On Greatness and Mediocrity
XXIV
No, not their names. It was the tohers who built
Each great coercive avenue and square,
Where men can only recollect and stare,
the really lonely with the sense of guilt
Who wanted to persist like that for ever;
The unloved had to leave material traces:
But these need nothing but our bettter faces,
And dwell in them, and know that weshall never
Remember who we are nor why we’re needed.
Earth grew them as a bay grows fishermen
Or hills a shepherd; they grew ripe adn seeded;
And the seeds clung to us; even our blood
Was able to revive them; and they grew again;
Happy their wish and mild to flower and flood.
…
XXVI
Always far from the centre of our names,
The little workship of love: yes, but how wrong
We were about the old manors and the long
Abandoned Folly and the children’s games.
Only the acquisitive expects a quaint
Unsaleable product, something to please
An artistic girl; it’s the selfish who sees
In every impractical beggar a saint.
We can’t believe that we ourselved designed it,
A minor item of our daring plan
That caused no trouble; we took no notice of it.
Disaster comes, and we’re amazed to find it
The single project that since work began
Through all the cycle showed a steady profit.
—W. H. Auden, “In Time of War”
