Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
Ceremonial Ode Intended for a UniversityLascelles Abercrombie (18811938)
W
The curdled element
And gathered forces, and the world began,—
The Spirit that was shut and darkly blent
Within this being, did the whole distress
With a blind hanker after spaciousness.
Into its wrestle, strictly tied up in Fate
And closely natured, came like an open’d grate
At last the Mind of Man,
Letting the sky in, and a faculty
To light the cell with lost Eternity.
For upward grew Man’s ken
And trode with founded footsteps the grievous fen
Where other life festering and prone remain’d.
With knowledge painfully quarried and hewn fair,
Platforms of lore, and many a hanging stair
Of strong imagination Man has raised
His Wisdom like the watch-towers of a town;
That he, though fasten’d down
In law, be with its cruelty not amazed,
But be of outer vastness greatly aware.
High, and yet more high,
The knowledgeable towers above base wars
And sinful surges reaching up to lay
Dishonouring hands upon your work, and drag
From their uprightness your desires to lag
Among low places with a common gait.
That so Man’s mind, not conquer’d by his clay,
May sit above his fate,
Inhabiting the purpose of the stars,
And trade with his Eternity.