Oh ye men of Greece and Rome,
Too long have ye laboured,
Feel you not what is to come,
the grass by the wall of the ruin?
Leave ye down your tools, ancient peoples,
know you not what is to come?
See you not the pass of many years,
the grass through pavements old?
Great enterprise never sprung from a fertile land,
Go ye into the desert, and there build your temples,
Amongst the sands and beneath the sun,
where grass can never grow.
Here the lines and here the verse,
Here the vaults and chimneys,
Hark the turning of the days,
eek the tall and terrible days.
Lo, the falling of a chimney,
Lo, the crack of stones to splinter,
Lo, the old oak tree stands yawning.
better to build from bushes and thorn.
Have at your lawnmowers, ye council men,
And see what good it does you,
Think ye can halt the rise and fall,
of strong towers left to ruin?
Have at your anoraks, and have at your coats,
Clouds gather above and rankle the parapet,
Here stood a roof, here a joist, here a beam,
blackened in the soot and flames – here falls the rain.
Have at your sickles, and have at your hammers,
Go back to steppe and sod from whence ye came,
And never more disturb the sepulchral vaults,
where lie long dead men of Greece and Rome.
I suppose this comes close to a cheap imitation of something Coledridge might have written - general romanticism, splashes of the gothic, and plenty of blunt apathy - all it needs is a screeching owl and some auld sailor bloke. Look, its still better than anything Michael D. Higgins ever wrote.
Middle English Glossary: eek - also/additionally/besides.
Early Modern English Glossary: Lo - an exclamation.
Whence - where from (dative form of 'where').
These are not deliberate archaicisms for the sake of it, I just think they sound nice. The word 'ye' is used because it is just as good as 'you'.
And yes, sliding in and out of blank verse is intentional. Doesn't sound nice - good, it's not meant to. God I love formalism.