The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950

  The Witness. The Critic. The Stranger.

  The God-shaken, in whom is the truth inborn.

  Enter the ROCK, led by a BOY:

  THE ROCK:

  The lot of man is ceaseless labour,

  Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,

  Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.

  I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know

  That it is hard to be really useful, resigning

  The things that men count for happiness, seeking

  The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting

  With equal face those that bring ignominy,

  The applause of all or the love of none.

  All men are ready to invest their money

  But most expect dividends.

  I say to you: Make perfect your will.

  I say: take no thought of the harvest,

  But only of proper sowing.

  The world turns and the world changes,

  But one thing does not change.

  In all of my years, one thing does not change.

  However you disguise it, this thing does not change:

  The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.

  Forgetful, you neglect your shrines and churches;

  The men you are in these times deride

  What has been done of good, you find explanations

  To satisfy the rational and enlightened mind.

  Second, you neglect and belittle the desert.

  The desert is not remote in southern tropics,

  The desert is not only around the corner,

  The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,

  The desert is in the heart of your brother.

  The good man is the builder, if he build what is good.

  I will show you the things that are now being done,

  And some of the things that were long ago done,

  That you may take heart. Make perfect your will.

  Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.

  The lights fade; in the semi-darkness the voices of WORKMEN are heard chanting.

  In the vacant places

  We will build with new bricks

  There are hands and machines

  And clay for new brick

  And lime for new mortar

  Where the bricks are fallen

  We will build with new stone

  Where the beams are rotten

  We will build with new timbers

  Where the word is unspoken

  We will build with new speech

  There is work together

  A Church for all

  And a job for each

  Every man to his work.

  Now a group of WORKMEN is silhouetted against the dim sky. From farther away, they are answered by voices of the UNEMPLOYED.

  No man has hired us

  With pocketed hands

  And lowered faces

  We stand about in open places

  And shiver in unlit rooms.

  Only the wind moves

  Over empty fields, untilled

  Where the plough rests, at an angle

  To the furrow. In this land

  There shall be one cigarette to two men,

  To two women one half pint of bitter

  Ale. In this land

  No man has hired us.

  Our life is unwelcome, our death

  Unmentioned in ‘The Times’.

  Chant of WORKMEN again.

  The river flows, the seasons turn

  The sparrow and starling have no time to waste.

  If men do not build

  How shall they live?

  When the field is tilled

  And the wheat is bread

  They shall not die in a shortened bed

  And a narrow sheet. In this street

  There is no beginning, no movement, no peace and no end

  But noise without speech, food without taste.

  Without delay, without haste

  We would build the beginning and the end of this street.

  We build the meaning:

  A Church for all

  And a job for each

  Each man to his work.

  II

  Thus your fathers were made

  Fellow citizens of the saints, of the household of GOD, being built upon the foundation

  Of apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself the chief cornerstone.

  But you, have you built well, that you now sit helpless in a ruined house?

  Where many are born to idleness, to frittered lives and squalid deaths, embittered scorn in honeyless hives,

  And those who would build and restore turn out the palms of their hands, or look in vain towards foreign lands for alms to be more or the urn to be filled.

  Your building not fitly framed together, you sit ashamed and wonder whether and how you may be builded together for a habitation of GOD in the Spirit, the Spirit which moved on the face of the waters like a lantern set on the back of a tortoise.

  And some say: ‘How can we love our neighbour? For love must be made real in act, as desire unites with desired; we have only our labour to give and our labour is not required.

  We wait on corners, with nothing to bring but the songs we can sing which nobody wants to hear sung;

  Waiting to be flung in the end, on a heap less useful than dung’.

  You, have you built well, have you forgotten the cornerstone?

  Talking of right relations of men, but not of relations of men to GOD.

  ‘Our citizenship is in Heaven’; yes, but that is the model and type for your citizenship upon earth.

  When your fathers fixed the place of GOD,

  And settled all the inconvenient saints.

  Apostles, martyrs, in a kind of Whipsnade,

  Then they could set about imperial expansion

  Accompanied by industrial development.

  Exporting iron, coal and cotton goods

  And intellectual enlightenment

  And everything, including capital

  And several versions of the Word of GOD:

  The British race assured of a mission

  Performed it, but left much at home unsure.

  Of all that was done in the past, you eat the fruit, either rotten or ripe.

  And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored.

  For every ill deed in the past we suffer the consequence:

  For sloth, for avarice, gluttony, neglect of the Word of GOD,

  For pride, for lechery, treachery, for every act of sin.

  And of all that was done that was good, you have the inheritance.

  For good and ill deeds belong to a man alone, when he stands alone on the other side of death,

  But here upon earth you have the reward of the good and ill that was done by those who have gone before you.

  And all that is ill you may repair if you walk together in humble repentance, expiating the sins of your fathers;

  And all that was good you must fight to keep with hearts as devoted as those of your fathers who fought to gain it.

  The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without;

  For this is the law of life; and you must remember that while there is time of prosperity

  The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of adversity they will decry it.

  What life have you if you have not life together?

  There is no life that is not in community,

  And no community not lived in praise of GOD.

  Even the anchorite who meditates alone,

  For whom the days and nights repeat the praise of GOD,

  Prays for the Church, the Body of Christ incarnate.

  And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,

  And no man knows or cares who is his neighbour

  Unless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,

  But all dash to
and fro in motor cars,

  Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.

  Nor does the family even move about together,

  But every son would have his motor cycle,

  And daughters ride away on casual pillions.

  Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore;

  Let the work not delay, time and the arm not waste;

  Let the clay be dug from the pit, let the saw cut the stone,

  Let the fire not be quenched in the forge.

  III

  The Word of the LORD came unto me, saying:

  O miserable cities of designing men,

  O wretched generation of enlightened men,

  Betrayed in the mazes of your ingenuities,

  Sold by the proceeds of your proper inventions:

  I have given you hands which you turn from worship,

  I have given you speech, for endless palaver,

  I have given you my Law, and you set up commissions,

  I have given you lips, to express friendly sentiments,

  I have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust.

  I have given you power of choice, and you only alternate

  Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.

  Many are engaged in writing books and printing them,

  Many desire to see their names in print,

  Many read nothing but the race reports.

  Much is your reading, but not the Word of GOD,

  Much is your building, but not the House of GOD.

  Will you build me a house of plaster, with corrugated roofing,

  To be filled with a litter of Sunday newspapers?

  1ST MALE VOICE:

  A Cry from the East:

  What shall be done to the shore of smoky ships?

  Will you leave my people forgetful and forgotten

  To idleness, labour, and delirious stupor?

  There shall be left the broken chimney,

  The peeled hull, a pile of rusty iron,

  In a street of scattered brick where the goat climbs.

  Where My Word is unspoken.

  2ND MALE VOICE:

  A Cry from the North, from the West and from the South

  Whence thousands travel daily to the timekept City;

  Where My Word is unspoken.

  In the land of lobelias and tennis flannels

  The rabbit shall burrow and the thorn revisit,

  The nettle shall flourish on the gravel court,

  And the wind shall say: ‘Here were decent godless people:

  Their only monument the asphalt road

  And a thousand lost golf balls’.

  CHORUS:

  We build in vain unless the LORD build with us.

  Can you keep the City that the LORD keeps not with you?

  A thousand policemen directing the traffic

  Cannot tell you why you come or where you go.

  A colony of cavies or a horde of active marmots

  Build better than they that build without the LORD.

  Shall we lift up our feet among perpetual ruins?

  I have loved the beauty of Thy House, the peace of Thy sanctuary,

  I have swept the floors and garnished the altars.

  Where there is no temple there shall be no homes,

  Though you have shelters and institutions,

  Precarious lodgings while the rent is paid,

  Subsiding basements where the rat breeds

  Or sanitary dwellings with numbered doors

  Or a house a little better than your neighbour’s;

  When the Stranger says: ‘What is the meaning of this city?

  Do you huddle close together because you love each other?’

  What will you answer? ‘We all dwell together

  To make money from each other’? or ‘This is a community’?

  And the Stranger will depart and return to the desert.

  O my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,

  Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

  O weariness of men who turn from GOD

  To the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action,

  To arts and inventions and daring enterprises,

  To schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited,

  Binding the earth and the water to your service,

  Exploiting the seas and developing the mountains,

  Dividing the stars into common and preferred,

  Engaged in devising the perfect refrigerator,

  Engaged in working out a rational morality,

  Engaged in printing as many books as possible,

  Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles,

  Turning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm

  For nation or race or what you call humanity;

  Though you forget the way to the Temple,

  There is one who remembers the way to your door:

  Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.

  You shall not deny the Stranger.

  IV

  There are those who would build the Temple,

  And those who prefer that the Temple should not be built.

  In the days of Nehemiah the Prophet

  There was no exception to the general rule.

  In Shushan the palace, in the month Nisan,

  He served the wine to the king Artaxerxes,

  And he grieved for the broken city, Jerusalem;

  And the King gave him leave to depart

  That he might rebuild the city.

  So he went, with a few, to Jerusalem,

  And there, by the dragon’s well, by the dung gate,

  By the fountain gate, by the king’s pool,

  Jerusalem lay waste, consumed with fire;

  No place for a beast to pass.

  There were enemies without to destroy him,

  And spies and self-seekers within,

  When he and his men laid their hands to rebuilding the wall.

  So they built as men must build

  With the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other.

  V

  O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

  Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian: were doubtless men of public spirit and zeal.

  Preserve me from the enemy who has something to gain: and from the friend who has something to lose.

  Remembering the words of Nehemiah the Prophet: ‘The trowel in hand, and the gun rather loose in the holster.’

  Those who sit in a house of which the use is forgotten: are like snakes that lie on mouldering stairs, content in the sunlight.

  And the others run about like dogs, full of enterprise, sniffing and barking: they say, ‘This house is a nest of serpents, let us destroy it,