Classic Poem

In the cathedral in Gloucester a space for contemplation,
many cubic feet enclosed in stately stone and glass
and five minutes of time snatched between bus journeyings,
three hundred seconds, but a part of one stood still,
all eternity in an eye's twinkling.
The nave, the chancel, the clerestory and the chapels,
scanned by the beam of prayer of ancient generations,
glowed a moment in the blackness of millenniums.

White went the sunlight on the work of masons
being the Palace of the Prince of Heaven
in the estimation of the congregations which prayed Our Father
(“Thou in the skies, on earth Thy Kingdom come”)
but saw no scruple in appealing to Cæsar.

There visibly I saw how close to the old world
of fixed earth and foursquare wisdom
had come the heavenly reign of one
who would not plead to Pilate.

As Abraham hallowed his nomad herdsmen,
Moses his tribal hordes, David his monarchy,
Nehemiah the Senate of Priests, the synagogues democracy,
so the meek prayer became substance as empire.

I saw an image, two Oes oppositely posed,
the circle of earth-bound concepts,
the sphere of thought gravitating to the point which is infinite heaven,
touching, in Gloucester tower.

It was with me a dream of boyhood sleep that I saw
the full circle of the moon in mid-heaven crack and fall,
a few white fragments lazily turning.
So the sum of gains which earthly genius regards
as final evidence of excellence in action,
land, slaves and gold, gold, slaves and land,
a rounded ideal resplendently
drawn on its devastating path through history
with sublime unconcern by Force, Guile, and Greed,
I proclaim riven at a touch from heaven,
the power of holy prayer, Our Father, Pater Noster.
But not so that its terrifying fragments ceased to roll
in States and Empires unto this day
with mass immolations flattering Moloch;
mind is sold to Mammon, bodies to Aphrodite.
But now these oppressions are not the confines
of the spirit of man which gravitates beyond.

Of the moon it is computed by the mathematicians
that it must fall asunder when, its speed failing,
it encounters too nearly the field of the earth-force,
and finally it must disintegrate in many fragments,
minute meteoroids making a ring like Saturn's:
so shall it be with Cæsar and all his sovranty.
The cosmos of human aspirations, centred no more in itself,
is broken and shall hereafter circle
in humble equalities the Kingdom of Heaven.