Ruins of a Great House

Derek Walcott's poem “Ruins of a Great House” utilizes the decaying estate as an extended metaphor for colonization and imperialist power. The ruins of this sprawling manor indicate the wealth and prosperity of those that once occupied it and, by extension, represent the atrocities committed by colonial powers to achieve that level of wealth and status. The speaker is painfully aware of this connection as he walks through the grounds, sensing the pain and injustice that this building represents. But the speaker has an even more personal issue that he does not address outright; instead, he leaves the reader clues throughout the text. These clues are the many literary references to great English writers. This secondary tension complicates the way the speaker views the ruins of the manor and slowly alters and shifts his perspective over the course of the poem.

In the first stanza, the speaker compares the broken stones of the crumbling house to the scattered remains of human body parts with the Latin phrase “disjecta membra” (Line 1). The direct translation of this phrase is “scattered limbs.” It is a quote from the Roman poet Horace, who compared fragmentary poetry to the dismembered “limbs” of a poet (Satires 1.4.62). In this first stanza, the speaker finds that the house’s “limbs” are scattered about in much the same way; it is up to him to piece them together again, much as a literary critic would reconstruct a fragmentary poem.

Walcott uses surprising images like "moth-like girls" (Line 2) and “lizard's dragonish claws” (Line 3), which evoke fantastical opulence. This otherworldly beauty is now made grotesque; nature's retaking of the property is symbolic of the failure of opulent colonial empires. This reclamation of the estate by nature also reveals its true ugliness: Mold and mildew corrupt the angelic cherubs on the gate into something horrifying (“The mouths of those gate cherubs shriek with stain,” Line 4). Manure smothers a broken coach (Lines 5-6). The power of nature has revealed that these relics of colonization are surprisingly fragile, now that their time has passed. The three crows that fly into the eucalyptus trees symbolize a bad omen, perhaps for the colonial enterprise as a whole; crows are often used in literature as harbingers of doom.

Next, the speaker notices “A smell of dead limes” which “quickens in the nose” (Line 9). Limes were commonly used in the treatment of scurvy, a disease contracted by British naval men at sea. Plantations could make a massive profit from these fruits, especially because these plantations relied on enslaved Africans to work the fields. But now the literal fruits of British colonization lie rotting on the ground, much like the places they colonized. The limes decay just like the estate; both show symptoms of “The leprosy of empire” (Line 10). Comparing the limes to leprosy implies that empires are contagious and, with close enough contact, may spell certain doom.

The opening line of the second stanza makes two significant comparisons: “Marble like Greece, like Faulkner's South in stone” (Line 13). The connection between the fallen rocks of the manor and the marble of Ancient Greece carries a specific implication because Greece, like Great Britain, was once a great empire that has since fallen. The American writer William Faulkner (1897-1962) had a notorious love/hate relationship with the American South, not unlike Derek Walcott's relationship with the English presence in Saint Lucia. In both instances, these places of immense economic and political power ended, doomed to fall like the leaves in autumn. At this point, the speaker begins his contemplation on death that he continues to explore for the rest of the poem, envisioning the spade he spots at the tree line used to bury a human or an animal back during the colonial period.

The third stanza follows the speaker as he continues his tour of the grounds. He calls the white men who used to inhabit the manor “imperious rakes” (Line 21), nodding to imperialism with his choice of vocabulary. As an agent of nature, the river washes away the pain and suffering from this place, reinforcing the notion that colonialism and slavery are opposed to the natural order. If given the opportunity, the natural world will set these injustices right and reveal their inherent ugliness.

As the speaker climbs the wall, he refers to himself in the first person for the first time (“I climbed a wall with the grille ironwork,” Line 23). As he walks the grounds of the ruined estate, the speaker’s identity, too, begins to emerge and materialize. Because the speaker (usually understood to be Walcott himself) has ties to the Africans, the indigenous Caribbean people, and the English colonizers, this setting symbolizes an intersection of all three cultures. The ruins of this great house become an extension of the speaker's identity. The speaker was forged from the trauma of colonization and now finds himself in a period where those colonies are dissolving and falling into ruin.

Even though the ironwork on the wall implies that its intended function was to protect the estate, all it protected its inhabitants from was the guilt of exploitation, slavery, and oppression. But that fancy ironwork could not save the mansion from the ravaging effects of nature and time. Worms and mice have burrowed into the foundation, eating away this great monument to colonial rule and turning it to dust: A metaphor for how the speaker views the inevitable fall of colonialism. The speaker believes the tiny creatures, the rats and the worms—that is, often-overlooked creatures that are considered pests—are the ones that eventually overthrow these massive oppressive institutions.

The reference to Kipling is also of special significance (“What Kipling heard, the death of a great empire,” Line 28). The English poet Rudyard Kipling was an avid imperialist. Many critics argue that he was a jingoist who believed in the white European colonial authority to colonize, enslave, or eradicate indigenous or non-white cultures for the sake of “progress.” Colonial powers often used the Bible and military might as the primary weapons of subjugation. It appears that the speaker is claiming that Kipling's ideologies were based on the fear that these great imperial empires would eventually collapse, a fear that indeed came true.

In the fourth stanza, the speaker’s mind wanders to famous Englishmen known for exploring, piracy, and participating in the slave trade. The speaker seems to be conflicted about how someone could be a murderer and a poet. The speaker takes issue with the idea that because this was a sprawling and affluent estate, it must mean that things were better back then, claiming, “The world's green age then was rotting lime / Whose stench became the charnel galleon's text” (Lines 36-37). The stench of limes is a symbol of the atrocities committed by the British: Their prosperity is based on slavery, their heroes are also villains, and their ships traded human lives like market goods.

Line 38 is the most definitive line of the poem. An end-stopped line, it asserts, “The rot remains with us, the men are gone.” Both physically and metaphorically, all the things that remain from this time are rotting or putrid. Meanwhile, those who suffered or caused the suffering have escaped these consequences. Essentially, men are born and die, but their legacy remains long into the future. Yet, even in this state of disgust and fury, the speaker’s mind drifts to the poetry of John Donne that rekindles the flame in the speaker’s brain. “My eyes burned from the ashen prose of Donne” (Line 41). It is almost as if the speaker cannot help himself as his mind drifts towards English literature. His inclination to use western means of understanding the world betrays his own colonized and marginalized ancestry. It is a great irony that the speaker, who is a product of the violence and oppression of colonization, uses the language and writing of his oppressor to come to terms with his ancestral trauma.

The final stanza opens with the speaker’s rage at the thought that an enslaved person’s remains may lie at the bottom of the lake on the estate. But compassion based on reason creeps into his psyche. The speaker remembers that England was also colonized and ravaged by a foreign power long ago, its people subjugated and oppressed by invading empires. The speaker quotes John Donne's most famous poem, “No Man Is an Island” (1624). In this context, the speaker is saying that no island is truly an island. Like the islands of the Caribbean, England's island was once abused and traumatized by colonialism and turned around to perpetuate that abuse and trauma onto other islands. The speaker and the island do not exist in a vacuum; their relationships with others define them. The speaker cannot help that he recognizes himself in the literature and writing of his colonizers and even finds beauty in what they wrote. It is this irony that seems to divert the speaker's initial rage. It allows him the ability to see the humanity in his oppressor and to finally, against his better judgment, view the long-dead owner of the estate as some version of a friend.