The smeared, leather-coated, leather-greaved engineer Walks in front of his traction-engine Like some figure out of the sagas, Like Grettir or like Skarpheddin, With a sort of majestical swagger. And his machine lumbers after him Like some mythological beast, Like Grendel bewitched and in chains, But his ill luck will make me no sagas, Nor will you crack the riddle of his skull, O you over-educated, over-refined literati! Nor yet you, store-bred realists, You multipliers of novels! He goes, and I go. He stays and I stay. He is mankind and I am the arts. We are outlaws. This war is not our war, Neither side is on our side: A vicious mediaevalism, A belly-fat commerce, Neither is on our side: Whores, apes, rhetoricians, Flagellants! in a year Black as the @3dies irae@1. We have about us only the unseen country road, The unseen twigs, breaking their tips with blossom. |