Summary
Summary Stephen Spender - "XXIV" - Analysis
This is a summary and analysis of the poem "XXIV" by Stephen Spender.
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“After they have tired of the brilliance of cities” is a poem by StephenSpender. It is a lyrical prophecy of the continuing economic collapse
which will make revolution inevitable.
In this poem, Spender moves outward from an individual sense of the
necessity for change to a more general call for revolution. Spender
explores ideas of love and death in “this time”, progressing from a
dismissal of “this time” to a call for revolution. The natural image of
snow clashes with the urban “brilliance of cities”; an opposition which
underlines the oppression of the spirit by the city which inspires the
poet’s desire for revolution and freedom. The poet’s stance, although
a Romantic cliche is presented with conviction and eloquence.
The first stanza dismisses those who strive for public office or possess
public honours together with public monuments because “Death and
Jerusalem glorify also the crossing sweeper”; and all is temporary
before the ultimate apocalyptic reality of death: “Then those streets
the rich built and their easy love……Clean and equal like the shine
from snow.”
The smooth movement from lines which are long, slow and
high-sounding to lines which are short and provocative mirrors the
transition from the multi-coloured “brilliance of cities” to the fading of
colour “like old cloths” to a singular “white”, which is both the colour of
death’s naked skull and snow. “Grinning white” is juxtaposed with
colourful “brilliance” in the same way that white’s associations with
purity and virginity are juxtaposed with the vanity and self-importance
of the rich. However, the combination of “Grinning” and “white”
qualifies the rich visual imagery with the grotesque personification,
almost a cartoon of death.
The second stanza sets against the wealth, impotence and frailty of
“those who were pillars of yesterday’s roof” the hunger, poverty and
, strength of “We”: “And our strength is now the strength of our
bones//Clean and equal like the shine from snow//And the strength of
famine and of our enforced idleness//And it is the strength of our love
for one another.”
The persistent repetition of “strength” and the sturdy rhythm of these
lines, with its strenuous yet inexorable forward movement, convey the
sense of struggle for justice and revolution.
The “We” aspire to the classless, stateless all-loving country visualise
in the third stanza as opposed to the materialistic and oppressive
society of the first stanza: We have come at last to a country// Where
light equal, like the shine from snow, strikes all faces//Here you may
wonder//How it was that works, money, interest, building, could ever
hide//The palpable and obvious love of man for man.”
The general criticism of the rich, most notably in the first stanza, and
such specific charges as “the declared insanity of our rulers’ do not
exhibit the “palpable and obvious love of man for man”. The poem’s
vision of an universal love is energised by the vivid and impassioned
language, exemplified by the Blakean “Spring-like resources of the
tiger”, but ironized by the poem’s revolutionary politics. The poem
wonders at the hiding of that love yet itself hides it. The poetry is
straining beyond itself to evoke an ideal world which it can only
indicate. The ideal future country is not in itself clearly visualised, nor
is the means by which it might be achieved.
The fourth stanza calls for the creation of such a country for the sake
of future generations whose judgement, like the fact of revolution, will:
“explode like a shell//Around us, dazing us with its light like snow.”
The continual use of the image of snow has a numbing effect, its initial
novelty fading with its seemingly unnecessary inclusion in, even
intrusion into, such lines as: “Where light equal, like the shine from
snow, strikes all faces.” As the commentary in Modern Poetry
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