The Cittie beneath the Ocean sits and sleeps

A simple sign reveals the futility of man’s struggle against the seas at Dunwich, Suffolk

Flood flow and fluvium flings the shingle shore sharply in the waves
As here at Dunwich my horse has homed me thus.
But behold the sea! Battering swells have swung the swarming throng
That I knew well when Bigod was bigging and boasting way back then
And cast them to the corners of the earth leaving but the calm of beach and boat!
For where once was town there now be but waves.

Dunwich as captured by JMW Turner – when this picture was painted, the wreck of Dunwich was still returning 2 MPs to Parliament even though a handful of people lived in the constituency.

Dunwich, greatest of the citties of the East, a Suffolk surety
Against the predations of France and proudly preaching its excellence
At those pretenders Orford, Blythburgh and Walton – sea towns, sea men and sea bound.
If I listen, I can hear the homesteads and high spirits of merchant, monk and merry man!
If I cast my eye it walks down webs of wicker and wattle, warming on women who weave in the yards!
There was power here once – parliament itself was propped by Clerk and Brantham;
Precursors of a poisoned politik portrayed as but rotten by 1832.

What wrought the stones and crushed them to cobbles clacking?
The sea! The German Ocean, the great North Sea! Smooth swell but swarming.
This sea looks brown as is moves in shallow sands murmuring;
Voices cry from its depths, bells toll to unseen ears, unhearing now and unholy.
Storms moved with menace mightily down this coast and men did quake but to behold them!

Defoe knew well how windmills burned in woe as winds whipped sails beyond endurance.
But the mighty winds of Maurus mocked the men before his time
And more blows too did the cheeks of God bustle forth in His anger at our vanity!

Dunwich collapses into the sea; today nothing remains of this church

He shut off the river and rendered town rudderless;
Churches were cast to the earth in Middle Age and modern time:
Slowly they succumbed: St James; St Peter’s; St Nicholas; All Saints –
And more! Street by street, the sea sucked away the sand and slurped up the people.

Today a monastery in ruins stands upon the cliffs marking time, making friends.
It knows that like its brothers long ago its boldness will be but bluster
When the waves come to call one last time to waft it to the waters.
Look closely at those cliffs and clear you’ll see the bones of cloistermen
Long gone from Greyfriars, growing from the soil, groaning in lament
Of a time when land loyally lapped their lair, a haven high.

Yet for years all was not lost! Young was its spirit as it clung to old privilege!
In arrogance, this undersea urchin still with unction sent its London members
Till with Great Reform even this last vestige of its vain power was vanquished
In the name of democracy. And duped thus Dunwich died – a footnote to a finer time.
Now, a few houses on a street end sit, stumps of a place once superior now silent
As an English village supping beer in sleepy Suffolk while, just beyond, the old cittie sings
Among the fish, the flounder and the foaming horse.

When we with vanity talk of power
And at our mirrors crow
Just simply think of Dunwich tower
And know which way you’ll go.