>>6136483>>6135367>>6136559>>6136141I feel obliged also to reciprocate the literary offering of SpookQM, who furnished me with a very intriguing stanza so here is an ekphrastic poem from WH Auden from a volume with some similar themes on decline of empire. I think the idea of poems is to allude to a thing without shouting out the obvious, Auden does this well, hehe. But maybe it is just about a house falling into the sea. I like poems with internal rhyme, this sounds very pleasant if you intone it out loud. I don't think there is an epub of it, just some pdf scan, this poem alongside several other works is omitted from most of the published collected editions and edited compilations of WH Auden's works, hehe
***
Look, stranger, at this island now
The leaping light for your delight discovers,
Stand stable here
And silent be,
That through the channels of the ear
May wander like a river
The swaying sound of the sea.
Here at the small field's ending pause
Where the chalk wall falls to the foam, and its tall ledges
Oppose the pluck
And knock of the tide,
And the shingle scrambles after the sucking surf, and the gull lodges
A moment on its sheer side.
Far off like floating seeds the ships
Diverge on urgent voluntary errands;
And the full view
Indeed may enter
And move in memory as now these clouds do,
That pass the harbour mirror
And all the summer through the water saunter.
