, on the sand,
      Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
    And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,   
      Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
      Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,   
      The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
      And on the pedestal, these words appear:
    My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
      Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
      Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
      Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
      The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

What will remain of our own empires and triumphs once history has swept us away, O men of the West?

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Poetry Corner

Posted May 3, 2007 By John C Wright
 
Lament for the Makers
  William Dunbar 1465–1520?
 
 
I THAT in heill was and gladnèss
Am trublit now with great sickness
And feblit with infirmitie:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
Our plesance here is all vain glory,
This fals world is but transitory,
The flesh is bruckle, the Feynd is slee:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
The state of man does change and vary,
Now sound, now sick, now blyth, now sary,
Now dansand mirry, now like to die:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
No state in Erd here standis sicker;
As with the wynd wavis the wicker
So wannis this world’s vanitie:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
Unto the Death gois all Estatis,
Princis, Prelatis, and Potestatis,
Baith rich and poor of all degree:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
He takis the knichtis in to the field
Enarmit under helm and scheild;
Victor he is at all mellie:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
That strong unmerciful tyrand
Takis, on the motheris breast sowkand,
The babe full of benignitie:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
He takis the campion in the stour,
The captain closit in the tour,
The lady in bour full of bewtie:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
He spairis no lord for his piscence,
Na clerk for his intelligence;
His awful straik may no man flee:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
Art-magicianis and astrologgis,
Rethoris, logicianis, and theologgis,
Them helpis no conclusionis slee:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
In medecine the most practicianis,
Leechis, surrigianis, and physicianis,
Themself from Death may not supplee:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
I see that makaris amang the lave
Playis here their padyanis, syne gois to grave;
Sparit is nocht their facultie:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
He has done petuously devour
The noble Chaucer, of makaris flour,
The Monk of Bury, and Gower, all three:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
The good Sir Hew of Eglintoun,
Ettrick, Heriot, and Wintoun,
He has tane out of this cuntrie:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
That scorpion fell has done infeck
Maister John Clerk, and James Afflek,
Fra ballat-making and tragedie:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
Holland and Barbour he has berevit;
Alas! that he not with us levit
Sir Mungo Lockart of the Lee:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
Clerk of Tranent eke he has tane,
That made the anteris of Gawaine;
Sir Gilbert Hay endit has he:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
He has Blind Harry and Sandy Traill
Slain with his schour of mortal hail,
Quhilk Patrick Johnstoun might nought flee:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
He has reft Merseir his endite,
That did in luve so lively write,
So short, so quick, of sentence hie:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
He has tane Rowll of Aberdene,
And gentill Rowll of Corstorphine;
Two better fallowis did no man see:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
In Dunfermline he has tane Broun
With Maister Robert Henrysoun;
Sir John the Ross enbrast has he:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
And he has now tane, last of a,
Good gentil Stobo and Quintin Shaw,
Of quhom all wichtis hes pitie:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
Good Maister Walter Kennedy
In point of Death lies verily;
Great ruth it were that so suld be:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.

 

Sen he has all my brether tane,
He will naught let me live alane;
Of force I man his next prey be:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
Since for the Death remeid is none,
Best is that we for Death dispone,
After our death that live may we:—
    Timor Mortis conturbat me.
 
 
GLOSSARY:  heill] health.  bruckle] brittle, feeble.  slee] sly.  dansand] dancing.  sicker] sure.  wicker] willow.  wannis] wanes.  mellie] mellay.  sowkand] sucking.  campion] champion.  stour] fight.  piscence] puissance.  straik] stroke.  supplee] save.  makaris] poets.  the lave] the leave, the rest.  padyanis] pageants.  anteris] adventures.  schour] shower.  endite] inditing.  fallowis] fellows.  wichtis] wights, persons.  man] must.  dispone] make disposition.
  
I first came across this poem in THE WORM OUROBOROS by E.R. Eddison, in the scene where, having wrastled the mighty Gouldry Blasco for the lordship of the planet Mercury, the King of Witchland, Gorice XI is fallen and lies in state in the presense chamber of the Red Foliot, who reads Dunbar’s Lament. He is interrupt at about line 45 when Corinius and the sons of Corsus are dicing during the funeral, and Corinius accuses Gallandus son of Corsus of cheating, and smites him on the jaw with the dice box. 

This poem also shows up in my wife’s novel CHILDREN OF PROSPERO, in the mouth of the morbid and sinister son of the magican, Erasmus Prospero, whose black wand contains nothing but the magic of withering and decaying. He recites it when he slays armies, turning them instantly to dust.

Who says science fiction does not introduce readers to high culture?

I always did feel sort of sorry for the babe full of benignity; and Sir Mungo Lockart of the Lee. Alas, Poor Mungo!

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Poetry Corner

Posted April 24, 2007 By John C Wright
Just in case you were worried that the world was returning to paganism. If only. If only. 
Cliché Came Out of its Cage

1

You said ‘The world is going back to Paganism’.
Oh bright Vision! I saw our dynasty in the bar of the House
Spill from their tumblers a libation to the Erinyes,
And Leavis with Lord Russell wreathed in flowers, heralded with flutes,
Leading white bulls to the cathedral of the solemn Muses
To pay where due the glory of their latest theorem.
Hestia’s fire in every flat, rekindled, burned before
The Lardergods. Unmarried daughters with obedient hands
Tended it By the hearth the white-armd venerable mother
Domum servabat, lanam faciebat. at the hour
Of sacrifice their brothers came, silent, corrected, grave
Before their elders; on their downy cheeks easily the blush
Arose (it is the mark of freemen’s children) as they trooped,
Gleaming with oil, demurely home from the palaestra or the dance.
Walk carefully, do not wake the envy of the happy gods,
Shun Hubris. The middle of the road, the middle sort of men,
Are best. Aidos surpasses gold. Reverence for the aged
Is wholesome as seasonable rain, and for a man to die
Defending the city in battle is a harmonious thing.
Thus with magistral hand the Puritan Sophrosune
Cooled and schooled and tempered our uneasy motions;
Heathendom came again, the circumspection and the holy fears …
You said it. Did you mean it? Oh inordinate liar, stop.

2

Or did you mean another kind of heathenry?
Think, then, that under heaven-roof the little disc of the earth,
Fortified Midgard, lies encircled by the ravening Worm.
Over its icy bastions faces of giant and troll
Look in, ready to invade it. The Wolf, admittedly, is bound;
But the bond wil1 break, the Beast run free. The weary gods,
Scarred with old wounds the one-eyed Odin, Tyr who has lost a hand,
Will limp to their stations for the Last defence. Make it your hope
To be counted worthy on that day to stand beside them;
For the end of man is to partake of their defeat and die
His second, final death in good company. The stupid, strong
Unteachable monsters are certain to be victorious at last,
And every man of decent blood is on the losing side.
Take as your model the tall women with yellow hair in plaits
Who walked back into burning houses to die with men,
Or him who as the death spear entered into his vitals
Made critical comments on its workmanship and aim.
Are these the Pagans you spoke of? Know your betters and crouch, dogs;
You that have Vichy water in your veins and worship the event
Your goddess History (whom your fathers called the strumpet Fortune).
CS Lewis

 
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