POETRY.
WINTER MEDITATIONS ON THE PAVEMENT.
GAY are the London streets, and bright With windows streaming floods of light Over all luxuries,—o'er gold, Rubies, and diamonds, wealth untold; O'er soft dim stuffs, in Indian looms Woven for London drawing-rooms; Delicate fabrics to enhance Young English beauty, wrought in France; Venetian glass to flush with wine From Burgundy, or banks of Rhine; Then, golden fruits which shone between The foliage of dark Southern green ; Soft fors which guarded Arctic bears Through sunless frosts ; fantastic wares Turned by the laughing Japanese Beside the far Pacific seas ; A dazzling show, you mast confess, Chiefly made up of food and dress. Before it moves the living show, The cheerful crowds that come and go Released from labours of the day, And free, at last, to choose their way, But gravitating, on the whole, To warm, bright parlours as their goal.
Great is the saving grace that dwells In noise and light, and e'en in smells.
These sounds, these sights that trance the eye, The shops, the folk who pass them by, Absolve the mind from thought, and give The sense " We see and therefore live."
Wide does the realm of light extend From Putney to beyond Mile End.
Beyond it, true, the country lies, Cold, bleak, and damp, with mists that rise Along slow streams, and draw their pall O'er ruined hedge and dripping wall, And woods deep sunk in heavy clays Where the dead wind just coldly plays With ghosts of leaves on clammy ways.
Mile after mile, cold, wet, and drear, The waste extends, save here and there, A little outpost of the town, Some shining villa crests a down, Or hamlet twinkles in a vale.
Then, mile on mile again, the pale Grey mists, the muddy fields, and then Beyond the last low homes of men, Chill lines of foam, sad boundary Of the inhospitable sea.
In life we dwell as in a town, In motion, action, sense, we drown The thought of time and endless space Around our sparkling dwelling place.
We toil and play to stop our ears, To shield us from misgivings, fears, From dreadful shapes that will not die ; We shuddered when they first came nigh Our childish sports, and touched with chill Foreboding the impetuous will.
We gazed, and fled, but ne'er again Could quite avoid the doubt, the pain, Or quite again forget that we Are children of mortality. B. H. H.
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