The Cock of Heaven
By
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MACMILLAN
THE author of this poem quotes a legend to the effect that the Cock of Heaven, which crew when Peter denied Christ, was the Angel Gabriel, warning Man of his fate; that Man did not heed it, and that when the cock should crow again ‘ the fabric of the whole world should be dissolved thereby, and all creation undone.’ The various parts of the poem are commentaries on the text of the legend, which include the stories of several signs and portents which shall precede the universal destruction.
The poem is very obscure in parts, but it has passages of great power and passion. In a medley of styles, ranging from the simplicity of the mediæval mystery play to the sophistication of modern colloquial idiom, the author evokes the past history of man to prove his unending and inexorable drift towards his own destruction. In symbol, image, and anecdote the themes of death, decay, corruption, blood, confusion, and despair are created and presented, and the author’s own emotion at his anguished vision is emphasized by a skillful use of echoes of similar attitudes in Donne, Hopkins, Baudelaire, and Eliot. E. D.