Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE BUILDING, by JOHN DRINKWATER Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Whence these hods, and bricks of bright red Last Line: Chaos transfigured into lineament. Subject(s): Buildings & Builders; Details; Things | ||||||||
WHENCE these hods, and bricks of bright red clay, And swart men climbing ladders in the night? Stilled are the clamorous energies of day, The streets are dumb, and, prodigal of light, The lamps but shine upon a city of sleep. A step goes out into the silence; far Across the quiet roofs the hour is tolled From ghostly towers; the indifferent earth may keep That ragged flotsam shielded from the cold In earth's good time: not, moving among men, Shall he compel so fortunate a star. Pavements I know, forsaken now, are strange, Alien walks not beautiful, that then, In the familiar day, are part of all My breathless pilgrimage, not beautiful, but dear; The monotony of sound has suffered change, The eddies of wanton sound are spent, and clear To bleak monotonies of silence fall. And, while the city sleeps, in the central poise Of quiet, lamps are flaming in the night, Blown to long tongues by winds that moan between The growing walls, and throwing misty light On swart men bearing bricks of bright red clay In laden hods; and ever the thin noise Of trowels deftly fashioning the clean Long lines that are the shaping of proud thought. Ghost-like they move between the day and day, These men whose labour strictly shall be wrought Into the captive image of a dream. Their sinews weary not, the plummet falls To measured use from steadfast hands apace, And momently the moist and levelled seam Knits brick to brick and momently the walls Bestow the wonder of form on formless space. And whence all these? The hod and plummet-line, The trowels tapping, and the lamps that shine In long, dust-heavy beams from wall to wall, The mortar and the bricks of bright red clay, Ladder and corded scaffolding, and all The gear of common traffic -- whence are they? And whence the men who use them? When he came, God upon chaos, crying in the name Of all adventurous vision that the void Should yield up man, and man, created, rose Out of the deep, the marvel of all things made, Then in immortal wonder was destroyed All worth of trivial knowledge, and the close Of man's most urgent meditation stayed Even as his first thought -- "Whence am I sprung?" What proud ecstatic mystery was pent In that first act for man's astonishment, From age to unconfessing age, among His manifold travel. And in all I see Of common daily usage is renewed This primal and ecstatic mystery Of chaos bidden into many-hued Wonders of form, life in the void create, And monstrous silence made articulate. Not the first word of God upon the deep Nor the first pulse of life along the day More marvellous than these new walls that sweep Starward, these lines that discipline the clay, These lamps swung in the wind that send their light On swart men climbing ladders in the night. No trowel-tap but sings anew for men The rapture of quickening water and continent, No mortared line but witnesses again Chaos transfigured into lineament. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPELL by MARGARET MOORE MEUTTMAN THINGS by ROSELLE MERCIER MONTGOMERY PERPETUA by HENRY LONGAN STUART SIMPLE THINGS by PAUL JEAN TOULET THE INFERENCE: 1 by THOMAS TRAHERNE A TOWN WINDOW by JOHN DRINKWATER |
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