I don’t think there was any immediate catalyst for this stanza, as far as date or event were concerned. In the UK, as elsewhere, there just seemed to be so few redeeming features, no 5th cavalry rescue , no clearing of the mist, no light of sanity breaking through. The thought that we make a world that reflects the chaos of our own natures is neither new nor original.
Yet whatever dreadful things we do and make, the plain and simple bliss of being still waits in ambush.