Landscape

Ye Prologue:

The late 19th and early 20th century Saw a red brick suburban terrace street building boom, All over the country and also in towns like Stroud, - A walk along Horns Road to the Crown and Sceptre Will exemplify that and take you down a wormhole of time.

More Prologue:

The late 19th and early 20th century Also saw a bohemian near-worship of Pan, As exemplified in the work of Arthur Machen; A cultured mockery of shabby genteel pretensions As in the Weedsmiths’ The Diary of a Nobody; And also, an almost subliminal fear Of the suburbs’ manic growth, That fused together so many inchoate anxieties, As articulated in Algernon Blackwood’s stories, Where the ordinary, everyday red brick dwellings Harbour dark secrets of sorcery and the occult; As though the very utilities of mains pipes Could transmit necromantic alchemical evil, As well as water, gas and, eventually, electricity.

Last Prologue:

Of course, subsumed within this confusion, Was also a nostalgia for the loss of landscape, And a fear of the working-class and socialism.