The Full Text of “Cathedral Builders”
The Full Text of “Cathedral Builders”
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“Cathedral Builders” Introduction
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John Ormond wrote "Cathedral Builders" around 1963, after being inspired by a visit to Italy where he saw men singing while building a new cathedral; the poem was published in the journal Poetry Wales in 1965, and later collected in Ormond's book Cathedral Builders and Other Poems (1987). In this poem, the speaker follows a group of cathedral builders over generations of hard work on a single magnificent cathedral. The poem's intimate peek at the builders' ordinary personal lives reminds readers that sublime works emerge from humble, everyday labor.
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“Cathedral Builders” Summary
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The poem describes the labors of the workers who built cathedrals. These men, the speaker says, climbed rickety ladders toward the heavens, lifted heavy pieces of rock, clambered up toward the sky armed with hammers in defiance of gravity, and made stone sacred through their efforts. They raised the great church toward God.
Yet at night, they descended to ordinary lives: dinner and cheap weak beer, bedtime with their not-very-clean wives, fighting, disciplining their children, telling lies, spitting, singing, and going through all the ups and downs of emotion.
And then every day, they returned to their working lives on the ladders. They raised the cathedral so high in the air that they blocked the flight of swallows. As their work went on, they got old and grey and shaky, and less likely even to clamber up to repair a neighbor's roof on a warm evening anymore.
Over the course of their working lives, they saw the cathedral expand and get more and more elaborate. They muttered curses against the fancy guys in charge of the stained glass windows, managed to avoid dying of the Black Plague, got arthritis instead, and finally retired.
They let the next generation of craftsmen finish the spire. Then, on the day of the cathedral's official blessing, they stood in the crowd (way in the back, far from the priests performing the ceremony) and envied the well-fed bishop for his fancy clothing. They squinted up at the cathedral's highest point, and proudly said: "I built that."
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“Cathedral Builders” Themes
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The Value and Honor of Ordinary Work
“Cathedral Builders” celebrates the persistence and humility of the craftsmen who constructed the great cathedrals of medieval Europe, and the many workers like them before and since. Rather than praising the buildings for their glory, the poem exalts the countless unseen hours of work the (often anonymous) builders contributed to their construction. Ordinary lives and ordinary work, this poem suggests, can create lasting and transcendent beauty—and have a great beauty and value of their own.
The poem presents the cathedral builders as hardworking, rooted individuals, craftsmen who take pride in a lifetime of tough and unpretentious work. Their jobs involve intense daily physical labor: balanced on "sketchy ladders," they hoist "hewn rock into heaven," constructing their vast project bit by tiny bit, "every day."
Such tough work takes up their whole working lives. As the poem points out, cathedrals took years to build, even lifetimes: numerous generations of workers would be committed to the job. The poem traces the craftsmen's repetitive lives as they return home to their “suppers and small beer" and engage in petty grievances and squabbles, then head right back out to their work again in the morning. These are ordinary people dedicating themselves fully to their ordinary work.
But it's through this kind of patient, unglamorous, mundane labor, the poem suggests, that superhuman feats can be achieved. Through their efforts to build a massive, glorious cathedral, the workers are ultimately able to raise up “God’s house to meet Him”— to approach heaven! This is not just lofty language; the builders’ craft, blood, sweat, and tears produces what they truly believe to be the house of God (and what anyone, regardless of their religious faith, might see as a transcendent, lasting work of art and architecture).
Simple lives and simple work, the poem thus suggests, can be uniquely spiritually satisfying. In their later years, the builders are able to look upon the cathedral with a sense of pride and ownership. Even though they may not have many material comforts (unlike the wealthy “fat bishop” in his “warm boots”) they have access to something far more important. Their legacy is long-lasting, and their efforts are reflected in the glory of the building they produced. The poem suggests that, even if it’s not particularly glamorous, and even if it's often not recognized or celebrated, ordinary work is a noble and ennobling thing—and can achieve transcendent results.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-20
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Cathedral Builders”
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Lines 1-4
They climbed on ...
... to meet him,In the first stanza of "Cathedral Builders", the speaker sets the stage for the poem by describing the work those titular cathedral builders do. These medieval laborers work at a job that unites hard physical toil with divine ambitions. "Hoist[ing] hewn rock into heaven," "deif[ying] stone," the cathedral builders make something sacred and airy out of something heavy, inert, and physical.
These opening lines are rich in vivid imagery that establishes the danger of these men's jobs and the precarious conditions in which they work. They climb "sketchy ladders," for example, ladders that might not be entirely stable or safe—an image that emphasizes their courage and determination.
These lines also make heavy use of figurative language. These men aren't literally "inhabit[ing] the sky with hammers" or raising "God's house to meet him!" Rather, these metaphors suggest, these men are able to defy the physical limitations of the world around them: through their work, they are capable of elevating the materials they are working with by making the very stone sacred.
This, then, will be a poem about the holy arising from hard daily work, a celebration of the many anonymous laborers who build enduring works of art. In keeping with these themes, the poem is written in quatrains (four-line stanzas) of rough iambic pentameter (lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "Deci- | ded it | was time | to give | it up"). This predictable, square, but rough-around-the-edges form suits the poem's heroes: the anonymous and unpretentious builders who perform remarkable feats.
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Lines 5-8
And came down ...
... happy, or unhappy, -
Lines 9-12
And every day ...
... a fine evening, -
Lines 13-16
Saw naves sprout ...
... give it up, -
Lines 17-20
To leave the ...
... bloody did that."
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“Cathedral Builders” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Juxtaposition
"Cathedral Builders" is all about contrasts. The poem runs on a central juxtaposition between ordinary people and the extraordinary things they can create.
Right from the first stanza, the speaker juxtaposes the builders' "sketchy ladders"—their tools, so basic that they're nearly falling apart—against their holy destination: they're climbing "towards God," lifting "hewn rock into heaven." These are pretty amazing feats made possible by the simplest of equipment!
The second stanza, which reveals the boring, unglamorous truths of the builders' home lives, further highlights the gulf between the workers' product (a beautiful, transcendent cathedral) and their personal experiences. They "lay with their smelly wives," enjoy simple "suppers and small beer," and, during the day, return to their work: accomplishing massively impressive feats of engineering in the service of divinity and art. By highlighting all of these stark contrasts, the speaker makes it clear that the sacred and the everyday exist side by side.
The speaker also juxtaposes the humble and the snooty, underscoring the builders' working-class pride. The cathedral builders, for instance, are jealous of the "loud fancy glaziers" "for their luck," a line that reminds readers that the stone-hewing builders themselves don't have the most glamorous job, even among their fellow workers. The poem's last scene, which is set at the dedication ceremony for the completed cathedral, provides another angle on this idea. It illustrates the arrangement of different classes of people in the crowd: the church elites in their fancy "vestments" (religious garments)—guys who didn't directly participate in the cathedral's building process at all—are given priority at the front while the builders stand in the back.
Despite the fact that the builders may be undervalued in society, they're not in this poem. The speaker never stops emphasizing the fact that humble people are responsible for creating the world's most incredible structures.
Where juxtaposition appears in the poem:- Lines 1-12
- Lines 10-11
- Lines 11-12
- Line 13
- Line 14
- Lines 17-19
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Imagery
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Metonymy
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Metaphor
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"Cathedral Builders" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Pulley
- Winch
- Deified
- Small beer
- Cuffed
- Naves
- Clerestories
- Glaziers
- Rheumatism
- Vestments
- Consecration
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(Location in poem: Line 2: “with winch and pulley hoisted hewn rock into heaven”)
A suspended wheel around which a rope runs, used (like a winch) to lift heavy objects.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Cathedral Builders”
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Form
The 20 lines of "Cathedral Builders" are separated into five quatrains (or four-line stanzas). Written in a rough, shaggy iambic pentameter (that is, lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "Deci- | ded it | was time | to give | it up") and without a consistent rhyme scheme, the poem feels simple, colloquial, and funny. Its regular, consistent form mirrors the lives of the workers it describes. Every day and night, the cathedral builders do the same humble things over and over again. But as the poem points out, humble daily labor can create glorious artworks.
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Meter
This poem is written in blank verse—that is, unrhymed iambic pentameter. That means that its lines each use five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's how that sounds in line 16:
Deci- | ded it | was time | to give | it up,
But the poem doesn't stick too rigorously to this meter. Instead, it bounces around, as rough and informal as the cathedral builders' voices. For instance, listen to the difference in line 14:
Cursed the | loud fan- | cy gla- | ziers for | their luck,
There are still five beats in this line, but they break that pulsing iambic rhythm—a fitting effect in a line describing curses!
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Rhyme Scheme
Although this poem has a regular stanza structure, it doesn't use a rhyme scheme. The lack of rhyme contributes to the poem's general informality—it's about ordinary people, after all, so it's written in a voice that isn't too fancy, literary, or complex. There are a few instances of slant rhyme, like the chime between the words "wives" and "lied" in the second stanza, but they just give the poem a touch of musicality.
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“Cathedral Builders” Speaker
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The speaker in this poem is an anonymous observer who—while sympathetic towards the cathedral builders—stands apart from them. Like a historian, the speaker follows generations of builders throughout their lives, from their youth to their old age. But unlike a historian, this speaker seems to have access to the builders' intimate moments over the course of years and years, from their evenings in bed with their "smelly wives" to their pride at seeing the great cathedral on the day of its consecration. The speaker's observations capture the texture of ordinary life, making the point that great works of art emerge from the everyday.
Readers might hear some of John Ormond's own voice in this speaker's. While on vacation in Italy, Ormond passed by a cathedral under construction and heard its builders singing; this poem is his celebration of that moment, and of all the unsung workers who labor to create beauty.
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“Cathedral Builders” Setting
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"Cathedral Builders" follows generations of workers as they build a medieval cathedral in some unnamed European city. (The builders' use of British slang—"I bloody did that"—might lead readers to guess that the poem takes place in Ormond's native UK.) Although much of the poem is set in the construction site itself (following the workers as they clamber on the cathedral's ladders and scaffolding) the poem also looks into the builders' homes (where they eat humble "suppers," drink "small beer," and go to bed with their comically "smelly wives"), juxtaposing deeply ordinary daily lives with the creation of an awe-inspiring sacred building. At the end of the poem, readers get to look in on the completed cathedral's "consecration," its official blessing. These fluid changes between settings allow the poem to follow the cathedral's development—and, of course, the cathedral builders' lives—over decades.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Cathedral Builders”
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Literary Context
John Ormond (1923-1990) was a Welsh writer and filmmaker. The son of a shoemaker, he grew up in the same kind of unpretentious working-class world he depicts in this poem (albeit numerous centuries later), and had a lifelong respect for craftsmen and builders.
Ormond wrote "Cathedral Builders" after an extended struggle with writer's block. On a 1963 trip to Italy, he was finally inspired by the sight of contemporary builders singing as they worked on a construction site. This wry but sincere poem's thoughts on life, work, and the passage of time align it with the broader tendencies of poetry in the mid to late 20th century.
Ormond wrote much of his poetry in the years after World War II, a time marked by significant social and cultural changes as the UK (and the wider world) reckoned with the collapse of pre-war security and optimism. In the realm of poetry, this era saw a move towards more personal and reflective styles, often characterized by a focus on individual experiences and observations (as in the poetry of Sylvia Plath). Ormond's gently funny reflections on class and culture also align him with poets like Sir John Betjeman, another witty commentator on British life.
Historical Context
Although the poem doesn't provide a specific historical setting or location in time, readers can guess that it takes place in Europe during the Middle Ages, the heyday of cathedral-building (though, of course, that practice spanned centuries and extends to the present day, as visitors to the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona will know!). The construction of cathedrals was a major undertaking involving the collective effort of whole communities over generations. The poem's focus on the builders' everyday lives and their gradual aging and retirement pays homage to these legacies of dedicated, often anonymous work.
This poem's tongue-in-cheek but celebratory portrait of the builders' lives was also informed by Ormond's own world and experiences. In the years after World War II, British society began to reckon in new ways with its class system. Working people began to demand better wages and better treatment, and a broader sense of the value of manual labor blossomed. Ormond's vision of the cathedral builders is at once comically medieval (as in the case of the builders' "smelly wives," whose bathwater presumably gets hauled up from sludgy communal wells) and timeless; the men's pride in the cathedral is a reminder that craftsmanship is a sturdy and ancient human value.
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More “Cathedral Builders” Resources
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External Resources
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A Brief Biography — Learn more about John Ormond.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
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Cathedral Building — Read a short explanation of how cathedrals were built. As this poem observes, a cathedral was a titanic project that might take several generations to complete!
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Ormond in a Welsh Context — Read a summary of John Ormond's contributions to Welsh culture.
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Video Review of Ormond's Collected Poems — Watch a brief review by Ashley Owen of John Ormond: Collected Poems (produced by the New Welsh Review multimedia program).
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