 | Relicta |  |
24
LONDON TOWN
Oh how I wish it were day! There is nothing so dull as the darknessWhen with the light of the sun everything pleasant has gone:
Everything—colour and form, and the pomp of clouds in the heavens,
And on the earth around, voices and movement and life.
Here, we are under a shroud, like that which envelopes a dead man,
Lying unconscious and cold, waiting to go to his grave;
Seeing no more of the world he has left, or the people within it,
Than through our darken'd panes we can behold of it now.
Yet I had rather be here, in the quiet and peace of the country,
Silent and sad as it is, than in the terrible town:
Terrible, not for its crimes, nor the selfish stress of its efforts,
Nor for its noisy crowds, hurrying ever along,
Each with a hard grim face, indifferent quite to the others,
Thinking of money alone, anxious and eager for gain—
Not for such spectres as these, for we know them of old, they are evils
Bred in the nature of towns, everywhere always at hand—
But for a new strange thing, a real and scandalous danger,
Which in these difficult days meets us wherever we go:
Danger, the latest gift that civilisation has brought us,
Danger to life and limb, threatening death to us all.
Hark! to the hideous roar of the ugly implacable monsters
Forging in frantic speed, each with the other at war;
Howling and growling and hoarse, in the riot of insolent triumph,
Deaf to authority's voice, reckless of order and law.
Here then at last is a force that none have the courage to cope with,
None have the wit to suppress, none even dare to control:
25
Making the fair broad streets seem like a vision of hell.
Aye, and we too are doom'd, though we live remote in the country
If but a road be near, still to encounter the foe;
Still to endure its stench, its cruel and culpable presence,
Killing all beauty and grace, crushing the charm out of life;
Making us bitterly feel that our impotent civilisation
Cannot contrive to be free, cannot be noble and calm.
| Relicta | |