Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SOUL'S DESTROYER, by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SOUL'S DESTROYER, by             Poem Explanation     Poet Analysis    
First Line: London! What utterance the mind finds here!
Last Line: As dumb and silent as a moulting bird.
Alternate Author Name(s): Davies, W. H.
Subject(s): Troy


London! What utterance the mind finds here!
In its academy of art, more rich
Than that proud temple which made Ophir poor,
And the resources famed of Sheba's Queen.
And its museums, hoarding up the past,
With their rare bones of animals extinct;
And woven stuffs embroidered by the East
Ere other hemispheres could know that Peace
Had trophies pleasanter to win than War;
The great man, wrought to very life in stone --
Of genius, that raises spirits that
It cannot lay until their will is wrought --
Till in their eyes we seek to wander awed,
Lost in the mind's immensity, to find
The passage barred, the spirit gone away.
And not without sweet sounds to hear: as I
Have heard the music, like a hiding child,
Low chuckling its delight behind a wall,
Which, with a sudden burst and joyous cry,
Out leapt and on my heart threw its sweet weight --
When strolling in the palace-bounded parks
Of our great city on a summer's morn.
Now, one who lives for long in London town
Doth feel his love divided 'tween the two --
A city's noise and Nature's quiet call:
His heart is as a mother's, that can hear
Voices of absent children o'er the sea
Calling to her, and children's words at home.
E'en when old Thames rolls in his fog, and men
Are lost, and only blind men know their way;
When Morning borrows of the Evening's lamps,
Or when bewildered millions battle home
With stifled throats, and eyes that burn with pain --
Still are there lovers faithful to such moods.
But in thy slums, where I have seen men gaunt,
In their vile prisons where they wander starved
Without a jailer for their common needs --
Heard children whimper to their mother's moan;
Where rich ones, had they love, with willing hands,
Have privilege to win their godhead soon
By charity that's needless in new realms --
Oh, who can love thy slums with starving ones!
Where children live, like flowers in Ocean's dells,
Unvisited by light or balmy wind:
As daffodils, that plead with their sweet smiles
Our charity for their rude father March.
They place is in the slums, O Charity,
These are thy churches for thy visitings;
The charity that seeks is nobler far
Than charity that must at home be sought.
This London served my life for full five years.
In sheer disgust to know intemperance
And poverty, and leaning to the sot
Who lays this precious intellect to sleep,
As though no beauty was in all the world,
With heaven and earth scarce worthy of a thought,
And helpless grown of every future joy --
Methought return to Nature might restore
Youth's early peace and faith's simplicity.
Though Hope be an illusion, yet our life
Were never so bewildered as without it;
An April day of sunny promises
When we are suffering actual cold and want,
And child of Discontent -- without such hints
Of coming joy Life's name were Vanity.
Hopeless had I become, a wreck of men;
A derelict that neither sinks nor floats,
Is drifting out of sight of heaven and earth,
Not of the ways of men, but in their ways.
And there lived one, now to another wed,
Whom I had secret wish to look upon,
With sweet remembrance of our earlier years.
Her presence then a pool of deep repose
To break Life's dual run from Innocence
To Manhood, and from Manhood unto Age,
And a sweet pause for all my murmuring;
Until a way, for which is no account,
Set me to run again, and she received
Into her favour one who was my friend.
Oft had I mourned those days for ever gone
We went together side by side to school,
Together had our holidays in fields
Made golden by June's buttercups; in woods,
Where under ferns fresh pulled I buried her,
And called her forth like Lazarus from the grave;
She'd laughing come, to shake her curls until
Methought to hear full half a hundred bells.
A grown-up world took playful notice soon,
Made me feel shame that grew a greater love;
She was more chary of her laughter then,
And more subdued her voice, as soft and sweet
As Autumn's, blowing through his golden reeds.
In her sweet sympathies she was a woman
When scarcely she was more than child in years;
And yet one angry moment parted us,
And days of longing never joined us more.

One morning I awoke with lips gone dry,
The tongue an obstacle to choke the throat,
And aching body weighted with more heads
Than Pluto's dog; the features hard and set,
As though encased in a plaster cast;
With limbs all sore through falling here and there
To drink the various ales the Borough kept
From London Bridge to Newington, and streets
Adjoining, alleys, lanes obscure from them,
Then thought of home and of the purer life,
Of Nature's air, and having room to breathe,
A sunny sky, green field, and water's sound;
Of peaceful rivers not yet fretful grown
As when their mouths have tasted Ocean's salt;
And where the rabbits sit amid their ferns,
Or leap, to flash the white of their brown tails.
Less time a grey crow picks the partridge clean,
I was apparelled, and, with impulse that
Was wonderful in one of many sprees,
Went onward rapidly from street to street.
I still had vision clear of Nature's face,
Though muddled in my senses to the ways
And doings of the days and nights before.
I heard the city roaring like a beast
That's wronged by one that feared an open strife
And triumphed by his cunning -- as I walked.
It followed on for hours with rushing sound,
As some great cataract had burst all bounds
And was oncoming with its mingled pines --
The fallen sentinels -- to choke the sea.
Once in awhile the sound, though not less near,
Seemed distant, barred by dwellings closely joined,
But at a corner's turn heard full again;
Yet lessened soon and sure to softer ways
Of a low murmuring -- as though it found
Anger was vain, and coaxed for my return.
All day walked I, and that same night, I scorned
The shelter of a house, lay peaceful down
Beneath the glorious stars; beneath that nest
Of singing stars men call the Milky Way;
Thought it, maybe, the way that spirits take,
And heavenly choir to sing triumphal march
For dead men for the New Jerusalem.
I was alone: had left the Borough in
Safe care of my old cronies, who would keep
Its reputation from becoming changed
Into a quiet neighbourhood.

As with a shipwrecked seaman cast ashore,
And carried to a land's interior
By the rude natives, there to work and slave
Quarries and mines of their barbaric king;
Who after years escapes his servitude
To wander lost, at last to see before
Him mountains which he climbs to see beyond,
When on their top he stands -- beholds the sea!
And, wonders more, a fleet of friendly flags
Lying at anchor for his signalling --
Such joy a hundred times a day was mine
To see at every bend of the road the face
Of Nature different. And oft I sat
To hear the lark from his first twitter pass
To greater things as he soared nearer heaven;
Or to the throstle, singing nearer home,
With less of that abandon and wild fire,
But steady, like a sheltered light from wind.
What joy was mine, sweet Nature, to return!
The flower so wild, reared on thine own pure milk
Of dew and rain, and by thy sunbeams warmed,
Speckled the green with light of various hues;
The hawthorn it caught slippery Mercury,
And smothered him to smell of where he'd been;
And everything that had a voice made sound,
The speechless things were gladsome in dumb smiles.
It was a day of rest in heaven, which seemed
A blue grass field thick dotted with white tents
Which Life slept late in, as 'twere holiday.
Yon lord or squire in his great house,
Who himself busies guessing all his days
The age of horses and the weight of hogs,
The breed of hounds -- not such as he has held
The ear to Nature's quiet heart-beat. No;
He overlooks the flower to spy the fox,
Ignores the lark's song for the halloing horn,
Nor hears the echo of that horn he loves --
Not such as he is rich in Nature's stores.
I've seen proud Autumn in more gold arrayed,
Ere cold October strips and blows him bare,
Than ever delved from earth or ta'en from water's wash;
More pearls seen scattered to a summer's morn
Than Ocean e'er possessed in depths or out,
Though in his water's workshop -- like a slave.
Who sees a cobweb strung with dew pearls, sees
A finer work than jewelled crowns of gold.
Few are thy friends, sweet Nature, in these days,
But thou art still the Solitary's love.
The glory of the river's long since gone,
The land is sped and beauty unrevealed.
The motor-car goes humming down the road,
Like some huge bee that warns us from its way.
On, on, we speed by fire on slippery rails,
And earth goes spinning back from whence we came,
And through the trees, or on the hills' smooth tops
That cut the heaven clean -- the day's one orb
Goes with us till he sinks before the dark,
Clouds towering with him, to his back and front;
We speed our way through tunnels under ground,
Where one sees naught but faces of his kind.
Let others praise thy parts, sweet Nature; I
Who cannot know the barley from the oats,
Nor call the bird by note, nor name a star,
Claim thy heart's fulness through the face of things.
The lonely shepherd in his hut at night
Will dream of Beauty in the feverous towns,
Of Love and Gaiety, of Song and Dance;
With fore-paws on his master's crook, the dog
Sleeps dreaming his life's duty -- though his flocks
Are countless, and the hills on which they roam:
So faithful I to thee, like shepherd's dog,
To follow thee with joy in all thy moods,
As docile as the lamb that Una led.
When man shall stand apart from this dear world,
And have his vision's manifold increase,
To see it rolled at morning when the sun
Makes lamps of domes and lighthouses of fanes,
With its green fields, blue waters, and its hills,
And smiling valleys filled with brooks and flowers;
To hear the music of the world once his,
Singing in unison with other spheres --
He shall exclaim, 'I have God's second heaven
Ere I have known the wonder of His first.'

Six days had gone, and I at length near home,
Where toil the Cymry deep in sunless pits,
And emptying all their hills to warm the world.
Soon saw familiar scenes, and saw no change:
The rookery, where never silence seemed --
For every hour seemed it to be disturbed
By strange new-comers, aliens to invade;
Or, maybe, known ones bringing envied stores
Which stay-at-homes would clamour to divide.
And near that rookery a river ran,
And over it a bridge too small for piers;
Another crossing, of irregular stones,
Was seen, which in the springtime flooded o'er;
And I had heard the river tell their number,
And spell -- like letters of an alphabet,
That it would never tire repeating day
And night. When young I oft had bared my feet
To go from bank to bank, leapt stone to stone,
My ankles wetted on a sunken one.
Beyond the bridge was seen the village spire --
My courage failed. I feared to see in life
Her who was now the heroine of dreams,
And sweet familiar of my solitude
And silence, and whose shadowy hand kept full
The cup of memory; and in such mood
Entered an inn, to seek that courage which
Makes man abuse his friends, and wish them foes;
Or puts unnatural pity in his mind
To help strange ones, forgetful of his own.
Not one known face had met my own, or voice
To recognize, until that moment came;
And then such sight to see that had the man
Been other than he was had not surprised:
He who had wed my love stood shaking there
While to his lips another held the glass
Which his own hand lacked power to raise unspilled;
And there stood he, in manner of a beast
That's drinking from a trough, but more the greed.
We greeted as old friends; few moments passed
When I inquired of her, in casual way,
On which a fearful change came over him:
'Why, she hath filled the house with merry men
To mock her husband,' he replied, and turned
His head in fear. And well I knew his thoughts,
And of such demons in a drunkard's dream,
The sleepless dream that wearies flesh and brain.
This curse of drink, in village and in town,
The curse of nations, their decline and fall,
Ere they can question purpose of this life;
And so 'twill be until the mind is reared
To see the beauty that is in the world,
Of science, art, and Nature at all times;
To know that temperance and sobriety
Is truer joy -- e'en though the grave ends all --
Than an unnatural merriment that brings
A thousand tortures for its hundred joys.
He now seemed worse and moved about the room,
And many a sound of triumph, anguish made,
Though from his unseen foes receiving knocks
And giving in return. We stood in awe!
One looked at me and said: 'He should be home,
And we are much to blame for him; wouldst thou
See him safe there? for none can censure thee.'
'Nay, I would rather tread his threshold floor,
And dare all devils of his fancy there,
Than front his wife and children innocent.'
As some lone hunter might at sunrise see,
Upon the margent of a woodland pool,
Huge prints of something alien to his lore,
And know not if 'twere fowl or beast, or freak
Of man -- so awed, amazed I stood; until
He grew more calm, and then we coaxed him home.

We reached his home, a cottage lone and small
And such a place was my ideal to live,
Where I might walk it round, touch its four sides,
Free to the sun in every latitude,
Unto the first and final look on earth.
And at its door three little Aprils played,
Three little children, little Aprils all,
So full were they of April's strife and love;
Who, when they saw us coming, ran to meet us,
To make a bridal entry with their laughter;
But saw a stranger, and their father cold,
Fell back, and followed hushed, a funeral train.
Sure, thought I, our whole duty is to leave
Our children's state exalted 'bove our own:
Equipping them with kinder thoughts than ours,
And they do likewise in their day; so through
The generations to at last attain
The climax of our mortal purity.
Had I so failed to these poor little ones
If she and I were sharing of their lives!
We entered, and we stood before her face,
And it was stern, as woe affects the man,
Not that sweet resignation of her sex.
She looked on me as one unjustly served,
A look regretful, part resigned, as if
Some retribution was my right to claim.
Her once blue sapphire eyes had not a gleam,
As they would never smile or weep again,
And had no light to draw the waters up
Which staled upon her heart. To me all seemed
So plain: that she had loved without avail,
And reasoned, then had widowed her own self,
A widowhood in which Death claimed no part.
All night he raved, and in his madness died,
And I have seen his death-look on a beast
Baring the teeth 'twas powerless to use
Against a foe of greater strength, and there
Lay dead, intentions hatefully revealed.
Such his dread look: the vicious show of teeth
Made bare in hatred to his unseen foes.
Such is this drink that fathers half our sins;
It makes a simple one responsible
For deeds which memory makes no count to save,
And proves man guilty in his innocence.
When he shall stand before his judging God
He needs must answer charges strange to him
And his own mind -- to One who sees all things;
And what He sees, He never can forget.
May God have mercy on our frailties!
Sure we, though set a thousand years of pain,
Nor once should murmur at vicissitude,
Yet ill deserve those promises fulfilled
Of an eternity of bliss with Him;
And who can know the thoughts of him in hell,
Who sacrificed eternity of joy
To gratify this little life on earth!
Were't not for God Almighty's mercy, trees
Would 'scape the thunderbolt, th' unfeeling rocks
The lightning's blast; all ills would fall on man,
Who hides his conscience in a covered cage,
As dumb and silent as a moulting bird.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net