Classic Poem

I muse by the midnight coals to the tick of a clock:
On pageants I ponder; I ask myself, ‘What did it mean—
That ante-noontide ceremonial scene?’

I have sat in the Stadium, one face in a stabilized flock,
While the busbies and bayonets wheeled and took root on the green.
At the golden drum-majors I gazed; of the stands I took stock,
Till a roar rolled around the arena, from block after block,
Keeping pace with the carriage containing the King and the Queen.

Ebullitions of Empire exulted. I listened and stared.
Patriotic paradings with pygmy preciseness went by.
The band bashed out bandmaster music; the trumpeters blared
The Press was collecting its clichés (The cloud-covered sky
Struck a note of neutrality, extra-terrestrial and shy.)

The megaphone-microphone-magnified voice of the King
Spoke hollow and careful from vacant remoteness of air.
I heard. There was no doubt at all that the Sovereign was there;
He was there to be grave and august and to say the right thing;
To utter the aims of Dominion. He came to declare
An inaugurate Wembley. He did. Then a prelate, with prayer
To the God of Commercial Resources and Arts that are bland,
Was broadcasted likewise, his crozier of office in hand.
‘For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory,’ he said,

But when Elgar conducts the massed choirs something inward aspires;
For the words that they sing are by Blake; they are simple and grand,
And their rapture makes everything dim when the music has fled
And the guns boom salutes and the flags are unfurled overhead . . .
And the Names , the anonymous crowds, do they all understand?
Do they ask that their minds may be fierce for the lordship of light
Till in freedom and faith they have builded Jerusalem bright
For Empires and Ages remote from their war-memoried land?