TALES OF THE MERMAID TAVERN

Under that foggy sunset London glowed,

Like one huge cob-webbed flagon of old wine.

And, as I walked down Fleet Street, the soft sky

Mowed thro’ the roaring thoroughfares, transfused

Their hard sharp outlines, blurred the throngs of black

On either pavement, blurred the rolling stream

Of red and yellow busses, till the town

Turned to a golden suburb of the clouds.

And, round that mighty bubble of St. Paul's,

Over the up-turned faces of the street,

An air-ship slowly sailed, with whirring fans,

A voyager in the new-found realms of gold,

A shadowy silken chrysalis whence should break

What radiant wings in centuries to be.

So, wandering on, while all the shores of Time

Softened into Eternity, it seemed

A dead man touched me with his living hand,

A flaming legend passed me in the streets

Of London — laugh who will — that City of Clouds,

Where what a dreamer yet, in spite of all,

Is man, that splendid visionary child

Who sent his fairy beacon through the dusk,

On a blue bus before the moon was risen,—

This Night, at eight, The Tempest!

Dreaming thus,

( Small wonder that my footsteps went astray! )

I found myself within a narrow street,

Alone. There was no rumour, near or far,

Of the long tides of traffic. In my doubt

I turned and knocked upon an old inn-door,

Hard by, an ancient inn of mullioned panes,

And crazy beams and over-hanging eaves:

And, as I knocked, the slowly changing west

Seemed to change all the world with it and leave

Only that old inn steadfast and unchanged,

A rock in the rich-coloured tides of time.

And, suddenly, as a song that wholly escapes

Remembrance, at one note, wholly returns,

There, as I knocked, memory returned to me.

I knew it all — the little twisted street,

The rough wet cobbles gleaming, far away,

Like opals, where it ended on the sky;

And, overhead, the darkly smiling face

Of that old wizard inn; I knew by rote

The smooth sun-bubbles in the worn green paint

Upon the doors and shutters.

There was one

Myself had idly scratched away one dawn,

One mad May-dawn, three hundred years ago,

When out of the woods we came with hawthorn boughs

And found the doors locked, as they seemed to-night.

Three hundred years ago — nay, Time was dead!

No need to scan the sign-board any more

Where that white-breasted siren of the sea

Curled her moon-silvered tail among such rocks

As never in the merriest seaman's tale

Broke the blue-bliss of fabulous lagoons

Beyond the Spanish Main.

And, through the dream,

Even as I stood and listened, came a sound

Of clashing wine-cups: then a deep-voiced song

Made the old timbers of the Mermaid Inn

Shake as a galleon shakes in a gale of wind

When she rolls glorying through the Ocean-sea.