EAST COKE8.
Hunt the heavens and the plains
Whirled in a vortex that'shall bring
The world to that destructive fire
Which burns before the ice-cap reigns.
That was a way of putting it-not very satisfactory:
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter.
It
was not (to start again) what one had expected.
What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity
And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?
The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,
The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets
Useless in the darkness into which they peered
Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The
knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of
that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
In the middle, not only in the middle of the way
But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,
the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,
menaced by monsters, fancy lights,
. enchantment. Do not let me hear
the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
only wisdom we can hope to acquire
the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
houses are all gone under the sea.
dancers are all gone under the hill.
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