Decadence

The topic is decadence
The meaning interpreted, I'm sure
So I opened the Pocket Oxford
Left languishing on the floor-

Deterioration, it said, decline of a nation,
Or of an art or literature after culmination.

When has a nation climaxed
After Shakespeare, Mozart, or a Great War?
Or are we governed by cyles
Like a constant, revolving door?

We hit a peak and then decline
Before we can hit a peak again.
The circle of life goes on
We cannot and do not remain.

And Byron wrote, "I love not man the less but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From allI may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express - yet cannot all conceal."

For Man and Nature are inextricably entwined.
When we take too much, so we decline -
As Nature is bountiful, so it is lean
The boom and bust cycle and all that, that means.

Around the next corner
The moral reality
Of the nature of decadence
And its slide to the sea,

Which taketh and giveth
With pleasure and pain
Byron sought both
As his writings inflame.

Ian Matthews, October 2008.