Blue plaques remind us that talented people once lived in our locality. Sometimes whole houses perform that function. And then there are significant ships, bridges and viaducts – the Great Britain, the Forth railway bridge, the Ribblehead viaduct. Not so often do we find words put together by poets and carved in stone for the benefit of succeeding generations.
I remember being surprised by coming across a slab of black granite, I think it was, in the little village of Sandilands on the Lincolnshire coast. It was a roadside example of Kipling’s ‘If’ that had appeared out of nowhere at the behest of somebody perhaps who had learned the lines by heart as a school-boy and was keen for others to enjoy them too.
I remember too finding in the atrium in Bentall’s, Kingston-upon-Thames the concluding line of Tennyson’s poem ‘Ulysses’ I had hardly heard of Tennyson; the quotation had no citation of author or origin. Only later did I come across the poem itself and judged it was one of Tennyson’s best.
In fact, I still think that. Unlike R.S. Thomas, the Welsh nationalist poet who had not even a streak of sentimentality in him, Tennyson was similar to his predecessor Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in falling over himself in his later years. But in ‘Ulysses’ Tennyson struck a vein of poetry that rings true for any reader over 50. He looks back on an adventurous life and would like to be young again. But he accepts that perseverance, not giving up, is within the reach of us all: ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’ I wonder what inspired Frank Bentall or whoever to choose that line for the new department store? It was line line with Mark 13.13. (And I wonder too what made architect Maurice Webb look to Wren’s addition to nearby Hampton Court for the inspiration of his façade of the store building.)
Ulysses, of course, had only the polytheistic version of divinity to motivate him. We have something better. But in the Son of God we have not a man who grew old and grey and had the wisdom that comes in old age. Rather we have one who was cruelly cut off in his prime, who gave us memorable teaching, became obedient unto death for our sake and rose again.
In St Paul’s cathedral is the inscription: Si monumentum requiris, circumspice (If you seek a monument, gaze around). Wren left astonishing examples of his genius. Jesus left no more than 12 disciples. That proved to be all that was needed. We need only gaze around at the world we live in. Troubled it may be but we see traces of the grace of God.
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