Poem by George Rostrevor Hamilton

The Idol

I

"See," said the artist, while with languid care
He posed before his goddess, "how sublime
The primitive invention was, how bare
Of inessentials! We, in this dead time
Of outworn schools and theories, have need
To go to those first masters for our creed.

"In this rough stone more vision is expressed
Than* in your prettiest nudes. This flat-turned thigh,
And this long plane of shoulder and of breast,
For their consummate Tightness make me sigh.
How absolute! how abstract! and how fine
A harmony of angle, plane and line!

"Pure art is here, that has no reference
To anything external does not tie
Itself to apron-strings of moral sense,
Or flatter bourgeois minds with mimicry
Of actual objects, or give weak assent
To fussy vanity or sentiment.

"Of course" and here his voice took on a tone
Of deprecating softness "there are few
Who can love Art for her own sake alone:
It needs the single aim, the vision new,
Irrelevant human motives to reject,
And worship her with the pure intellect."

II

I heard his homily and did not speak,
But from his idol's grim archaic smile
Fancied her granite tongue was in her cheek
Mocking her priest with unsuspected guile,
Remembering with what worship she was fed
When knives flashed, and her altar-stones ran red:

When to that rigid and half-moulded shape
Of inhumanity her curveless breast,
Her taut half-separate limbs, her mouth agape
In hard grimace were offered up the best
Of growing life, the bodies dark-skinned, smooth,
Supple and trembling-swift of eager youth.

Above the chant of the priest, the beat of the drum,
The clamour of the multitude, the scream
Of writhmg victims, cold, impassive, dumb,
Bloodless she stood, insatiate, supreme
The crowned Idea of Vengeance, first elect
Terrible sovereign of man's intellect.

1. To Fighter Airmen
2. Tugs
3. Walls
4. A Cross in Flanders
5. Fog

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