Hearing of harvests rotting in the valleys,

    Seeing at end of street the barren mountains,

    Round corners coming suddenly on water,

    Knowing them shipwrecked who were launched for islands,

    We honour founders of these starving cities

    Whose honour is the image of our sorrow,Which cannot see its likeness in their sorrow

    That brought them desperate to the brink of valleys;

    Dreaming of evening walks through learned cities

    They reined their violent horses on the mountains,

    Those fields like sh.i.p.s to castaways on islands,

    Visions of green to them who craved for water. They built by rivers and at night the water

    Running past windows comforted their sorrow;

    Each in his little bed conceived of islands

    Where every day was dancing in the valleys

    And all the green trees blossomed on the mountains

    Where love was innocent, being far from cities. But dawn came back and they were still in cities;

    No marvellous creature rose up from the water;

    There was still gold and silver in the mountains

    But hunger was a more immediate sorrow,

    Although to moping villagers in valleys

    Some waving pilgrims were describing islands … "The gods," they promised, "visit us from

    islands,

    Are stalking, head-up, lovely, through our cities;

    Now is the time to leave your wretched valleys

    And sail with them across the lime-green water,

    Sitting at their white sides, forget your sorrow,

    The shadow cast across your lives by mountains." So many, doubtful, perished in the mountains,

    Climbing up crags to get a view of islands,

    So many, fearful, took with them their sorrow

    Which stayed them when they reached unhappy cities,

    So many, careless, dived and drowned in water,

    So many, wretched, would not leave their valleys. It is our sorrow. Shall it melt? Ah, water

    Would gush, flush, green these mountains and these valleys,

    And we rebuild our cities, not dream of islands.

    By W.H. Auden