When, as at Beverley Minster or All Souls,
You ape the Gothic, art is all façade.
Forms moulded of your substance, clear and hard,
Weigh with a Roman virtue. What controls
The impulse, at Christ Church, that would have soared
Through broken cornices to where a spire
Defined not form but anguish and desire,
Becomes your very theme at Castle Howard,
The Mausoleum. Private grief, though lost
In generalities of hope resigned,
There haunts the orders which the patient earth
Sustains for ruin. And something of the north
Troubles your cool sobriety of line
With aspiration and an edge of frost.