STATELY MANSIONS

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

[OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.]

By now, everyone in the world has seen the stunning photos of the demolition of the East Wing of the White House which began on October 20 to make way for the construction of a ballroom planned by its current occupant.

The reactions to the scenes of the rubble were predictably speedy and spontaneous.

As I browsed through the varied opinions from a myriad of sources, my thoughts drifted to a poem I first read my senior year of high school in advanced placement English class, “The Chambered Nautilus,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

The phrase, “Build thee more stately mansions,” from the final stanza of the poem kept rolling around in my brain.

Now I confess that, at seventeen years of age, I didn’t have much of an appetite for poetry, or poetry analysis.

And though I resented her to some degree at the time, today I am grateful for Helen Wilson, our teacher, who instilled in us an appreciation for literature that has served me well in my adult life.

She was a taskmaster.

She pushed her students to enlarge our vocabulary, to expand our awareness, to increase our knowledge, and to strive to reach beyond ourselves.

That is the primary theme of this poem.

Amy Berohn, an Associate Editor of the website Poemshubs.com, offers the following analysis: 

The poem uses the nautilus, a sea creature that builds a spiraled, chambered shell, as a symbol for human growth, spiritual development, and the journey toward a higher state of being. Holmes blends scientific observation with spiritual insight, using the creature’s progression through its chambers as a metaphor for the expansion of the soul and the need to continually grow and evolve.

Of course, none of that comes to mind when I think about the White House ballroom project, or, for that matter, of the person who has proposed this idea and whose name I refuse to mention.

His narcissism is always on display. His profanity laced speech exposes his shallow vocabulary. And I’ve never equated him as a person of any level of spirituality. If anything, money is his deity. He worships at the altar of materialism.

He is the antithesis of all the poem seeks to inspire in its readers: Build thee more stately mansions.

His intent is not to build, but to destroy – his opponents, those who disagree with him, those who have in any way offended him.

Normally I would hesitate to wade into the treacherous pool of public opinion. However, I felt stirred to say something about this, not only because of the passionate reactions of others, but because of the gut-wrenching emotions it aroused in me.

I feel as if a wrecking ball had leveled my own place of residence.

I think of every tourist who has ever set foot in the nation’s capital and taken the obligatory souvenir photo in front of the wrought iron fence that surrounds the symbolic structure. My son and I have several versions, both individually and together.

It will now become a collector’s item. No one will ever be able to duplicate it again. That is, unless you airbrush out whatever the new building will look like.

Undoubtedly, there have been both interior and exterior changes to the White House before, but in my lifetime, none has evoked such an overwhelming response.

Thus, when I focus on the debris, it becomes a metaphor for what is happening to the fabric of our society, the unpleasant division that continuously pulls apart our tenuous relationships.

All of that, of course, I lay at the feet of the one person who gleefully delights in our partisan bickering. It is by deliberate design.

I think of the history behind the original construction of the White House, and more recently, a comment by then First Lady Michelle Obama at the 2016 Democratic Convention that stirred up quite a controversy:

“I wake up each morning in a house built by slaves.”

She was correct, of course. Nonetheless, the words took on a life of their own because of who said them.

In fact, several other public figures – Nancy Pelosi among them – had made similar comments many times before. Yet fact checkers were sent scurrying to verify the truth of Ms. Obama’s powerful statement, only to find out that not only was the White House built by enslaved labor, but many other buildings in the District of Columbia as well.

Despite the vigorous efforts of many to dismiss the impact and influence that Black people, both slave and free, have had on the construction of this country, the contribution of African American labor cannot be undervalued.

And nowhere is that better demonstrated than in the painting, “Building More Stately Mansions.” In this artwork, the artist Aaron Douglas in 1944, wanted to emphasize the role of Black men and women in major parts of history, not just in the United States.

The title of the artwork, in case you didn’t notice, Douglas no doubt borrowed from the poem.

It remains to be seen what shape the final structure will take. But at times like these I am thankful that, at my advanced age, I won’t have all that long to dislike it.

In the meantime, I will cherish the nostalgic memories of that stately mansion, the White House, as I knew it.