X. IN THE LITTLE ROOM.

By Aldous Huxley

London unfurls its incense-coloured dusk

Before the panes, rich but a while ago

With the charred gold and the red ember-glow

Of dying sunset. Houses quit the husk

Of secrecy, which, through the day, returns

A blank to all enquiry: but at nights

The cheerfulness of fire and lamp invites

The darkness inward, curious of what burns

With such a coloured life when all is dead —

The daylight world outside, with overhead

White clouds, and where we walk, the blaze

Of wet and sunlit streets, shops and the stream

Of glittering traffic — all that the nights erase,

Colour and speed, surviving but in dream.