Vigilant, I make haste to close
With him who comes my way.
I go to meet him as he goes;
I know his note, his lay,
His colour and his morning rose;
And I confess his day.
My window waits; at dawn I hark
His call; at morn I meet
His haste around the tossing park
And down the softened street;
The gentler light is his; the dark,
The grey—he turns it sweet.
So too, so too, do I confess
My poet when he sings.
He rushes on my mortal guess
With his immortal things.
I feel, I know him. On I press—
He finds me ‘twixt his wings.
NOVEMBER BLUE
The colour of the electric lights has a strange effect in giving a complementary tint to the air in the early evening.—Essay on London.
O, Heavenly colour! London town
Has blurred it from her skies;
And hooded in an earthly brown,
Unheaven’d the city lies.
No longer standard-like this hue
Above the broad road flies;
Nor does the narrow street the blue
Wear, slender pennon-wise.
But when the gold and silver lamps
Colour the London dew,
And, misted by the winter damps,
The shops shine bright anew—
Blue comes to earth, it walks the street,
It dyes the wide air through;
A mimic sky about their feet,
The throng go crowned with blue.
CHIMES
Brief, on a flying night,
From the shaken tower,
A flock of bells take flight,
And go with the hour.
Like birds from the cote to the gales,
Abrupt—O hark!
A fleet of bells set sails,
And go to the dark.