"England and Yesterday": A Book of Short Poems. Louise Imogen Guiney

evenfall, so slow on hills, hath shot

      Far down into the valley’s cold extreme,

      Untimely midnight; spire and roof and stream

      Like fleeing spectres, shudder and are not.

      The Hampstead hollies, from their sylvan plot

      Yet cloudless, lean to watch, as in a dream,

      From chaos climb, with many a hasty gleam,

      London, one moment fallen and forgot.

      Her booths begin to flare; her gases bright

      Prick door and window; street and lane obscure

      Sparkle and swarm with nothing true nor sure,

      Full as a marsh of mist and winking light:

      Heaven thickens over, heaven that cannot cure

      Her tear by day, her fevered smile by night.

VII.

       DOVES.

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      Ah, if man’s boast and man’s advance be vain!

      And yonder bells of Bow, loud-echoing home,

      And the lone Tree, foreknow it, and the Dome,

      That monstrous island of the middle main;

      If each inheritor must sink again

      Under his sires, as falleth where it clomb

      Back on the gone wave the disheartened foam?—

      I crossed Cheapside, and this was in my brain.

      What folly lies in forecasts and in fears!

      Like a wide laughter sweet and opportune,

      Wet from the fount, three hundred doves of Paul’s

      Shook their warm wings, drizzling the golden noon,

      And in their rain-cloud vanished up the walls.

      “God keeps,” I said, “our little flock of years.”

VIII.

       IN THE READING-ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

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      Praised be the moon of books! that doth above

      A world of men, the sunken Past behold,

      And colour spaces else too void and cold,

      To make a very heaven again thereof;

      As when the sun is set behind a grove,

      And faintly unto nether ether rolled,

      All night, his whiter image and his mould

      Grows beautiful with looking on her love.

      Thou, therefore, moon of so divine a ray,

      Lend to our steps both fortitude and light!

      Feebly along a venerable way

      They climb the infinite, or perish quite;

      Nothing are days and deeds to such as they,

      While in this liberal house thy face is bright.

IX.

       SUNDAY CHIMES IN THE CITY.

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      Across the bridge, where in the morning blow

      The wrinkled tide turns homeward, and is fain

      Homeward to drag the black sea-goer’s chain,

      And the long yards by Dowgate dipping low;

      Across dispeopled ways, patient and slow,

      Saint Magnus and Saint Dunstan call in vain:

      From Wren’s forgotten belfries, in the rain,

      Down the blank wharves the dropping octaves go.

      Forbid not these! Though no man heed, they shower

      A subtle beauty on the empty hour,

      From all their dark throats aching and outblown;

      Aye in the prayerless places welcome most,

      Like the last gull that up a naked coast

      Deploys her white and steady wing, alone.