JUDD STREET, ST. PANCRAS
My dwelling has a courtyard wide
Where lord with lady well might pace,
—Such silks and velvets side by side,
And she a fan to shield her face!—
It's fine as any king's;
For there I see on either hand
The whole great stretch of London lie;
—Just so as any king might stand
Upon his roof, to watch go by
The flashing pigeon wings.
Just so a king might look abroad:
"And this is all my own," says he,
And then he'd turn to some great lord,
Who'd acquiesce with gravity
—But that I do without,
For all of lord there is up here
Is this impassive chimney-stack,
And cloudy be my view or clear
My courtier will not answer back;
All silent I look out,
And see the flight of roofs that fade
Towards the West in golden haze,
And all this work men's hands have made
Like jewels in the sun's last rays—
I have a dwelling wide;
Three rooms are mine, but I can go
Up to this roof in shade or shine,
And watch all London change and glow
Rose, purple, gold; three rooms are mine—
And all of heaven beside.
SPARROWS
Brown little, fat little, cheerful sparrows!
I like to think, when I hear them chatter,
How, when the brazen noise was gone
Of the chariot-wheels, with the sparks a-scatter,
Their chirp was heard in old Babylon.
In Babylon, and more ancient Memphis,
They chattered and quarrelled, pecked and fumed,
And loved their loves, and flew their ways,
Where the royal Pharaohs lay entombed
Deep from the daylight's vulgar gaze.
Then, just such little homely fellows
(When the angry monarch, terrible,
Watched his curled Assyrians writhe)
They sat, on a carven granite bull
Unheeding of anguish, feathered and blithe.
So did they sit, on the roofs of Rome,
And preen themselves in the morning sun;
And Caesar saw them, brown and grey,
Whisk in the dust, when his course was run
And he took to the Forum his fated way.