Another (Shelley) Poem for the New Year

Instead of renewed hope, January has brought us a resurgence of “American imperialism and a vision for a new world order in which the United States could freely overthrow national governments and take foreign territory and resources so long as it was in the national interest.” (Chris Cameron, “Stephen Miller Asserts U.S. Has Right to Take Greenland,” New York Times). It has the military force to do so, and no one should doubt that Greenland is soon to fall under its control. As Stephen Miller pronounced, this is the central tenet of the Trump administration’s foreign policy philosophy: “We live in a world, in the real world...that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

In the 19th century, stronger nations subjugated smaller ones simply because they could. Two centuries later, many of us would like to believe that humanity has progressed and has mostly outgrown its old barbarous appetite for conquest. In fact, Steven Pinker argues that, in general, violence has decreased and the world is in its most peaceful period in human history. Statistically, Pinker is accurate. Yet, the world’s largest militaries led by three ravening leaders, Trump, Putin, and Xi, seek to devour smaller political entities.

Domestically, Trump has chosen to enforce his immigration policy with an iron fist rather than employ reasonable means to determine the status of immigrants. Those accused of being here without proper documentation are denied their due process rights guaranteed by our Constitution. Rather, Trump has invoked The Alien Enemies Act, to aggressively hunt down those suspected of being here “illegally.” With hope fading each day, we could use a prophetic voice to remind us that the struggle for peace, kindness and love is eternal and forever worth fighting for.

Percy Shelley (1792-1822) believed, as many of us do today, that all countries have the right to freedom and self-determination. In 1821, he wrote a poem, “The World’s Great Age,” spoken by a chorus of Greek women slaves to conclude his verse drama, Hellas. The play was conceived and written by Shelley to express his support for Greece in its war of independence against the Ottoman Turks, but the poem also suggests Shelley’s vision of a new age in which human beings no longer wage war to dominate one another. Through the chorus of Greek women, Shelley foresees a new “golden age” akin to that of classical Greece. In this poem, the future promises peace, love and joy.

            The World's Great Age

The world's great age begins anew,
  The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
  Her winter weeds outworn;
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
    From waves serener far,
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
  Against the morning-star,
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
  Fraught with later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
  And loves, and weeps, and dies;
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.

O, write no more the tale of Troy,
  If earth Death's scroll must be!
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
  Which dawns upon the free;
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,
  And to remoter time
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
  The splendor of its prime,
And leave, if nought so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.

Saturn and Love their long repose
  Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, that One who rose,
  Than many unsubdued;
Not gold, not blood their altar dowers
But votive tears and symbol flowers.

O cease! must hate and death return?
  Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
  Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past,
O, might it die or rest at last!

Shelley’s poem is lyrically superb, but his classical allusions need some annotation to arrest the confusion with which they can confound the reader. The first stanza contains an allusion to the mythical reign of Saturn in the words “The golden years return.” In Greek mythology, Saturn’s reign signifies the golden age, a period of peace, abundance, wealth and ease for the human race. As Shelley imagines the return of this “age,” he also sees the earth shedding its old clothes, “winter weeds,” and predicts that the morally obsolete and corrupt “faiths,” and “empires” “dissolving” like a “dream” will vanish.

In stanza 2, a peaceful, sunny setting welcomes the river god Peneus flowing at dawn through the vale of Tempe. The old-world fades, as a new reality emerges, and the ideal of ancient Greece (Hellas) rises in its place. New iterations of the classical heroes, Jason (“loftier Argo”), Ulysses, and the archetypal poet Orpheus appear.

Shelley anticipates a new world order resurrecting the sublime ideal of classical Greece. But he also recognizes that the culture of Greece had its share of greed, violence, and tyranny. In Stanza 3, Shelley urges the present to “write no more the tale of Troy, or the evil that befouled Oedipus and Thebes. Instead, Shelley calls for a revised version of that ancient glory. “Another Athens” to “arise,” an “idealized” ideal of the past.

Shelley looks to that mythical epoch of the Golden Age to resurrect “Saturn and Love” and replace all the world’s other deities. But can this ancient myth inaugurate the transformation of humanity Shelley desires? His final stanza suggests his poetic labors might be in vain:

O cease! must hate and death return?
  Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
  Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past,
O! might it die or rest at last!

In one way, we live in an age not so different from Shelley’s: the menace the powerful leaders pose is ominous. No new golden age can be seen approaching, despite the absurd assertions of the Make America Great politician, but we hold the belief that our country, like Athens, “shall arise,” eventually rid itself of “bitter prophecy,” and of “hate,” we can finally “grow weary of the past” and choose to “rise…like sunset to the skies.”