The Builders

T
Before the unseen cock had called the time,
Those workers left their beds and stumbled out
Into the street, where dust lay white as lime
Under the last star that keeps bats about.
Then blinking still from bed, they trod the street,
The doors closed up and down ; the traveller heard
Doors opened, closed, then silence, then men’s feet
Moving to toil, the men too drowsed for word.
The bean-field was a greyness as they passed,
The darkness of the hedge was starred with flowers,
The moth, with wings like dead leaves, sucked his last,
The triumphing cock cried out with all his powers ;
His fire of crying made the twilight quick,
Then clink, clink, clink, men’s trowels tapped the brick.

I saw the delicate man who built the tower
Look from the turret at the ground below,
The granite column wavered like a flower,
But stood in air whatever winds might blow.
Its roots were in the rock, its head stood proud,
No earthly forest reared a head so high ;
sometimes the eagle came there, sometimes cloud,
It was man’s ultimate footstep to the sky.
And in that peak the builder kept his treasure,
Books with the symbols of his art, the signs
Of knowledge in excitement, skill in pleasure,
The edge that cut, the rule that kept the lines.
He who had seen his tower beneath the grass,
Rock in the earth, now smiled, because it was.

How many thousand men had done his will,
Men who had hands, or arms, or strength to spend,
Or cunning with machines, or art, or skill !
All had obeyed him, working to this end.
Hundreds in distant lands had given their share
Of power, to deck it ; on its every stone
Their oddity of pleasure was laid bare,
Yet was the tower his offspring, his alone.
His inner eye had seen, his will had made it,
All the opposing army of men’s minds
Had bowed, had turned, had striven as he bade it,
Each to his purpose in their myriad kinds.
Now it was done, and in the peak he stood
Seeing his work, and smiled to find it good.

It had been stone, earth’s body, hidden deep,
Lightless and shapeless, where it cooled and hardened.
Now it was as the banner on man’s keep
Or as the Apple in Eden where god gardened.
Lilies of stone ran round it, and like fires
The tongues of crockets shot from it and paused,
Horsemen who raced were carven on’t, the spires
Were bright with gold ; all this the builder caused.
And standing there, it seemed that all the hive
Of human skill which now it had become,
Was stone no more, nor building, but alive,
Trying to speak, this tower that was dumb,
Trying to speak, nay, speaking, soul to soul
With powers who are, to raven or control.

Rating:

Comment form:

*Max text - 1500. Manual moderation.

Similar Poems:

Paradise Lost: Book  3 (1674 version) by John Milton
John Milton
HAil holy Light, ofspring of Heav'n first-born,
Or of th' Eternal Coeternal beam
May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from Eternitie, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal stream,
Whose Fountain who shall tell? before the Sun,
Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a Mantle didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.
Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing,
Escap't the Stygian Pool, though long detain'd
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight
Read Poem
0
158
Rating:

The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.

Rats!
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And eat the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
Read Poem
0
134
Rating:

The Prairies by William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant

These are the gardens of the Desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name—
The Prairies. I behold them for the first,
And my heart swells, while the dilated sight
Takes in the encircling vastness. Lo! they stretch,
In airy undulations, far away,
As if the ocean, in his gentlest swell,
Stood still, with all his rounded billows fixed,
And motionless forever. —Motionless?—
No—they are all unchained again. The clouds
Sweep over with their shadows, and, beneath,
The surface rolls and fluctuates to the eye;
Dark hollows seem to glide along and chase
Read Poem
0
158
Rating:

from The Lady of the Lake: The Western Waves of Ebbing Day by Sir Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott
The western waves of ebbing day
Rolled o’er the glen their level way;
Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire.
But not a setting beam could glow
Within the dark ravines below,
Where twined the path in shadow hid,
Round many a rocky pyramid,
Shooting abruptly from the dell
Its thunder-splintered pinnacle;
Round many an insulated mass,
The native bulwarks of the pass,
Huge as the tower which builders vain
Presumptuous piled on Shinar’s plain.
The rocky summits, split and rent,
Read Poem
0
105
Rating:

Paradise Lost: Book 12 (1674 version) by John Milton
John Milton
AS one who in his journey bates at Noone,
Though bent on speed, so heer the Archangel paus'd
Betwixt the world destroy'd and world restor'd,
If Adam aught perhaps might interpose;
Then with transition sweet new Speech resumes.

Thus thou hast seen one World begin and end;
And Man as from a second stock proceed.
Much thou hast yet to see, but I perceave
Thy mortal sight to faile; objects divine
Must needs impaire and wearie human sense:
Henceforth what is to com I will relate,
Thou therefore give due audience, and attend.
This second sours of Men, while yet but few;
And while the dread of judgement past remains
Read Poem
0
192
Rating:

Chomei at Toyama by Basil Bunting
Basil Bunting
(Kamo-no-Chomei, born at Kamo 1154, died at Toyama on Mount Hino, 24th June 1216)
Read Poem
0
113
Rating:

This Scribe, My Hand by Ben Belitt
Ben Belitt
When this warm scribe, my hand, is in the grave.
—John Keats 1.

You are here
Read Poem
0
112
Rating:

Concerning My Neighbors, the Hittites by Charles Simic
Charles Simic
Great are the Hittites.
Their ears have mice and mice have holes.
Their dogs bury themselves and leave the bones
To guard the house. A single weed holds all their storms
Until the spiderwebs spread over the heavens.
There are bits of straw in their lakes and rivers
Looking for drowned men. When a camel won’t pass
Through the eye of one of their needles,
Read Poem
0
115
Rating:

The Sheep in the Ruins by Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish
for Learned and Augustus Hand You, my friends, and you strangers, all of you,
Stand with me a little by the walls
Read Poem
0
115
Rating:

To my Dear Friend Mr. Congreve on his Comedy Call'd the Double Dealer by John Dryden
John Dryden
Well then; the promis'd hour is come at last;
The present age of wit obscures the past:
Strong were our sires; and as they fought they writ,
Conqu'ring with force of arms, and dint of wit;
Theirs was the giant race, before the Flood;
And thus, when Charles return'd, our empire stood.
Like Janus he the stubborn soil manur'd,
With rules of husbandry the rankness cur'd:
Read Poem
0
94
Rating:

from Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax by Andrew Marvell
Andrew Marvell
Within this sober frame expect
Work of no foreign architect;
That unto caves the quarries drew,
And forests did to pastures hew;
Who of his great design in pain
Did for a model vault his brain;
Whose columns should so high be rais’d
To arch the brows that on them gaz’d.

Why should of all things man unrul’d
Such unproportion’d dwellings build?
The beasts are by their dens exprest,
And birds contrive an equal nest;
The low roof’d tortoises do dwell
In cases fit of tortoise-shell;
Read Poem
0
91
Rating: