From: hayesmstw@hotmail.com   
      
   Lewis's commentary on Williams's poem The Vision of the Empire   
      
   Quote:   
   The image of the Empire is the final form of something that had always haunted   
   Williams and which he often referred to simply as "the City". The word is   
   significant. Williams was a Londoner of the Londoners; Johnson and Chesterton   
   never exalted more than he at their citizenship. On many of us the prevailing   
   impression made by the London streets is one of chaos; but Williams, looking   
   on the same spectacle, saw chiefly an image -- in imperfect, pathetic, heroic,   
   and majestic image-- of Order. Two passages from among many in his novels may   
   be quoted. One of from War in Heaven (Chapter V) where he is describing the   
   decline of what had once been a residential street. At least, one end of the   
   street shows mere decline, but at the other end new life is beginning for   
   there "a public house signalized the gathering of another code of decency and   
   morals which might in time transform the intervening decay". The proletarian   
   courtesy and community of a public house (with all the mutual forbearance and   
   observance of unwritten law which they imply) are a manifestation of "the   
   City". The other passage comes from The Greater Trumps. It comes from Chapter   
   4 and the reference to "the Emperor" is explained by the fact that Henry and   
   Nancy have just been studying the Tarot cards. They are in a car and have come   
   to a traffic block;   
      
   'A policeman's hand held them up. Henry gestured towards it. "Behold the   
   Emperor!" he said to Nancy. "You're making fun of me," she half protested.   
   "Never less," he said seriously. "look at him"... She saw in that heavy   
   official barring their way the Emperor of the Trumps, helmed, in a white   
   cloak, stretching out one sceptred arm, as if Charlemagne or one like him   
   stretched out his controlling sword over the tribes of Europe pouring from the   
   forests... The noise of all the passing street came upon her as the roar of   
   many peoples; the white cloak held them by a gesture: order and law were   
   there.'   
      
   Such is Byzantium -- Order, envisaged not as a restraint, not even as a   
   convenience, but as a beauty and splendour. Perhaps no element in Williams's   
   imagination separates him so wildly as this from other writers. The modern   
   world has planners and orderers in plenty but they are not often poets: it has   
   poets not a few, but they seldom see beauty in policemen.   
      
   Source: Lewis & Williams 1974:289   
      
   Comments, anyone?   
      
      
   --   
   Steve Hayes   
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