Terrible Beauty

Wrote William Butler Yeats of Dublin after the Easter Rising of 1916:

All changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

Wrote an anonymous observer in the latest issue of London's New Statesman and Nation to reach the U.S.:

"I doubt if we shall ever again see the centre of London as beautiful as it is this summer. Much that was ugly, as well as some that was irreplaceably lovely, has been destroyed. Bombs have created unexpected and delightful views; St. Paul's stands out as St. Peter's does in Rome, and one can see it to great advantage from distant open spaces. . . . Many hideous buildings make quite respectable ruins. From the rubble purple willow herb grows luxuriantly, and in one place I know of bracken is sprouting out of sandbags. . . . In Victoria Street a breed of ducklings has grown up comfortably from a nest in the rubble. Above all, for the first time in our lives, there is a sense of space and air in London, and these are the first essentials of all town planning. . . ."

Last week London's County Council published a 50-year reconstruction plan to give London new parks, wide avenues, swimming pools and playgrounds, self-contained communities.

Just before he died Yeats wrote:

All things fall and are built again,

And those that build them again are gay.

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