PICTURESQUE LONDON; OR, SKY-SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
(An Extract from the "Trivia" of the Future.)
"But when the swinging signs your ears offend,
With creaking noise."
GAY's Trivia; or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London.
Offend our ears? Pedestrian Muse of GAY,
Had you foreseen the London of to-day,
How had you shuddered with ashamed surprise
At "swinging signs" which now offend our eyes!
Long have Advertisement's obtrusive arts
Pervaded our huge maze of malls and marts;
But now the "swinging signs" of ogre Trade,
Even the smoke-veiled vault of heaven invade,
And sprawling legends of the tasteless crew
Soar to the clouds and spread across the blue.
See—if you can—where Paul's colossal dome
Rises o'er realms that dwarf Imperial Rome.
Cooped, cramped, half hid, the glorious work of WREN
Lent grandeur once to huckstering haunts of men,
Though on its splendour Shopdom's rule impinged,
And plaster, had they power, kind heaven's clear vault
With vulgar vaunts of Sausages or Salt.
Picture the proud and spacious city given
Wholly to Shopdom's hands! 'Twixt earth and heaven
Forests of tall and spindly poles arise,
With swinging signs that almost hide the skies.
Huge letterings hang disfiguring all the blue
To vaunt the grace of SNOBKINS's high-heel'd Shoe.
A pair of gloves soar to a monstrous height,
Long have its letterings large, its pictures vile,
Possessed the mammoth city mile on mile;
Made horrors of its hoardings, and its walls
Disfigured from the Abbey to St. Paul's,
And far beyond where'er a vacant space
Allowed Boeotian Commerce to displace
Scant Urban Beauty from its last frail hold,
On a Metropolis given up to Gold.
But till of late our sky at least was clear
(Such sky as coal-reek leaves the civic year)
If not of smoke at least of flaming lies,
And florid vaunts of quacks who advertise.
Not these sky-horrors, huge and noisy-hinged,
Shamed the still air about it, or obscured
Its every view. Is it to be endured,
O much-enduring Briton? There be those
Who'd scrawl advertisements of Hogs or Hose
Across the sun-disc as it flames at noon,
Or daub the praise of Pickles o'er the moon.
Unmoved by civic pride, unchecked by taste,
They 'd smear the general sky with poster's paste
And at Dan Phoebus seem to "take a sight."
Colossal bottles blot the air, to tell
That MUCKSON's Temperance drink is a great sell.
Here's a huge hat, as black as sombre Styx,
Flanked by the winsome legend, "Ten and Six."
Other Sky-signs praise Carpets, Ginghams, Socks,
Mugg's Music-hall, and "Essence of the Ox."
Bah! GAY's trim Muse might sicken of her rhymes
Had she to read these Sky-signs of the Times!
