Friday, July 8, 2022

Builders of Empires - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com 

https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/

poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

 

Builders of Empires

 

Great men of thought, of character and strength

Have built from time to time empires of industry

Empires of soldiers and sailors forcing conquests

Of ancient lands and nations for their own purposes

 

Great men have built ziggurats and stood upon them

Mapping the Dance of the sun, moon, and stars

Great men have written books, pondered the arts

And given us the empires of the mind

 

But a man alone in his cell telling his beads

Builds better and forever, for all of us

 

(In context “man” is gender-neutral. As Samuel Johnson would say, “And there’s an end on’t.”)

 

(“Empires of the mind” references a speech by Churchill at Harvard in 1943.)

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