Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. PORTLAND, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. PORTLAND, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: In the grey north-east of winter the great granite rock
Last Line: Is the easier fate reserved!
Subject(s): Portland (penisula), England


IN the grey North-East of winter the great granite rock, see, overhung with
cloud!
And from the top no portion of the mainland visible—only a few
war-ships below, and Chesil Bank, its far end rising into fog.
But behind, on the high plateau of the rock, among the quarries,
Where neither the sea nor the ships nor the mainland, but only the dreary
piles of stone and drearier prison-walls, can at any time be descried, and the
arméd sentinels—
There, behold! the convicts in gangs, ten or twelve to a gang—and to
each gang one or two warders, with muskets—
The sullen heavy-faced convicts, and (in that place) every day more sullen
growing—hauling at trollies, or quarrying or dressing the stone:
Damned,
Without interest in life.

And so onward, through more warders, some with and some without muskets,
And through huge stone gateways and bastions, and through heavy clamped
doors, with endless turning of keys,
Till at last amid all this absurd and lumbering display of brute force, as
if for wild beasts—behind bars thick enough to confine an elephant—
Lo! a well-known face!
A gentle unharmful face, making the whole apparatus look foolish and
ashamed of itself—
The face of your friend whom you came to see—
So tender and hesitating, thoughtful, and lover of children:
His face, also alas! grown monotone,
And like a caged wild animal's indeed,
With dull and quavering eyes, that fill with tears,
And lips whose tremulous smile belies the words
They speak so bravely.

And so more clanging of doors and turning of keys, and this one left behind
again, clamped down,
And buried in stone and iron.

Damned,
Without interest in life:
Neither to speak nor to hear, to speed nor to welcome, a word of
fellowship, a single act of kindness;
[Even a warder for tucking the scanty blanket round an ailing prisoner was
fined;]
Never to use nor exercise the sense of helpfulness—the source of all
human virtue
Never to feed but only starve the soul;
Is this the Doom?
To hear no news from the outer world, save at unimaginable intervals a
letter;
To read no book—save some goody-goody inhuman rubbish recommended by
the Chaplain;
To nauseate, and yet to hunger ravenously for the same scant ever-same
food;
To sicken at and hate the same insults and loud imperatives of the jailer,
unendingly continued, unendingly borne—the same idiotic vacancy of the
cell—
The three-legged stool, the can, the barred little window;
The same long hours of the night with pain at the heart, the sound of silly
fingers every hour at the slide of the spyhole, and the flashing of the
night-officer's lantern in one's face;
The recurring effort of the irritated mind and starved body to compose
themselves to sleep;
In vain: the same same thoughts thought over and over and over and over
again;
The same little stock of memories and fancies brought with one into this
whited sepulchre—getting smaller and slighter daily—now like a wheel
with ever rapider motion going round and round,
Till the brain itself is reeling.


[And now a Fear, perhaps for the safety of some loved one outside, leaps
into the grinning circle and courses with it; and now another, perhaps for one's
own fate in the years still in front; and now—worst of all
phantoms—the Dread that one's mind is giving way: till, in fact, out of
momentary sleep awaking to the same awful nightmare, a chill runs down the back,
the body breaks in sweat, forms gibber and voices jabber—and presently the
doctor is called.]

Mind starved and body starved, and heart, too, starved—
Is this the Doom of Man to his outcast fellow?
Only for those whose minds and hearts are already stunted—for the
merely brutish by nature—the fate reserved is easier.
For them, two thoughts alone dominate—Hunger, the ever-present craving
for food, the counting and computing of meals in prospect, sufficiently
degrading;
And Sex, the everlasting curiosity and imagination (and act if possible);
But no word, no possibility presented to them, of Manhood; no word, no
possibility, of Love.
And so for those who care not that such possibilities should be presented,
Is the easier fate reserved!





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