LONDON DAWN

Dawn over London; all the pearly light

Trembles and quivers over street and park,

The houses are a strange, unearthly white;

Pavement and roof grow slowly, palely bright;

There is no shadow, neither light nor dark

But everything is steeped in glimmering dawn.

Oh, purity of dawn; oh, milk-and-pearl

Translucent splendour, spreading far and wide,

As on a yellow beach the small waves curl

— Almost as noiselessly as buds unfurl —

On windless mornings with the rising tide,

So flows the dawn o'er London, all asleep.

Indeed, I think that heaven is a sea,

And London is a city of old rhymes

Sunk fathoms deep in its transparency,

That folk of living lands may dream they see

And muse on, and have thoughts about our times,

How we were great and splendid, and now gone.

For never light the common earth has born,

This crystalline pale wonder that so falls

On streets and squares the daily toil has worn,

On blind-eyed houses, holding lives forlorn,

For the grey roads and wide, blank, grey-brick walls

Shine with a glory that is new and strange.

And not more wonderful, nor otherwise

Shall dawn come up upon the dewy hills,

Nor in the mountains, where the rivers rise

That water Eden; and no lovelier lies

The dawn on Paradise, than this that fills

The space‘ twixt house and house with tremulous light.

Yet, on the pavement, huddled fast asleep,

A thing of dusty, ragged misery,

Grotesque in wretchedness, from London's deep

Spumed off, a strange, distorted thing to creep

From God knows where, and lie, and let all be

Unheeding, whether of the day or night.

Such tired, hopeless angles of the knees

And neck and elbows — and the dawning grey

Trembling to sunrise; in the park the trees

Begin to shiver lightly in a breeze,

And turning watchful kindly eyes away

The policeman passes slowly on his beat.