Classic Poem

In an old court-yard,
Seen from a lane-way,
Down by the Liffey,
Somewhere in Dublin,
Whitened with stone-dust
Dwells an Italian;
And he makes angels.

There are too many
Makers of tomb-stones
Whitened and formally
Carven with crosses,
Dwelling among us:
But he makes angels
Down by the Liffey.

Now I remember
Pagan Pompeii
With its black frescoes
Brightened by Cupids,
Flying attendants,
Winged amorini,
Angels of Venus.

Aye; and I think of
Hermes the Angel,
After his flight from
Crystal Olympus,
Skimming and fanning
With his winged sandals
The violet water;
And in the four-fountained,
Wonderful island,
His thankless reception.

Backwards and forwards
To Middle Ages
Lightly my thought goes
Thinking of Dante
Drawing an angel;
And the tip-pointed
Wings of some airy
Angelic chorus.

What does the poor dusty,
Dublin Italian
Know of the grandeur
Of his great nation?
Grim civilisers,
Law-givers, road-makers,
Founders of cities,
Dreamers of angels,

Far from the sunlight,
Far from the citron,
White, with its branches
Over white tables
Lighted with red wine,
Under grape trellises,
Here in a lane-way,
True to his nature,
Making an angel?

O for ten thousand
Gifted Italians
Dwelling amongst us
Just to put angels
On the black fresco
Of this most dismal,
Reasty and sunless
Town where the meiny
Of Heaven's chief subjects,
The Christ-beloved children
Are housed in a horrible
Graveyard of houses!

I am a lover
Of Beauty and Splendour,
Lover of Swiftness,
Lover of Brightness,
Lover of sunlight
And the delightful
Movement of water,
Starving in Dublin
For Beauty and Brightness,
Starving for gladness:

God send an angel!
Not a mere figment
From childhood remembered,
God, but a far-flashing
Terrible creature,
An awful tomb-shattering
Burning Idea
Of Beauty and Splendour,
A winged Resurrector,
One with a message
To make the announcement:

Not in His Death,
But in Christ's resurrection
Lieth salvation,

Break down the tenement
Walls that surround them;
Lead out from festering
Lane and back garden
The Heirs to the Kingdom,
To sunlight, to highland,
To winds blowing over
Green fields; and restore to
The sons of a City,
By seafarers founded,
The sight of white clouds on
An open horizon.

Raise up a man —
What though he must shout from
The mountebank platform
To gain him a hearing —
With knowledge, with vision
And sense of the grandeur
Of human existence,
To plan out a city
As grand, if not grander,
Than Georgian Dublin,
With broadways and side-walks
And dwellings proportioned
To what in the nation
Is faithful and noble;
To save this old town
From the artisan artist,
The cottage replacing
The four-storey mansion,
The cynical largesse
Of hospital-builders;
And all its bad conscience.

Build up with gladness
The house individual
Set in its garden,
Detached and uncrowded;
So that the children
In health grow to greatness;
The family hold to
Its proper distinction;
So that the nation
Be saved from soul-slaughter,
The living damnation,
Which comes from the crowding
That leads to the Commune.

Build not in lanes
Where the thought of an angel
Is one with a tombstone;
But out where Raheny
Gives on to Howth Head
And the winds from Portmarnock;
Or build where Dundrum,
With its foot set in granite,
Begins the long climb
To the hill which O'Donnell
Crossed ages ago
In his flight from the city.
Why should the sons
Of the Gael and the Norseman
Be huddled and cramped
With broad acres about them
And lightning-foot cars
At their beck to transport them,
Which overcome space
Like the sandals of Hermes?

Nations are judged
By their capital cities;
And we by the way
That we fashion an angel.