Sonnet XXXV

A poem

The Enemy Sowing Tares (John Everett Millais, 1865)

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We learned too late the price we'll have to pay
The ferrymen, disguised before the eye
Of those already blind; posing to ply
The trade of knowledge, brushing from their way
The half-burnt husk of human personhood,
Long pillaged of its golden-kernelled core
That's threshed from field to furnace – nothing more
Than smoke above a half-raped ancient wood.
Whose woods these are they know and do not care
And tear the noble roots up from the soil
That bears the cultivation and the toil
Of labour and leisure, both in equal share.
But we with good seed sow a holy curse
And so the sacred parable reverse. 

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