The Glacier
Despair not, Melanctheus, beholding the desolation of man.
The world has been covered by an ice age before.
The man of poverty probing the street litter tin for prize;
The dingy woman, whose digestion must miraculously extract
Life from margarine and mildewed wheat;—
These are grains of the glacial mud
being ground slowly lower
by the deadweight
of the ice overhead
the tons and acres of wealth dammed up by the frost of debt
in fantastic blocs and spires of production forbidden the poor,
a glittering waste.
The sunlight little guesses
underneath the glitter
the unlit sediment,
the urban millions, the grey masses,
formed of fields that clung with happy roots to the rock;—
I mean the families of folk that flourished aforetime
by husbandry and handcraft,
giving their masters overmeasure and getting almost enough themselves
But the inventive genius of man
made their jobs valueless
to their money-jealous masters;
Machine Power
with which their poor might could not avail to compete
weighed with huge volumes of threatened production
vastly upon them,
thrusting them from their lodgment and lively environment,
throwing down landmarks,
confusing all things
in the indistinguishable mud.
The triumphant many coloured crystals
of transparent death
press mercilessly down,—
the upper millstone of ice,
the nether millstone of immovable rock.
Forthright instinct,
the inner voices of freedom,
are frozen in the hearts of clerks,
their lives are crystallised
in identical patterns
cold hard and clearly defined
denying the intercession of human love,
not willingly but from numbness of will;—
carefully shielded from any warm wind of imagination.
Carefully drawn is the compass of their thought,
narrowly defined are their modes of feeling,
their actions are predictable.
Standardised are their clothes,
standardised are their faces,
standardised is their singing,
and the male and female of the species approximate.
Together they compose an unproductive crystalline mass
with no function but to deepen the superstructure of debt.
(Will the light of knowledge ever
laden with the hot arrows of scorn
unfreeze their hearts and render them back to themselves?
or must they be protected from knowledge
for fear of avalanches?)
See only over this fair land
the filthy moraines
of mud, brick and boulders
dumped by the all-impending glacier,
the jumble of villas and the building estates,
the derelict acres of slums in the Northern dales.
See how the glacier of the spirit
drops substantial moraines:
so closely are spirit and substance interactive.
Go forth my song like a lantern of God
to burn in the heart of Melanctheus.
Nevertheless, as that other ice age came not by the will of man and passed away not by the will of man, so this ice age which came by the will of man will not pass away but by the will of man.
The world has been covered by an ice age before.
The man of poverty probing the street litter tin for prize;
The dingy woman, whose digestion must miraculously extract
Life from margarine and mildewed wheat;—
These are grains of the glacial mud
being ground slowly lower
by the deadweight
of the ice overhead
the tons and acres of wealth dammed up by the frost of debt
in fantastic blocs and spires of production forbidden the poor,
a glittering waste.
The sunlight little guesses
underneath the glitter
the unlit sediment,
the urban millions, the grey masses,
formed of fields that clung with happy roots to the rock;—
I mean the families of folk that flourished aforetime
by husbandry and handcraft,
giving their masters overmeasure and getting almost enough themselves
But the inventive genius of man
made their jobs valueless
to their money-jealous masters;
Machine Power
with which their poor might could not avail to compete
weighed with huge volumes of threatened production
vastly upon them,
thrusting them from their lodgment and lively environment,
throwing down landmarks,
confusing all things
in the indistinguishable mud.
The triumphant many coloured crystals
of transparent death
press mercilessly down,—
the upper millstone of ice,
the nether millstone of immovable rock.
Forthright instinct,
the inner voices of freedom,
are frozen in the hearts of clerks,
their lives are crystallised
in identical patterns
cold hard and clearly defined
denying the intercession of human love,
not willingly but from numbness of will;—
carefully shielded from any warm wind of imagination.
Carefully drawn is the compass of their thought,
narrowly defined are their modes of feeling,
their actions are predictable.
Standardised are their clothes,
standardised are their faces,
standardised is their singing,
and the male and female of the species approximate.
Together they compose an unproductive crystalline mass
with no function but to deepen the superstructure of debt.
(Will the light of knowledge ever
laden with the hot arrows of scorn
unfreeze their hearts and render them back to themselves?
or must they be protected from knowledge
for fear of avalanches?)
See only over this fair land
the filthy moraines
of mud, brick and boulders
dumped by the all-impending glacier,
the jumble of villas and the building estates,
the derelict acres of slums in the Northern dales.
See how the glacier of the spirit
drops substantial moraines:
so closely are spirit and substance interactive.
Go forth my song like a lantern of God
to burn in the heart of Melanctheus.
Nevertheless, as that other ice age came not by the will of man and passed away not by the will of man, so this ice age which came by the will of man will not pass away but by the will of man.
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