The Shattering of Peter's Edifice

The sphincter-trumpets of one hundred Eminences --
All in bright and bloody red --
Announce the cracking of the Rock
Now shattered beyond hope of any re-formation.

In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or apple, and such speeches cannot be written by anyone who works among people who have shut their lips on poetry. In Ireland, for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery and magnificent, and tender; so that those of us who wish to write start with a chance that is not given to writers in places where the springtime of the local life has been forgotten, and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks.

-- J.M.S.  1907