A Lay of Civilisation; or, London

Prologue

City of light and shadow, height and deep.
Yawning abysm sundering rich and poor !
One upon velvet pile or marble floor
Feasts, while another starves, whom even sleep
Flieth as God-abandoned ; children weep
Around their mother; at the rich man's door
She cursing God and man dies: ye who keep
High festival with morning, temple, tower,
Broad palace, rather in congenial night
Avoid ashamed the level eyes of light !
Cower hidden ! royal river in your pride,
With world-wealth mantling on your stately
Undkr awakening woods I heard the birds
With no reserve unbosom all their joy :
Even as a beam reveals the limpid deep
Of a pure pool, sweet song revealed their heart,
A shadowless illimitable bliss
Of innocent love; the joy of wakening woods
Welled over in soft frills of fairy leaves.
Glossy and tender flakelets of green light.
Infolded mutually ; fair forest aisles
Dawn to leaf-laughter silent and serene ;
One would surmise the new-born delicate leaves
Thronged to the ends of all the twigs to hear
Innumerable bird-song, called from sleep
By many a plumed Orpheus ; their blithe notes
Weave webs of music multitudinous,
Even as a leafing tracery of stems tide, , .

Steal muffled in deep gloom ! slow bells be i 'i''i '"lyard bronze embroiders the blue air
tolled ! j It seems afar one smoke above the silver
Thou on the proud dome, glistering cross of gold,
Thy life is changed to hard death bought and sold.
Art thou the hilt of a death-drinking sword
Plunged in Earth's heart by some infernal
Lord?
Brethren of Him who fainted on the wood,
\Vhat help is found in yon devouring rood ?

What help? what hope? a sceptred Woman bows
Under a lowly lintel, and none knows ;
Humbly she helpeth bitter loathly need,
Beareth the burden, dons the lowly weed.
Babes the high honour of their trust confer
Upon this royal lady, and by her
Perchance the city may be saved from fire,
That lurid lurks, and threats to make it one red funeral pyre I
Of birchen boles ; beneath, the English flower,
The flower so dear to English hearts, nor least
When we abide among the sunnier blooms
Of alien lands, the pure and pale primrose,
(fathers in sisterhoods upon the breast
Of greening earth, her still abiding smiles
Fair with assurance of humility.
And when their pale cool flame is far efiused.
Earth in her lowlihood may vie with Heaven,
With Heaven, what time the dawning East conceives
A half-awakened light hued like the flower.

Down a green dale I heard some children roam.
Merrily laughing by a rivulet ;
Then a hawk hovered, and sweet songs were hushed
In the grove under.
All the scene grew dim,
i Appeared to melt before mine eyes, and change.
I heard, and heard not, for the land dissolved,
And clouding slowly, lo ! another sound,
Akin to the sea-sound, was in mine ears,
Resembling some huge roar of a far furnace,
Whose sullen flare through wallowing mists impure
Burned like the fire-flush from those realms of Dis
In that deep-mouthed verse of the Mantuan.
Huge murmur from the throat of Babylon !
Illimitable leagues of piles confused,
Dome, tower, and steeple, stately palaces.
Islanded in a welter of dim street ;
Mean habitations, warrens of dun life,
Tortuous, swarming ; sullied, pale, cramped life,
With, in the midst, a large imperial River,
Turl)id and troubled, the town's artery.
Spanned by tumultuous l)ridges ; o'er them clang
Steam-dragon, chariot, horse, and laden wain.
With hurrying people of the human hive ;
Whose shores are thronged with warehouse, opulent wharf,
Whose turbulent tide u[)buoyeth bark and barge,
Throbbing, foam-trailing steamer, russet sail.
And stately ships from far sea-sundered lands.
But over all a brown Plutonian gloom
Of murk air dismal and defiled, the breath
Of our so monstrous town — her visible sin.
And weight of wan woe, l)lotting out sweet heaven !
Behold the River I a guilt-laden ghost,
How he hurries all unlingering below,
Away, away, through horror of deep night.
Pale with the guilty secret of the city !
Like that sin-burdened victim, driven forth
In Israel to the wilds, ashamed Thames
Rolls headlong, tarries nor to look, nor listen,
Hastens lo hide himself in the great Deep,
There to confide, unbosom, bury there.
The tomb, the womb, the unfathomed otherworld.
Absolving and absorbing Mother (Jcean,
The ineffaljle oppression at iiis heart,
The horror of unutterable wrong !
How changed, O Thames ! from in thine earlier hour
Of child-like dallying among reeds and lilies.
White swans, and flowers, and boats of lingering lovers.
By Marlow, Maidenhead, or Cliveden Grove !

But darkness deepens : by the parapet
Of that great platform which embanks the tide.
While sudden lights leap to assuage the gloom,
Wavering on the water, and loud trains
Turn cloudy fiery serpents on the bridge,
I note the faded features of a girl.
Who clasps a pining infant to her breast,
And my heart, gazing into that wan face,
Named her Despair ; no other name she bore
Surely among the angels, or the fiends,
Whose hate environs earth : she mounts the wall ;
Springs, and two lives have vanished in the void !

Happy birds fluting in the leafy woods,
And children playing by the rivulet !

Hard by, the glare and Babel -roar, where men
With women drink fire of forgetfulness.
Flying from ash-pale spectres of dim life
Into the burning bosom of mad fiends —
Hard by, within the gloom of the low lane,
Else empty, slouches a dun-vestured form
Of one who peers, like some gaunt beast of prey,
Yonder upon the pavement ; for he deems
He sees within the tract of lamplit stone
A morsel of soiled food, fallen casually
From Plenty satiated ; pouncing on it,
He ravenously feeds ; but one who passed
Bestows a coin within the skeleton claw
Of him, who murmurs some faint sound of

And then, himself unseen, the benefactor
Saw the man kneel bare-headed on the flags,
And lift clasped hands of gratitude to G(jd.
It is not far to where the lordly street
Hath wares luxuriant myriad-fold displayed
Behind illumined panes ; the hurrying throngs
Tramp with their broken talk ; they whirl on wheels,
Soft-raimented, gems flashing from white shoulders,
Or swarm from forth the stately spectacle,
Embathed in yellow lustre of the lamps.

It is a gala-night ; they laugh, they dance,
In perflimed chamber youth low whispers love;
At high doors lounge the sumptuous servingmen ;
While glowing globes of emerald or ruby
Adorn, disposed with manifold design.
Each ample thoroughfare ; the crimson hangs
From all high windows; launched from every steeple
Roll blazoned banners; floods of light beneath
Hail floods of sound aloft delirious,
Pealed from wild reeling bells in dome and tower ;
For some imperial pageantry hath passed,
With blare of scarlet, festival and pomp
Of martial music, horse-tramp, and clanked sabre :
Our arms perchance have triumphed on far fields ;
Or it may be the birthday of a king.
And yet my sombre heart reverts to him
Who snatched that offal from the pavement, sees
White retrograded faces of the crowd,
The outraged, foundered womanhood of towns :
Cold women huddling on the stately stairs,
Who cower in shadow with their babes, till one
Bids them begone ; there is no room for them.

And who is here? a hunger-withered girl.
In grip of some black myrmidon of law.
Her crime, I pray you ? She hath stolen a flower
From a rich lord's iui measurable land.
Her mother, poor and bedridden, so longed
To see and smell a flower : " I took it for her ;
She has no friend, sir, very little food."
Tht girl low weeps; the mother waits her child.
Then was I taken through some noisome lanes,
Among ill faces bleared, unhumanised.
Like hideous apparitions from the tomb.
That hoarsely chafiered by lit market-stalls,
Into a dwelling, meanest of the mean,
Where a young child lay weeping ; crippled frame,
.\nd hopeless face told plainly of one refused
Bodily sustenance, untended, maimed,
Scarred with habitual blows ; while cruel cold
Looks, and harsh words have laid waste her young life.
A man weak-visaged cowered before a woman
Inflamed with drink, and choler — father, mother.
Men named the pair — and save for reeking rags
Upon the floor, a broken chair, some shards
Of littered food, the filthy room was bare !
But pale Death looked with pity on the child. . . .
. . . In a vault hard by of some deserted house
There lies the body of a murdered girl.
None knowing, save night-hearted murderers ;
Unowned, unwept by any man, or woman
In this confused, loud-battling multitude.

Is there indeed no more than doth appear?
An outraged and extinguished human soul.
Four blank dead walls, a silent senseless night —
Senseless and silent, save for our loud ears —
Around the ruin of what seemed a child ?
Foul insult hath been proffered here to Man !
In all yon vain expanse of impotent worlds,
May none be found to avenge, or make amends ?
Nay ! if there are no Presences unseen
By mortals, unbelievable by sense,
Who have the child in charge, who bore her home.
Then from this dead-alive mad charnel-dance
Of earth let us depart, where all most wise,
Kind and heroic souls may not avail
To make our life endurable, though they.
With their poor lowly cups of cool clear water,
In this despair, and dearth, and dissonance,
Rendering fair Love palpable by loving,
Be the sole salt of our dark world's corruption.

Happy birds fluting in the leafy woods,
And children playing by the rivulet !

Next into neighbouring tenements I came,
Where hideous Lust with venal Force conspired
To outrage fair and feeble innocence,
By parents sold to ruin for base coin, . . .
. . . Then a voice spake : "Consider where you are I "
And sore amazed, I found me in a church ;
But the voice said : " Lo ! here they do as there ! "
Here well-attired smooth dames and cavaliers
Assisted, while bland mother and smug sire
Delivered their young maiden to a lord
Of broad rich acres, and deep-dyed ill-fame,
Plague-dabbled ermine, and smirched coronet;
Her a demure priest, silver syllabled.
Profaning holiest word and ordinance,
Offered before the altar to low gods
Of Pelf, Position, Power. The sires of old,
Jephthah and Agamemnon, immolated.
Weeping, fair daughters for the common weal,
And those pure virgins bowed the patient head,
Young victims aureoled with martyr fire ;
But these, degenerate, degrade their child.
Starved on base offal-maxims of the world,
Yea, prostitute her heart to infamy,
Hunting their hollow bubbles of ill greed !
Yonder, for guerdon of a lifelong toil.
That heeds no hunger of the infinite soul,
Faint parents watch their little ones devoured
By famine ; for the scanty wage,
That serves for summer shelter, fails to shield
From searching winter blasts of accident.
Old age, or illness ; then the poor must beg.
Or steal, or starve, and watch their children die.

But are not indignation, and deep ruth,
Baffled recoil, loud passionate appeal
From earth's confusion to a starry sphere
Of holier Order, mirrored in the soul.
Faint and aloof, are they not very God ?
More than ill-breathing nightmares, and dull coils
Of gorged contentment, or the infinite Void,
Thronged with fair semblance? Yea, by right divine.
These are but slaves, and those commanding kings ;
They travail till the God be formed in man ;
Yea, realms of rapine, limbos, are in labour,
Till very God be born within their womb.
The Soul compels rude rebels of the night,
Passions, Ambitions, Evil aim, Denial,
To hew wood and draw water for Her need ;
All kingdoms crowned Her in the Heavens of old;
Hers are the glory, and predominant power !
O'er you lemures, vampires, and grim ghouls.
The tranquil Queen moves, ruling turbulent tides
Of human tempest, and the outer deep
Of your wild, heaving, dark dominion.
Infernal empires, billowing in gloom,
Altho' you rise athwart the calm pale orb,
Foamingly threatening her soft sweet face,
Ye feel the mild monitions of her eye !
And Faith hath power to compass her own
Vision,
Herself the fair fruit come to birth in us.
Earliest green point of the flower to be.

Idlers indifferent, prosperous, full-fed,
On well-worn usage easefully reclined
In vasty mansion ; jostlers for more gold.
Or place, or power, in senate, change, and church.
Immersed in worship, sport, or spectacle,
Methought I visited ; poor homeless folk
Cowering unclothed by temple- porch and palace.
With pining babes half-hidden in their rags,
While painted harlots flaunt their own pollution,
And forms more formidable prowl ; they skulk,
Desperate, plotting cruel desperate deeds
For private greed, or violent overthrow
Of that immense, hoar, consecrated Pile,
Where the jammed People standing scarce may breathe,

Wide-mouthed aware of pomp and priest and king.
Then I looked stifling up to the earth-pall ;
A death-shroud, one contamination, wrapped
Round human plague, thick-woven of sin and sorrow !

Yet there be wafts of heavenlier effluence
From the ten righteous Abraham desired.
For Human Love moves in the lazar-house
Of our poor planet, gentle minister.
The cloudy pall moves, lifting from the city ;
Sun gleams through rents in it on her thronged life,
On tower and temple, and the lordly river.

Lo ! little children playing on the green,
Or noisome alley, changed to paradise
By young enchantments of fresh fantasy ;
In airy school they learn, with happy faces:
There note the humanising spectacle.
Grave for life-lore, and for amusement gay :
While kindly Opulence with aching Need
Shares verier wealth than gold, the gentle lady.
Whom we on earth name Mercy, bends to heal
A mortal Pain, who turns to kiss Her shadow.
And hear sweet Music hovering like a dove
Over the weary! Yet are all but gleams
In lurid fume that suffocates the sun?
This huge black whirlpool of the city sucks,
And swallows, and encroaches evermore
On vernal field, pure air, and wholesome heaven —
A vast dim province, ever under cloud,
O'er whose immeasurable unloveliness
His own foul breath broods sinister, like Fate.
And yet what wealth of wisdom, and rich lore,
Swift lightnings of keen-edged enccjuntering wit,
Fair tribute of all periods, all lands.
Wide walls alive with hues of genius!
Our pale West here meets mellow Orient,
Flowing with warm-hucd raiment, redolent
Of perfume, eyed witii slow luxurious fire.
All realms send sons, elect ambassadors.
For interchange of many-moulded mind.

And rarely, deep indrawn from the mad whirl
Of dissonant motion round me, face to face,
'Mid comelier architecture than our own,
I find me with the venerable shades,
Mankind consents to honour — legislator.
Iconoclast, bard, warrior, king, queen :
Richard the Lion, Alfred, the Black Prince,
That armoured conqueror of Agincourt,
And She who gained a nobler victory'.
By Calais, over a revengeful heart.
True queen, true woman, Mercy's minister ;
Mailed knight, with baron proud from
Runnymede,
Dan Chaucer, Wyclif, Cromwell, Hampden,
Charles.
There speeds boy Chatterton, elate with hope,
There droops, pale, sullen, near the agony I
Shakespeare, the human ; Milton, oceantoned ;
Ariel Shelley ; Byron, the volcano ;
Our voice of hills and lakes ; the luminous-eyed
Young Greek, astray in our dim century!

Beyond the Saxon, Norman, Roman town
(For each whelms, founds itself on what foreran ;
So all lie deep-entombed beneath the stones).
Where London roars, there slept the lonely wild.
Where London roars, the lonely wild will sleep.
Ourselves are founded on the lives before.
Founding the future ; will the world grow wise
With all the long-accumulating years?

A train sped on a road banked o'er the lanes.
And courts ignoble of our monstrous Fast ;
Wherefrom glad children, laden with spring flowers.
Fluttered white kerchiefs cheering ; at a window
Of (yne of those poor dwellings a pale child
Waved his lean arm responsive; his hurrah
Was dr<nvned in theirs ; they saw not the wan smile

Of that seven-year-old cripple ; in a cot.
That seemed an orange-case disused, he lay,
Propped high for him to see the bright live trains
Rush past with human freight ; an ancient dame
Tended the child, his grandmother ; they two
Lived ever here ; the boy knew no green fields ;
Through the long days, and late into the nights
(When her frail charge lay peacefully in sleep.
And when to wakeful voyagers by rail
The shadow of the love-invented cot
On the illumined blind appeared to be
That of a little coffin ; ah ! great Love!
Wilt thou soon lay the lad in such a cot ?)
The old woman plied her scissors and her needle
For a poor pittance ; one rich offering
Of sweet burned incense, all her selfless soul
Is offered up to Heaven for the child.
The dame hath taught her helpless one to read,
Buying him Noah's ark and picture-book,
And she hath helped him order on the floor
A mimic park with turfs from a lark's cage.
Wherein are planted perpendicular
Thin sticks of deal, their foliage svoolly shreds
From old frayed borders of the grandame's gown;
A baking-dish contains the mimic lake,
And, swimming there, a dinted bird, once white."

These are unbeautiful ; the neighbouring scene
Affronts our every sense ; Plague, Famine lurk
With heads obscene, with sly lack-lustre eyes,
Couching at every threshold motionless.
Vet, here, yea, here, not where the larlc pours joy.
Evermore pouring ecstasies in air
Of rapturous blue, nor where a throstle wafts
His incense of clear notes upon the breeze,
O'erquavered by soft shadows of young leaves ;
Nor where, with agelong rapture, holy men
Dream swooning visions in Himalayan snows —
Not there, but here I find me at Heaven's gate,
Open to let the eternal Sun shine through
On our sad Earth ; fair angels coitie and go
In this poor hovel, for Queen Love lives here.
With dear handmaidens. Patience, Tenderness,
And her fair warrior-knight, young Fortitude.
Behold ! how many graceless roofs and walls
Are glowing with a rarer, heavenlier grace
From martyr-deaths, and lowly hero lives !

A boy lay suffering in hospital,
His members crushed and mangled by a wain,
Whose wheels passed o'er him playing in the street.
Scarce can he bear the thought that he must die.
His mother's darling ; she is kneeling near.
Later the father came — the man well loved
His little son, but he was harsh to her,
Paying her patient drudgery with blows.
" My lad, I cannot, will not part with thee ! "
By the white bed he sobbed, to whom the child :
" Father, they tell me I must leave you both ;
I feel it very hard, but I shall die
Content, I think, if thou wilt promise me
One thing before I go " — to whom the sire :
" Yes, if it lie within my power, lad!"
' Promise thou never wilt ill-use, or strike.
Or be unkind to mother when I'm gone ! "
The man did promise, faltering, and then
Peace passing understanding, like still light.
Illumined the pale face of him who died.

A widow woman nursed her ingrate son
In his long illness to the final hour,
With inextinguishable tenderness,
He little heeding, snatching as a due
Love's gracious offices, a graceless churl ;
She had bestowed on him from birth till now
Through all the helpless years of his great need.
Freely her innermost, her sacred self,
And later fair solicitudes of love
Still proffered ; but, a pauper of the heart,
A boor in spirit, he had thrown from him
The pure celestial jewel of high heaven,
Which is the suljstance of the throne of God.
Rarely he brought his earnings home to her.
Squandering them on transitory sense ;
But her clear love welled on perennial,
Until the man died ; then the pillow soft,
Whereof she had despoiled herself for him.
Was placed by her beneath the wasted corse
Within the coffin, for she said to one,
" I know well that he will not want it now
Under his thin back, yet, sir, I shall feel it ;
I could not bear to rest on it to-night,
Knowing him laid upon the cold hard wood.
And he so tired, worn to skin and bone I "
She did not long survive the man, but when
She went, her heart still turned to serving
John.
And surely Love will work deliverance
In Love's own time, for time belongs to Love.

Down-trodden woman, mother, mistress, wife,
Monotonously toiling for his weal.
Who slays you. swift or slowly, ye would shield
Him whose vile blows deform you ; now I see
In you my God, who died upon the Cross,
I hear the seraphs choiring in your heart !
Barren the bowers of Elysium ;
Our very God is born from human woe !
Vea, golden fruit of the Hesperides.
A hundred-headed, tumult-breathing Beast,
A dragon-chaos guards ; the Hero dares !
Fearlessly storms he the fell forest-hold.
Crags lapped in fire, or never might he find
And kiss Brunhild in her enchanted sleep,
Awakening the maid to nuptial love.
Nor was the Volsung found invulnerable
Until he bathed him in the monster's blood,
WTiom erst he braved with his good brand, and slew.
Vea, Sirius, excelling our great Sun
Twofold in splendour, Sirius the fair.
How were his mighty drift imaginable.
Or lordly functions in the hierarchy
Of all Sun-gods, and their obedient worlds,
Or offices for man, without the dark
Stupendous Brother-orb invisible.
From age to age sublime companion?

And blest are ye, dark heralds of new dawn.
Rebels, who beard the tyrant, for all souls
Claiming free-i;rowth to their own height, with form
Predestinated from eternity.
So Pride, thrust back within the boundary,
May learn at length to recognise the Body,
Whereof we are but functioned cells, for fear
He perish isolated in the cold.
So thunders Revolution ! Hail ! unnamed,'*
Unconsecrate Melchizedek, thou priest
Of the Most High God, though thou know
Him not,
Vea, and blasphemest idols we adore,
Who have usurped in Temples His great
Name ;
Without or sire, or mother, or descent.
Never enrolled among the ranks of men,
Among the living of thy land unknown.
So best to serve the people of thy love,
Voung martyr, self-immured in a rank prison.
That saps the vitals, withers the rose-bloom !
There also fade thy fellows, delicate girls,
Who fondle Death with desperate white hand,
And with gay smile salute Annihilation,
Enamoured of one flame-eyed lover. Him
They serve with indefatigable joy.
Whose lofty name is Martyrdom for Man I
Howe'er insane or violent your aim,
Deniers of our Lord, I worship Him
Alive in you, Knights-errant of the Poor,
Whom His decrepit Church adores, but dead.

And yet reserve some reverence for ranks
Of men, who guard with dedicated lives
Our holy, our inalienable Past,
Their heads bowed low before that ancient throne
Of long-descended hoar Authority !
These have mine honour also, for I know
That not one cause, but rival camps in arms
Hold Sons of Belial, and true friends of
God;
While from loud shocks of terrible crossed steel
Leaps the live flame that ministers to man. , . .

... A stately palace, whose immense demesne
Of vivid verdure is ablaze with bloom,
Whose halls are animate with radiant forms
Of picturing genius, luxuriant
With wealth of loom, and mine, art-elevate,
And sacred from the hopeless hands of toil.
The windows of the lordly pile behold
A silver water ; o'er wide miles of park
Fair antlered deer browse in the fragrant fern,
Under huge oaks, whose agelong reverie,
And leaiy secrecies of summer sound
Hold more than meeteth mortal ear and eye.
But all is hushed now, save for weird, far calls
Of owls, and plashing fountain ; the lithe forms
Of statues on the terrace in the moon
Are not so beautiful as living maid
And youth, who linger under whispering leaves
And by the flowery frondage ; her light garb
Seems airy foam, a woof of silken sheen,
And delicate lace about her warm white throat.
Each leans to each with deep and dewy eyes :
The wedding-day is near ; I hear low words :
" Was ever happiness like ours? the clock,
Silverly chiming from the ivied tower,
Tells how the bells will peal full soon ; come death,
We shall have lived, my darling, we have lived ! "

Then all was blurred ; the happy vision faded,
As if the potion of slow-poisoning Time
Were concentrated in one murderous draught,
Of power to wither suddenly ; I hear
Again the troubled surge of London town.

I pass the teeming dens where herds of men.
Shamefully heaped promiscuous, unshamed.
Are thrust by their stern gaoler. Poverty,
With scorn refused the luxury of Virtue.
The vision taketh small account of Time,
For Time is creature of the mind that knows,
Varying with it ; what was shown me now ?
In a confined low garret droops a maid.
Wearily sewing with red eyes, and pale,
A withering flower, reft of air and light ;
But she is very beautiful ; her face
And form are moulded for young joy of love,
Tho' the rare undulation and rich lines
Be thwarted by a niggard nourishment,
And the worn faded raiment be no mate
For her moon-fair imperial loveliness.
Deftly her needle plies ; the long night wears ;
Orion solemn passeth, and hath rest ;
The weary girl may sleep not : lol she holds
A delicate sheeny fabric as of foam,
A virginal rich raiment ; surely this
Should be the very garment I beheld
Enhance the beauty of the soft betrothed
That summer evening in the calm domain,
And easeful pleasaunce of prosperity.
Whose feet are on the stair ? she starts ; she quivers,
Rose-colouring ; the dewy, lustrous eyes
Flash luminous, the while she mutters low,
' ' He comes : I can no more : I wrestled long I
Why doom my prisoned youth to wither here,
Shut from all sweet fruition of my years ?
How have I earned this ? Honourable toil
Is ever paid here with a long dull death ;
And I will live ! I will be rich like her !
And wear fine jewelled clothing, ay, be loved.
Adored, enjoy my life before I die !
Ah ! mother, pardon ! if thou wert but here ! "
A knock : one enters : he displays rare gems.
Whose lustre blinds the miserable den :
He wraps her round with passionate fierce fire;
Delicious flame consumes her ; eagerly.
Headlong she plunges down the abyss of ruin.

Sisters, and brothers, ye who name the
Christ,
How may ye suffer such foul shame to be?
We would be leisured, good, accomplished, wise,
Charming, and charitalile ; the rank soil
That breeds the exotic is a brother's blood !
Inevitable ills arraign the Heavens :
Some wrongs accuse mankind ; we challenge them.

From where our patriot sailor on his column
Stands, with the lion of England at his feet,
Among the fountains, looking toward the towers,
The banded towers of Westminster, beyond
Green trees, by Thames, to Lambeth, London roars
Eastward, loud leagues of palaces for men
Who toil to accumulate, around the dome,
Where warrior Wellington by Nelson sleeps.
Flows to four towers, phantoms of the past,
In whose dread dungeons linger shadowy sighs
From ruined lives of all the slow sad years ;
On, where the navies largesse of world-wealth
Lavish on quays vociferous (yet we
Pine ever ailing, surfeited, unfed),
By that great arsenal of war-weapons,
Forged with tremendous clangour, to God's sea.

And westward, London roars round congregated
Palaces, where men squander. Of the crowds
Our eyes encounter, some are sorrowful.
Long uncompanioned of sweet Hope, the bride.
Withering mournful ; some are jubilant.
Sunny and strong with youth, or strenuous.
Of glad demeanour ; listless, languid these ;
But most are weary in this Babylon,
Whether men idle, or contend for bubbles ;
The happiest are they who minister.
Beyond these regions, reaches of dim street,
A sullen labyrinth of ill-omened hovels :
Ah ! dull, grey, grovelling populations, ye
That are rank human soil, wherein we force
Our poor pale virtues, and our venomous sins
Of gorgeous growth, our proxy-piety,
Official food, that yields no sustenance.
But chokes with outworn fantasy free life.
What hooe, O people ? Red convulsive strife
With lho..e whom circumstance made masters, then
Brief moaning silence under other lords ?
And yet what ask ye? Sick men from a feast
Rise loathing ; health can relish his poor crust.
The pure soul hath her panoply of light,
In direst dungeon radiating heaven ;
Ensphered in her own atmosphere of joy
Sees no deformity; while tyrants tread
Their marble halls, to find them torturechambers ;
A graceless prison all his fair demesne
To some illiberal, illustrious fool.
Perchance ye. ground to powder in God's mill.
May serve more than who sleep in delicate death.
With rarest incense in the mummy-fold.

O whirling wheels ! O throngs of murmuring men !
Where is the goal of infinite endeavour ?
And where your haven, O ye fleeting faces ?
High Westminster, like some tall ghostly father
Of olden time, stands wildered, while for crowds
Of modern men, swift eddying at his feet.
His reverend grandeur void of consolation
Broods ; for no warriors, consecrated kings.
Kings who were crowned here through the centuries.
Nor bard, nor saint, emblazoned on the pane.
Canopied under marble in the aisle.
Whose shadowy memories haunt his heart, may help.
These are unsceptred ; time trends otherwhere ;
Their slumber is by channels long deserted !
His hoary towers, with melancholy eyes,
Dream in their own world, impotent for ours ;
Or if he speak, who may interpret now?
He wakes in vain, who slept for centuries,
For he awakens in some alien world.

Doth Hope inhabit, then, the sister-pile.
Whose stately height hath grown to overshadow
That hoarv minster ? This in sooth avails.
And yet methinks more health is in the old,
Renewing youth from fountains of the new,
Than in rash overthrow of all men built,
With salt of insolence sown in holy places.

Therefore, O secular, and sacred towers,
Confound your glories by the river-shore.
And marry mighty tones in ordering time !
Cathedral organ, roll insurgent sound,
As though the archangel would arouse the dead !
Our firm foundations on the invisible,
Build we the ever ampler, loftier state,
Till unaware we walk the City of God !
Yea, for I deem the fathers we revere.
Shrined in cathedral glooms, embolden us
With eyes of silent counsel, and dumb power,
Approving backs turned on their empty tomb.
But who may slay the irrevocable Past ?
The Past, our venerable Sire, that girds
Bright armour round us, like some grand old knight.
With benediction sending forth fair youth
To battle, crowning what himself began !

When England bathes in shadow, the tall tower
Of that great palace of the people shines,
Shines to the midnight like a midnight sun.
While crowned inherited incompetence,
And while law-making men laborious
Through long night-watches, in their golden chamber,
Wage wordy wars of faction, help the
State,
The dreadful river rolls in darkness under.
Whirling our human lights to wild witchgleam !
See yellow lamps in formidable gloom
Of both the shores, night-hearted haunts of men ;
Terrible water heaped about great piers
Of arches, gliding, gurgling, ominous !
But on the vasty parapet above
Those Titan tunnels, ghastlier for the glare
Of our electric mockeiy of moons.
Appears a moment a fate-hunted face —
Wan Desolation, plunging to the Void.
Then swirls a form dishonoured among gleams,
Which eddy as light-headed ; what was man,
With other offal flotsam, flounders, rolls.

But now for one who mused upon the bridge.
Of pier and arch tremendous, the huge reek.
And sin-breathed exhalations of the city.
Transfigured by an alchemy of power.
Burned with all colour ; the broad river rose
Aslant horizonward, and heavenward,
One calm aerial glory of still dream ;
Thronged habitations on the shadowy shore
Blend solemn, disembodied to a bloom
Ethereal, bathed in evening ; fair enchased.
Or diapered upon the delicate air,
Hull, mast, sail, tiny bark, or barge, or steamer,
Poised darkly in mid primrose of the tide,
Like carven fretwork on a golden shrine.
All monstrous hostels, with interminable
Glazed bulks that over- roof the clanging train.
And all our builded chaos doth repent.
Converting into beauty ; while I muse,
The mild, and modulated cadences
Of lemon fruit, shy violet, dove-down,
Deepen to very pomp and festival
Of dyes magnificent ; one diapason
Of hues resplendent, crimson, gold, and green,
And purple gorgeous, like robes of kings.
Or caves of sun-illumined sea-treasure,
Or glories blazoned in Cathedral aisle,
Heart d white lily, fruit of passion-flower,
Or fervid eagle-eyes ; a parable.
One nuptial-feast of marrying glow andgloom.
A wondrous parable of life through death !

While yonder haughty heights of Westminster,
Where once fierce feuds of our illustrious dead
Sleep reconciled in monumental calm,
Mary reposing by Elizabeth,
And where with throes of living loud debate
Are brought to birth the still behests of
Heaven ;
With ancient consecrated privilege
Of lordly Lambeth on his stately sward ;
These, and the grand dome, and the four grim towers.
Haunted by phantoms of long-wandering crime,
And harbours thronged with navies of the world,
Glow fair a moment with supernal fire.

I am on the country-side again ; but ah !
Nor here may I escape the treacherous
Flat viper-head that lurks behind all joy.
The World god-fronted hath a dragon-train,
Long loathsome coil, gold-cinctured, with a heart,
Now hot with love or hate, and now dead-cold.
Yea, under budding pear and cherry tree,
Preluding silent anthems of white bloom,
Under a nest of mellow-throated thrush,
Who warbles out his soul to a soft mate,
Her own warmth luring hfe from the frail egg;
Here one deemed woman drowns a trustful child,
Pleading in vain, for she is all one stone
To his close clinging, wild, appealing woe.
Where did she drown him? Whence the bubbling cry ?
In a pure lingering stream, that mirrors well
Fresh grass and flowers, whose home is on his bank ;
He takes them to his heart, he shrines them there !
Nor ever bolt leaps shattering from the blue ;
A plumy pomp of cloud in azure air
Sails undismayed ; Earth shudders not for shame ;
Nor yawns to engulph her — gulphs the innocent.
Only a zephyr dimples with young joy
Yon vivid verdure overstarred with gold !

Poor paralytic human Pity ! what
Canst thou in this confusion ? Wring thy hands.
And weep, like Rachael, fi)r thy liule ones,
Or fumble thy conjectural remedies.
That may be poisons, and experiment !
A human sire, on whom a child relies,
Asleep in perfect trust upon his heart —

Would he not give his body to be burned,
And all his soul to Satan for the child ?
Death shall devour it, even in his arms.
Or Ruin rend, he lying impotent !

But Thou, O Father, if these are Thy Sons,
Canst Thou behold them prostrate in such plight
Unmoved? nor rend the heavens and come down ?
Or art Thou sleeping, on a journey, or
Mast Thou deserted these Thine orphans.
Lord?
Nay, who but Heaven commissioneth dim
Plague,
Death, Sorrow, Madness, dire ancestral Sin,
Cancer, long torments unimaginable.
And all the brood of ever-ravening ills,
That devastate mankind ? No bribe can tame them,
Unguessed, innumerous, invincible.
So clings some awful beast to a faint fawn,
Galloping maddened o'er the indifferent wild.
By wells, and pleasant pasturage the Doom
Cowers in his ambush, springs from the blue air.
Falls like a thunderbolt ; O men, can ye
Rival your Mother in accomplished crime?
Who perpetrates what freezes the warm blood.
Masked in light laughter, kissing while she stabs !
And yet, because the still small voice within
Reveals God more than storm, or earthquake, we,
Bettering Her rude ways, give sense the lie,
Nor will believe Her what she only seems.
O Thou dread Silence, dumbly do we bow ;
In silence we commend Thy world to Thee.

Most awful Spirit of the Universe!
Kneeling before Thy throne we grovel low,
Yea, wrestle with Thee through the long night hours.
Unknowing Thy dread Name ; we will not let
Thee go until Thou loose the cloudy fold
From that veiled countenance ! Hath Love, or Hate,
Or dead Indifterence his temple there ?