Welcome to Season 2 of The Well Read Poem podcast. During this
season, our host, classicist and poet Thomas Banks will be reading
and interpreting six poems of history. This week's poem is
"Constantinople" by J. C. Squire. Poem begins at timestamp
4:29.
JUSTINIAN.
Does the church stand I
raised
Against the unchristened
East?
Still do my ancient altars
bear
The sacrificial
feast?
My jewels are they
bright,
My marbles and my
paint,
Wherewith I glorified the
Lord
And many a martyred
Saint?
And does my dome still
float
Above the Golden
Horn?
And do my priests on Christmas
Day
Still sing that Christ was
born?
EUROPE.
Though dust your house,
Justinian,
Still stands your lordliest
shrine,
But the dark men who walk
therein,
Know not of bread nor
wine.
They fell long since upon your
stones,
And made your colours
dim,
Their priests who pray on Christmas
Day
They sing no Christmas
hymn.
But a voice at evening
goes
From every climbing
tower,
Crying a word you never
heard,
A name of desert
power.
CONSTANTINE
PALAEOLOGUS.
For seven hundred
years
We gripped a weakening
blade,
Keeping the gateway of the
West
With none to give us
aid.
Till at the last they
broke
What Constantine had
built,
And by the shattered wall the
blood
Of Constantine was
spilt.
Do men remember
still
The manner of my
death,
How after all those failing
years
I at the last kept
faith?
They know it for a bygone
thing
True but
indifferent,
For many a fight has come to
pass
Since to the wall you
went.
Westward and northward,
Emperor,
Poured on that bloody
brood,
Till those must turn to save
themselves
Who had known not
gratitude.
One fought them on the Middle
Sea,
One at Vienna's
gate,
And then the kings of
Christendom
Watched the red tide
abate.
Till in the end
Byzantium
Heard a returning
war;
But still a Mehmet holds your tomb
...
Keep silence ... ask no
more.