Ode on a Distant Prospect of the completed third of Liverpool Cathedral
by
A. Y. Campbell
("The Guardian", July 25, 1924)
I
On Bidston Hill I stood in May;
Gorse-perfumes all along the soft air stole;
Here, the green flat Wirral lay,
There the Welsh hills in full array;
North across feathery tree-tops, deep to shoal
Sweeping inward like a bay,
The broad sea beamed as on Creation's day.
I looked; I viewed the landscape whole;
I saw the long low mountains roll;
Near me I heard children play;
And of the times intolerant, sick at soul,
From all those happy sights I grimly turned away.
For these things long have been, yet misery thrives;
These things are fair, yet they redeem not Man;
Desperate, some hope I sought; and turned to scan
A very different sight; the scene of human lives!From the hill's foot, like an inferno, spread,
Hideous and clear and red,
Then gray, then smoke-enshrouded, hugged by cloud,
A city rich and proud;
And here, where one gaunt shape the welter crowned,
The thing I sought was found.
Across the brick and iron, beyond the stone,
Wide ranged the gaze past factories and spires;
Chimneys and shipping pell-mell thrown;
Domes, funnels, minarets, masts, and wires,
Sheds, water-towers, and cranes together tumbled,
Gasometers and graveyards jumbled,
Stacks, docks and flues; past all the mazed eye stumbled,
And reached in time
The height where, dominating all,
And brooding in his sulphurous pall,
A form inchoate, Gothic, huge, sublime,
Loomed through the towering grime.
Sadly, of Greece I thought; where sea, sky, sod,
Rock, wood, and hill, merged in one reverent plan,
Framed fanes untouched of mortar line and rod;
So had her builders bold the skill to scan
Earth's self for lines obsequious to their nod;
And set their temples white, with level base fair-shod,
Climax and keystone of the scene's whole span,
Making all feel, who thereby trod,
The goodliest thing in Nature still was Man,
And Man's best thought, his God.
Light incense did their Heavens placate,
And ours ask none;
One spirit there is, but one,
Whom no smoke-offerings ever yet could sate.
Vainly our builder chose with instinct sure;
Mammon proclaims this tract his own;
His censers these, that know no bate;
Vain plans, if Mammon's will be done;
For here, where the Heavens with clouds the sight abjure,
Keeps he his state;
Here joys he in his rites impure;
And art, wealth, labour, piety to frustrate,
His heathenish fumes all day the house of God obscure.
Indignation seized me then;
And, "What!" I cried, "shall He, Whom the pure heart
Glads, in pure streets delight not? Shall not men
Trulier perform His will than stones? Shall art
Honour him more, if in our business scorned?
Say, whence are cities more adorned
Than in their citizens' welfare? Or He praised?
While no more than all the wealth
That this monster chancel raised,
To these regions smirched and hazed
Might in less time sweep back their natural health,
Think you, will nave, tower, transepts rise
Grateful wholly (while still dime)
To the providence of Him
Who asked for mercy and not sacrifice?"
And quick as thought the question woke,
"While men still dwell in slum and smoke,
is this devout extravagance and show
but one vast mockery all?" -- I asked; and answered,
"No!"
II
Science, like Wealth, ordained our slave,
Powerful, as used, to damn or save,
Through patient hands, even now, collects our groans.
O, not uncatalogued we cry;
Nor unlabelled ache our bones,
Comfort take who can thereby.
Known are the factors of our agony;
And from many a proven cause
Are elicited new laws,
Whence in due time comes cure;
Nothing more sure;
'Twill come,
the great millennium.
Only the date does not appear;
And we meanwhile are here;
And daily, for perfection's state
See many a worthy thing that will not wait;
Art does not wait; Love does not, should not, wait.
And, fearless as her claim to cast out fear,
Religion shall not wait!
But more, still more. For they should wait in vain!
Never without these shall the truth be found.
Master the stars by scrutiny of the ground
Easier than make life's thorn-set highway plain
In slighting the soul's faintest need, and gain
Life at the price of life. The sage that frowned
On feeling, cut his own away;
Then in his cloak of Calm himself involved;
Felt himself conqueror -- having fled the fray;
Austere till death, walked where he had resolved;
Learned perhaps a truth a day;
And the one thing worth solving never solved.
Why still, then, why then still
In a thousand years unweave
The Gordian coil of mortal ill?
Cleave the knot now, that all at last must cleave.
But more; far more; for let the truth be told.
This is the work of Science! This vast mess
The legacy of an age that honoured less
The soul than knowledge, healths and hearts than gold.
We, like the unwary horse, our backs have sold;
For our own ends a mount we chose, who rides
Us now for ends not ours, and knees his hold
Upon our galled and spur-bled heaving sides.
The tool is now the tyrant; nay, we bless
Our servitude, and kiss the rod;
And making of an instrument a god,
Round his advancing car we press
To pitch in front each old and cherished thing,
And last ourselves, to swell his shrines;
What skills our death or life? Moloch is King!
Mighty is Moloch of the Philistines!
Fools, ere his impress o'er your limbs have rolled,
Hear once, hear the truth told.
The vaunted progress of our sires
Has shackled life with iron wires;
And peopled earth with wheels and tubes;
And maddened art with curves and cubes;
Made more to crave, and less to get;
None to enjoy, and all to sweat;
Has shouted down the spiritual call;
Made the man nothing, the mass all;
And bred fresh evils fifty-score;
And steeped the civil world in gore;
And left the human problem where it was before.
No! not by Science will the times be healed;
Sooner than Paradise from this hubbub
At his sole wand be witched, shall be revealed
Satan capitulant to Beelzebub.
III
We shall not find relief
In any mere belief;
Alas, already we believe too much.
The fact is but the fact;
The noblest creed a screed;
Dogma for Theory is but change of crutch.
Realler than truth is act;
Nerve seek we for the deed;
What shall inspire us, is the modern need;
To make, to bear; to bless; to sing, build, weld
Things fair and vital; to rejoice withal.
Too long have Art and Beauty them withheld
From our vexed ways, and shall not seek recall
Till reverence first return;
And Faith, our surest guard
From superstitions hard;
And Hope, from whom we learn
To prize what has been less than what may be,
Which who should shape, but we?
And therewith, Charity.
Then soar, dun pile; for here, here is the place.
In building thee ourselves we shrive.
Soar, stand, and long survive
The thriving devastation round thy base.
The industrial age rose in a day,
And shall as suddenly decay;
As thy power spreads, so shall they summit crown
In better days, a fairer, happier town.
Meantime, 'tis fit this peaceful mosque
That charts the skies, and weighs Heaven's air,
Bosomed amid this hilly bosk
Should nestle dove-like; but thou there,
There, in the heart and stronghold of the foe,
Mid hoot and horn, and smut and strife,
There is the place where thou shouldst root and grow;
For that is Liverpool, and such is life.
Even so, wherever lie our work,
'Tis done with labour in the murk,
Where we mid grit and soot and din
Digest the fumes of our own sin;
And even so, like to thee,
Still needing hands, and hearts, and wealth, and though,
And huger far in scope,
We know, than we shall ever live to see;
Yet founded on a rock, and wrought
In terms of ancient faith, but those more large and bold;
Beetling above the regions where we grope,
And vast with aisles and windows which unfold
Vistas of immortality;
Even so, such is our hope.
1924
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Editorial note: this text was edited for HTML by Richard Mervyn Leveridge 2002-10-27.
Version
2003-05-06.
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