”A happy vicar I might have been” (George Orwell)

Nedan följer det första, andra, sjätte, och sista stycket ur Orwells poem ”A happy vicar I might have been”, publicerad i december 1936. Den citeras även av Orwell själv i essän ”Why I Write” (1946) där han förklarar att under andra historiska omständigheter så hade han förmodligen skrivit oskyldiga böcker ”full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their sound”. Men: ”As it is I have been forced into becoming a sort of pamphleteer”. Det kan tilläggas att samlingsvolymen An Age Like This hämtar sin titel från denna dikt.

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A happy vicar I might have been

Two hundred years ago,

To preach upon eternal doom

And watch my walnuts grow;

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But born, alas, in an evil time,

I missed that pleasant haven,

For the hair has grown on my upper lip

And the clergy are all clean-shaven.

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It is forbidden to dream again;

We maim our joys or hide them;

Horses are made of chromium steel

And little fat men shall ride them.

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I dreamed I dwelt in marble halls,

And woke to find it true;

I wasn’t born for an age like this;

Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?

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A Kind of Compulsion, The Complete Works of George Orwell, vol. X (1903–1936), art. 335, s. 524–5.

‘Why I Write’, An Age Like This, (Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters, vol. I), s. 3–4.