Talking to Blake

I saw a lit candle in sunlight

held by the ghost of William Blake.

He walked by the polluted river, ill-at-ease,

beneath Lambeth's dusty poplar trees.

Then high above Parliament Big Ben struck

and his voice advised as from afar,

"Write visionary lines that give a moral light,

let a poem become a star.'

'Mr Blake,' I replied, 'most poets make

a pale sound now-like a falling snowflake -

and the roar of machinery grows

with the automation of the rose.

Deafened, deafened, are the beautiful Nine

so what you once said remains as true,

the languid strings do scarcely move,

the sound is forc'd, the notes are few.

All our permutations of despair,

smouldering word-fires without light or heat,

our pursuance of the incomplete,

leave no disturbance in the air.'

'Then,' said he, lowering the candlestick,

(as if to examine a grain of sand)

'the Rose of English Poetry is sick

like England's green and pleasant land.'