A woof reversed the fatal shuttles weave,
How slow! but never once they slip the thread.
Hither, upon the Georgian idlers' tread,
Up spacious ways the lindens interleave,
Clouding the royal air since yester-eve,
Come men bereft of time and scant of bread,
Loud, who were dumb, immortal, who were dead,
Through the cowed world their kingdom to retrieve.
What ails thee, England? Altar, mart, and grange
Dream of the knife by night; not so, not so
The clear Republic waits the general throe,
Along her noonday mountains' open range.
God be with both! for one is young to know
The other's rote of evil and of change.
[V. Changes in the Temple]
The cry is at thy gates, long-lovèd ground,
Again: for oft ere now thy children went
Beggared and wroth, and parting greeting sent
Some old red alley with a dial crowned;
Some house of honour, in a glory bound
With lives and deaths of spirits excellent;
Some tree rude-taken from his kingly tent
Hard by a little fountain's friendly sound.
Oh, for Virginius' hand, if only that
Maintain the whole, and spoil these spoilings soon!
Better the scowling Strand should lose, alas,
Her walled oasis, and where once it was
All mournful in the cleared quadrangle sat
Echo and ivy, and the loitering moon.
[VI. The Lights of London]
The evenfall, so slow on hills, hath shot
Far down into the valley's cold extreme,
Untimely midnight; spire and roof and stream
Like fleeing spectres, shudder and are not.
The Hampstead hollies, from their sylvan plot
Yet cloudless, lean to watch as in a dream,
From chaos climb with many a hasty gleam,
London, one moment fallen and forgot.
Her booths begin to flare; and gases bright
Prick door and window; every street obscure
Sparkles and swarms with nothing true nor sure,
Full as a marsh of mist and winking light:
Heaven thickens over, Heaven that cannot cure
Her tear by day, her fevered smile by night.