University of Virginia Library


190

LONDON IN NOVEMBER

Long streets of omnipresent fog and gloom:
A very hell, wherethrough there move to doom
Strange figures ceaseless.
O for one flower, one rose, one sea-gull's flight,
To bring me visions of vast air and light,
For here I wander sad-eyed, sombre, peaceless.
Could any deepest hell that Dante knew
Be worse than this which circles me and you
In London weather?
Rain, rain and fog,—and fog, and fog, and rain;
Ten minutes' dismal sun—then clouds again:
Till all of us turn mildewy-souled together!
Nov. 4, 1885.