Classic and Contemporary Poetry
EPILOGUE TO FLEET STREET ECLOGUES, by JOHN DAVIDSON Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Votary: what gloomy outland region have I won? Last Line: A tabernacle even with these ghastly bones. Subject(s): Ambition; Art & Artists; Earth; Humanity; Labor & Laborers; Prostitution; World; Work; Workers; Harlots; Whores; Brothels | ||||||||
Votary : What gloomy outland region have I won? Artist : This is the Vale of Hinnom. What are you? Votary : A Votary of Life. I thought this tract, With rubbish choked, had been a thoroughfare For many a decade now. Artist : No highway here! And those who enter never can return. Votary : But since my coming is an accident Artist : All who inhabit Hinnom enter there By accident, carelessly cast aside, Or self-inducted in an evil hour. Votary : But I shall walk about it and go forth. Artist : I said so when I came; but I am here. Votary : What brought you hither? Artist : Chance, no other power: My tragedy is common to my kind. Once from a mountain-top at dawn I saw My life pass by, a pageant of the age, Enchanting many minds with sound and light, Array and colour, deed, device and spell. And to myself I said aloud, 'When thought And passion shall be rooted deep, and fleshed In all experience man may dare, yet front His own interrogation unabashed: Winged also, and inspired to cleave with might Abysses and the loftiest firmament: When my capacity and art are ranked Among the powers of nature, and the world Awaits my message, I will paint a scene Of life and death, so tender, so humane, That lust and avarice lulled awhile, shall gaze With open countenances; broken hearts, The haunt, the shrine, and wailing-place of woe, Be comforted with respite unforeseen, And immortality reprieve despair.' The vision beckoned me; the prophecy, That smokes and thunders in the blood of youth, Compelled unending effort, treacherous Decoys of doom although these tokens were. Across the wisdom and the wasted love Of some who barred the way my pageant stepped: 'Thus are all triumphs paved,' I said; but soon, Entangled in the tumult of the times, Sundered and wrecked, it ceased to pace my thought, Wherein alone its airy nature strode; While the smooth world, whose lord I deemed myself, Unsheathed its claws and blindly struck me down, Mangled my soul for sport, and cast me out Alive in Hinnom where human offal rots, And fires are heaped against the tainted air. Votary : Escape! Artist : I tried, as you will try; and then, Dauntless, I cried, 'At midnight, darkly lit By drifts of flame whose ruddy varnish dyes The skulls and rounded knuckles light selects Flickering upon the refuse of despair, Here, as it should the costly pageant ends; And here with my last strength, since I am I, Here will I paint my scene of life and death: Not that I dreamt of when the eager dawn, And inexperience, stubborn parasite Of youth and manhood, flattered in myself And in a well-pleased following, vanities Of hope, belief, good-will, the embroidered stuff That masks the cruel eyes of destiny; But a new scene profound and terrible As Truth, the implacable antagonist. And yet most tender, burning, bitter-sweet As are the briny tears and crimson drops Of human anguish, inconsolable Throughout all time, and wept in every age By open wounds and cureless, such as I, Whence issues nakedly the heart of life.' Votary : What canvas and what colour could you find To paint in Hinnom so intense a scene? Artist : I found and laid no colour. Look about! On the flame-roughened darkness whet your eyes. This needs no deeper hue; this is the thing: Millions of people huddled out of sight, The offal of the world. Votary : I see them now, In groups, in multitudes, in hordes, and some Companionless, ill-lit by tarnished fire Under the towering darkness ceiled with smoke; Erect, supine, kneeling or prone, but all Sick-hearted and aghast among the bones. Artist : Here pine the subtle souls that had no root. No home below, until disease or shame Undid the once-so-certain destiny Imagined for the Brocken-sprite of self, While earth, which seemed a pleasant inn of dreams, Unveiled a tedious death-bed and a grave. Votary : I see! The dissillusioned geniuses Who fain would make the world sit up, by Heaven! And dig God in the ribs, and who refuse Their own experience: would-bes, theorists, Artistic natures, failed reformers, knaves And fools incompetent or overbold, Broken evangelists and debauchees, Inebriates, criminals, cowards, virtual slaves. Artist : The world is old; and countless strains of blood Are now effete: these loathsome ruined lives Are innocentif life itself be good. Inebriate, coward, artist, criminal The nicknames unintelligence expels Remorse with when the conscience hints that all Are guilty of the misery of one. Look at these women: broken chalices, Whose true aroma of the spring is spilt In thankless streets and with the sewage blent. Votary : Harlots, you mean; the scavengers of love, Who sweep lust from our thresholdsneedful brooms In every age; the very bolts indeed That clench and rivet solidarity. All this is as it has been and shall be: I see it, note it, and go hence. Farewell. Artist : Here I await you. Votary : There is no way out. Artist : But we are many. What? So pinched and pale At once! Weep, and take courage. This is best, Because the alternative is not to be. Votary : But I am nothing yet, have made no mark Upon my time; and, worse than nothing now, Must wither in a nauseous heap of tares. Why am I outcast who so loved the world? How did I reach this place? Hush! Let me think. I saidwhat did I say and do? Nothing to mourn. I trusted life, and life has led me here. Artist : Where dull endurance only can avail. Scarcely a tithe of men escape this fate; And not a tithe of those who suffer know Their utter misery. Votary : And must this be Now and for ever, and has it always been? Artist : Worse now than ever and ever growing worse. Men as they multiply use up mankind In greater masses and in subtler ways: Ever more opportunity, more power For intellect, the proper minister Of life, that will usurp authority, With lightning at its beck and prisoned clouds. I mean that electricity and steam Have set a barbarous fence about the earth, And made the oceans and the continents Preserved estates of crafty gather-alls; Have loaded labour with a shotted chain, And raised the primal curse a thousand powers. Votary : What! Are there honest labourers outcast here? Dreamers, pococurantes, wanton bloods In plenty and to spare; but surely work Attains another goal than Hinnom! Artist : Look! Seared by the sun and carved by cold or blanched In darkness; gnarled and twisted all awry By rotting fogs; lamed, limb-lopped, cankered, burst, The outworn workers! Votary : I take courage then! Since workers here abound it must be right That men should end in Hinnom. Artist : Right! How right? The fable of the world till now records Only the waste of life: the conquerors, Tyrants and oligarchs, and men of ease, Among the myriad nations, peoples, tribes, Need not be thought of: earth's inhabitants, Man, ape, dinornis for a moment breathe, In misery die, and to oblivion Are dedicated all. Consider still The circumstance that most appeals to men: Eternal siege and ravage of the source Of being, of beauty, and of all delight, The hell of whoredom. God! The hourly waste Of women in the world since time began! Votary : I think of it. Artist : And of the waste of men In warpitiful soldiers, battle-harlots. Votary : That also I consider. Artist : Weaklings, fools In millions who must end disastrously; The willing hands and hearts, in millions too, Paid with perdition for a life of toil; The blood of women, a constant sacrifice, Staining the streets and every altar-step; The blood of men poured out in endless wars; No hope, no help; the task, the stripes, the woe Augmenting with the ages. Right, you say! Votary : Do you remember how the moon appears Illumining the night? Artist : What has the moon To do with Hinnom? Votary : Call the moon to mind. Can you? Or have you quite forgotten all The magic of her beams? Artist : Oh no! The moon Is the last memory of ample thought, Of joy and loveliness that one forgets In this abode. Since first the tide of life Began to ebb and flow in human veins, The targe of lovers' looks, their brimming fount Of dreams and chalice of their sighs; with peace And deathless legend clad and crowned, the moon! Votary : But I adore it with a newer love, Because it is the offal of the globe. When from the central nebula our orb, Outflung, set forth upon its way through space, Still towards its origin compelled to lean And grope in molten tides, a belt of fire, Home-sick, burst off at last, and towards the sun Whirling, far short of its ambition fell, Insphered a little distance from the earth There to bethink itself and wax and wane, The moon! Artist : I see! I know! You mean that you And I, and foiled ambitions every one In every age; the outworn labourers, Pearls of the sewer, idlers, armies, scroyles, The offal of the world, will somehow be Are now a lamp by night, although we deem Ourselves disgraced, forlorn; even as the moon, The scum and slag of earth, that, if it feels, Feels only sterile pain, gladdens the mountains And the spacious sea. Votary : I mean it. And I mean That the deep thoughts of immortality And of our alienage, inventing gods And paradise and wonders manifold, Are rooted in the centre. We are fire, Cut off and cooled a while: and shall return, The earth and all thereon that live and die, To be again candescent in the sun, Or in the sun's intenser, purer source. What matters Hinnom for an hour or two? Arise and let us sing; and, singing, build A tabernacle even with these ghastly bones. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LOVING YOU IN FLEMISH by LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR A MAN AND WOMAN ABSOLUTELY WHITE by ANDRE BRETON AFTER THREE PHOTOGRAPHS OF BRASSAI by NORMAN DUBIE THE VIOLENT SPACE by ETHERIDGE KNIGHT AN OLD WHOREHOUSE by MARY OLIVER CHICAGO CABARET by KENNETH REXROTH FOR A MASSEUSE AND PROSTITUTE by KENNETH REXROTH HARRISON STREET COURT by CARL SANDBURG A BALLAD OF HELL by JOHN DAVIDSON |
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