64429: Uriconium - An Ode
Creators: name: Project Team, First World War Poetry Digital Archive
Publisher: name: University of Oxford
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 430304
subject: British history
classificationCode: 430308
subject: European history (excl. British, classical Greek and Roman)
classificationCode: 430316
subject: International history

description: It lieth low near merry England's heart<br> Like a long-buried sin; and Englishmen<br> Forget that in its death their sires had part.<br> And, like a sin, Time lays it bare again<br> To tell of races wronged,<br> And ancient glories suddenly overcast,<br> And treasures flung to fire and rabble wrath.<br> If thou hast ever longed<br> To lift the gloomy curtain of Time Past,<br> And spy the secret things that Hades hath,<br> Here through this riven ground take such a view.<br> The dust, that fell unnoted as a dew,<br> Wrapped the dead city's face like mummy-cloth:<br> All is as was: except for worm and moth.<br> Since Jove was worshipped under Wrekin's shade<br> Or Latin phrase was writ in Shropshire stone,<br> Since Druid chaunts desponded in this glade<br> Or Tuscan general called that field his own,<br> How long ago? How long?<br> How long since wanderers in the Stretton Hills<br> Met men of shaggy hair and savage jaw,<br> With flint and copper prong,<br> Aiming behind their dikes and thorny grilles?<br> Ah! those were days before the axe and saw,<br> Then were the nights when this mid-forest town<br> Held breath to hear the wolves come yelping down,<br> And ponderous bears 'long Severn lifted paw,<br> And nuzzling boars ran grunting through the shaw.<br> Ah me! full fifteen hundred times the wheat<br> Hath risen, and bowed, and fallen to human hunger<br> Since those imperial days were made complete.<br> The weary moon hath waxen old and younger<br> These eighteen thousand times<br> Without a shrine to greet her gentle ray.<br> And other temples rose; to Power and Pelf,<br> And chimed centurial chimes<br> Until their very bells are worn away.<br> While King by King lay cold on vaulted shelf<br> And wars closed wars, and many a Marmion fell,<br> And dearths and plagues holp sire and son to hell;<br> And old age stiffened many a lively elf<br> And many a poet's heart outdrained itself.<br> I had forgot that so remote an age<br> Beyond the horizon of our little sight,<br> Is far from us by no more spanless gauge<br> Than day and night, succeeding day and night,<br> Until I looked on Thee,<br> Thou ghost of a dead city, or its husk!<br> But even as we could walk by field and hedge<br> Hence to the distant sea<br> So, by the rote of common dawn and dusk,<br> We travel back to history's utmost edge.<br> Yea, when through thy old streets I took my way,<br> And recked a thousand years as yesterday,<br> Methought sage fancy wrought a sacrilege<br> To steal for me such godly privilege!<br> For here lie remnants from a banquet table ---<br> Oysters and marrow-bones, and seeds of grape ---<br> The statement of whose age must sound a fable;<br> And Samian jars, whose sheen and flawless shape<br> Look fresh from potter's mould.<br> Plasters with Roman finger-marks impressed;<br> Bracelets, that from the warm Italian arm<br> Might seem to be scarce cold;<br> And spears---the same that pushed the Cymry west ---<br> Unblunted yet; with tools of forge and farm<br> Abandoned, as a man in sudden fear<br> Drops what he holds to help his swift career:<br> For sudden was Rome's flight, and wild the alarm.<br> The Saxon shock was like Vesuvius' qualm.<br> O ye who prate of modern art and craft<br> Mark well that Gaulish brooch, and test that screw!<br> Art's fairest buds on antique stem are graft.<br> Under the sun is nothing wholly new!<br> At Viricon today<br> The village anvil rests on Roman base<br> And in a garden, may be seen a bower<br> With pillars for its stay<br> That anciently in basilic had place.<br> The church's font is but a pagan dower:<br> A Temple's column, hollowed into this.<br> So is the glory of our artifice,<br> Our pleasure and our worship, but the flower<br> Of Roman custom and of Roman power.<br> O ye who laugh and, living as if Time<br> Meant but the twelve hours ticking round your dial,<br> Find it too short for thee, watch the sublime,<br> Slow, epochal time-registers awhile,<br> Which are Antiquities.<br> O ye who weep and call all your life too long<br> And moan: Was ever sorrow like to mine?<br> Muse on the memories<br> That sad sepulchral stones and ruins prolong.<br> Here might men drink of wonder like strong wine<br> And feel ephemeral troubles soothed and curbed.<br> Yet farmers, wroth to have their laws disturbed,<br> Are sooner roused for little loss to pine<br> Than we are moved by mighty woes long sync.<br> Above this reverend ground, what traveller checks?<br> Yet cities such as these one time would breed<br> Apocalyptic visions of world-wrecks.<br> Let Saxon men return to them, and heed!<br> They slew and burnt,<br> But after, prized what Rome had given away<br> Out of her strength and her prosperity.<br> Have they yet learnt<br> The precious truth distilled from Rome's decay?<br> Ruins! On England's heart press heavily!<br> For Rome hath left us more than walls and words<br> And better yet shall leave; and more than herds<br> Or land or gold gave the Celts to us in fee;<br> E'en Blood, which makes poets sing and prophets see.<br>