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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117928" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Towers of Time</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Under what withering leprous light<br>The very grass as hair is grey,<br>Grass in the cracks of the paven courts<br>Of gods we graved but yesterday.<br>Senate, republic, empire, all<br>We leaned our backs on like a wall<br>And blessed as strong and blamed as stolid--<br>Can it be these that waver and fall?<br> And what is this like a ghost returning,<br> A dream grown strong in the strong daylight?<br> The all-forsaken, the unforgotten,<br> The ever-behind and out of sight.<br> We turned our backs and our blind flesh felt it<br> Growing and growing, a tower in height.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, not alone the evil splendour<br>And not the insolent arms alone<br>Break with the ramrod, stiff and brittle,<br>The sceptre of the nordic throne;<br>But things of manlier renown<br>Reel in the wreck of throne and crown,<br>With tyrannous tyranny, tyrannous loyalty<br>Tyrannous liberty, all gone down.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(There is never a crack in the ivory tower<br>Or a hinge to groan in the house of gold<br>Or a leaf of the rose in the wind to wither<br>And she grows young as the world grows old.<br>A Woman clothed with the sun returning<br>to clothe the sun when the sun is cold.)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, who had guessed that in a moment<br>Great Liberty that loosed the tribes,<br>the Republic of the young men's battles<br>Grew stale and stank of old men's bribes;<br>And where we watched her smile in power<br>A statue like a starry tower<br>the stone face sneers as in a nightmare<br>Down on a world that worms devour.<br> (Archaic incredible dead dawns breaking<br> Deep in the deserts and waste and wealds,<br> Where the dead cry aloud on Our Lady of Victories,<br> Queen of the Eagles, aloft on the shields,<br> And the sun is gone up on the Thundering Legion<br> On the roads of Rome to the Battlefields.)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, who had known who had not seen<br>How soft and sudden on the fame<br>Of my most noble English ships<br>The sunset light of Carthage came<br>And the thing I never had dreamed could be<br>In the house of my fathers came to me<br>Through the sea-wall cloven, the cloud and dark,<br>A voice divided, a doubtful sea.<br> (The light is bright on the Tower of David,<br> The evening glows with the morning star<br> In the skies turned back and the days returning<br> She walks so near who had wandered far<br> And in the heart of the swords, the seven times wounded,<br> Was never wearied as our hearts are.)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How swift as with a fall of snow<br>New things grow hoary with the light.<br>We watch the wrinkles crawl like snakes<br>On the new image in our sight.<br>The lines that sprang up taut and bold<br>Sag like primordial monsters old,<br>Sink in the bas-reliers of fossil<br>And the slow earth swallows them, fold on fold,<br>But light are the feet on the hills of the morning<br>Of the lambs that leap up to the Bride of the Sun,<br>And swift are the birds as the butterflies flashing<br>And sudden as laughter the rivulets run<br>And sudden for ever as summer lightning<br>the light is bright on the world begun.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thou wilt not break as we have broken<br>The towers we reared to rival Thee.<br>More true to England than the English<br>More just to freedom than the free.<br>O trumpet of the intolerant truth<br>Thou art more full of grace and ruth<br>For the hopes of th world than the world that made them,<br>The world that murdered the loves of our youth.<br> Thou art more kind to our dreams, Our Mother,<br> Than the wise that wove us the dreams for shade.<br> God if more good to the gods that mocked Him<br> Than men are good to the gods they made.<br> Tenderer with toys than a boy grown brutal,<br> Breaking the puppets with which he played.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What are the flowers the garden guards not<br>And how but here should dreams return?<br>And how on hearths made cold with ruin<br>the wide wind-scattered ashes burn--<br>What is the home of the heart set free,<br>And where is the nesting of liberty,<br>And where from the world shall the world take shelter<br>And man be matter, and not with Thee?<br> Wisdom is set in her throne of thunder,<br> The Mirror of Justice blinds the day--<br> Where are the towers that are not of the City,<br> Trophies and trumpetings, where are they?<br> Where over the maze of the world returning<br> The bye-ways bend to the King's highway.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=G.K.+Chesterton">G.K. Chesterton</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=117928" data-title="The Towers of Time de G.K. Chesterton" data-description="Under what withering leprous light/The very grass as hair is grey,/Grass in the cracks of the paven courts/Of gods we graved but yesterday./Senate, republic, empire, all/We leaned our backs on like a wall/And blessed as strong and blamed as stolid..."></div>
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