The Dark Ages

MEN call you ¿dark.¿ What factory then blurred the light

Of golden suns, when nothing blacker than the shades

Of coming rain climbed up the heather-mantled height?

While the air

Breathed all the scents of all untrodden flowers,

And brooks poured silver through the glimmering glades,

Then sweetly wound through virgin ground.

Must all that beauty pass?

And must our pleasure trains

Like foul eruptions belch upon the mountain head?

Must we perforce build vulgar villa lanes,

And on sweet fields of grass

The canting scutcheons of a cheating commerce spread?

Men call you ¿dark.¿ Did that faith see with cobwebbed eyes,

That built the airy octagon on Ely¿s hill,

And Gloucester¿s Eastern wall that woos the topaz skies,

Where the hymn

Angelic ¿Glory be to God on high,

And peace on earth to men who feel good will,¿

Might softly sound God¿s throne around?

Is that a perfect faith

Which pew-filled chapels rears,

Where Gothic fronts of stone mask backs of ill-baked bricks,

And where the frothy fighting preacher fears,

As peasants fear a wraith,

His deacon¿s frown or some just change in politics?