The Zenana and minor poems of L. E. L. [i.e. Landon] With a memoir by Emma Roberts |
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SCENES IN LONDON. |
The Zenana and minor poems of L. E. L. [i.e. Landon] | ||
SCENES IN LONDON.
I. PICCADILLY.
It kindles those old towers;
Where England's noblest memories meet,
Of old historic hours.
Tradition's giant fane,
Whereto a thousand years are linked,
In one electric chain.
First steals upon the skies;
And shadow'd by the fallen night,
The sleeping city lies.
Touched by the first cold shine;
Vast, vague, and mighty as the past,
Of which it is the shrine.
Around the sculptured stone
Giving a softness to the walls,
Like love that mourns the gone.
The human heart can know,
The mourning over those gone hence
To the still dust below.
Have vanished from the scene;
The pale lamps gleam with spirit ray
O'er the park's sweeping green.
The moon's calm smile above,
Seems as it lulled life's toil and wrath
With universal love.
The city is alive;
It is the busy hour of noon,
When man must seek and strive.
Is on the waking brow;
Labour and care, endurance, strife,
These are around him now.
Its tumult and its throng,
The hurrying of the thousand feet
That bear life's cares along.
With such a scene beside;
All sounds in one vast murmur melt
The thunder of the tide.
Upon another's face:
The present is an open book
None read, yet all must trace.
His daily bread to find;
The rich man has yet wearier chase,
For pleasure's hard to bind.
For which they live so fast—
What doth the present but amass,
The wealth that makes the past.
That glimmer o'er our head;
Not from the present is their fires,
Their light is from the dead.
Were waste of toil and mind;
But for those long and glorious hours
Which leave themselves behind.
II. OXFORD STREET.
The busy and the gay;
Faces that seemed too young and fair
To ever know decay.
Led forth its glittering train;
And poverty's pale face beside
Asked aid, and asked in vain.
Toys, silks, and gems, and flowers;
The patient work of many hands,
The hope of many hours.
There was a sigh of death;
There rose a melancholy sound,
The bugle's wailing breath.
That on its native hill
Had caught the notes the night-winds bear
From weeping leaf and rill.
Its warning music shed,
Rising above life's busy train,
In memory of the dead.
In sad procession by:
Reversed the musket in each hand,
And downcast every eye.
The sympathyzing crowd
Divided like a parted wave
By some dark vessel ploughed.
For awe was over all;
You heard the soldier's measured foot,
The bugle's wailing call.
The helmet and the sword,
The drooping war-horse followed near,
As he, too, mourned his lord.
To where a church arose,
And flung a shadow o'er the dead,
Deep as their own repose.
Of one, was made a grave;
And there to his last rest was laid
The weary and the brave.
Of an unconscious ear;
The birds sprang fluttering overhead,
Struck with a sudden fear.
Away upon the wind;
Only the tree's green branches sighed
O'er him they left behind.
I passed the crowded street—
Oh, great extremes of life and death,
How strangely do ye meet!
III. THE SAVOYARD IN GROSVENOR SQUARE.
That square of state, of gloom;
A heavy weight is on the air,
Which hangs as o'er a tomb.
Have built themselves around—
The general sympathies have shrank
Like flowers on high dry ground.
An orphan though so young;
None think how far the singer brings
The songs which he has sung.
None with a kindly word;
The singer's little pride must brook
To be unpraised, unheard.
And oft, when days were long,
His mother called her favourite child
To sing her favourite song.
Till cheek and eye are dim;
How little sympathy he meets,
For music or for him.
His dark eyes fill with glee,
Covered with blossoms snowy-white,
He sees an orange tree.
Nor faltering step is sad;
He sees his distant native vale,
He sees it, and is glad.
The doves fly through the dell,
The purple clusters of the vine;
He hears the vesper-bell.
Toil, travel, are no more;
And he has happy hours to come
Beside his father's door.
But for thy lovely ties,
Never might the world-wearied sense
Above the present rise.
Oh Nature, gentle mother;
How kindlier is for us thy care,
Than ours is for each other.
IV. THE CITY CHURCHYARD.
Among these mouldering bones;
Too heavily the earth is prest
By all these crowded stones.
With all its pomp and toil;
I pray thee do not lay me here,
In such a world-struck soil.
The slumbers of the dead;
I cannot bear for life to make
Its pathway o'er my head.
They stand apart, alone;
And no one ever pauses here,
To sorrow for the gone.
The summer sunshine cheers;
And where the early wild flower yields
The tribute of its tears.
Where droops the willow tree,
Where the long grass is filled with dew—
Oh! make such grave for me!
Will pause beside the grave,
And moralize o'er the repose
They fear, and yet they crave.
Its offering to the tomb;
And say, As fades the rose in spring,
So fadeth human bloom.
To soothe, and to relieve;
No fancies and no flowers are brought,
That soften while they grieve.
It is a world of stone;
The grave is bought—is closed—forgot!
And then life hurries on.
Redeem man's common breath;
Ah! let them shed the grave above—
Give loveliness to death.
If there be one object more material, more revolting, more gloomy than another, it is a crowded churchyard in a city. It has neither sympathy nor memory. The pressed-down stones lie heavy upon the very heart. The sunshine cannot get at them for smoke. There is a crowd; and, like most crowds, there is no companionship. Sympathy is the softener of death, and memory of the loved and the lost is the earthly shadow of their immortality. But who turns aside amid those crowds that hurry through the thronged and noisy streets?—No one can love London better than I do; but never do I wish to be buried there. It is the best place in the world for a house, and the worst for a grave. An Irish patriot once candidly observed to me, “Give me London to live in; but let me die in green Ireland:”—now, this is precisely my opinion.
The Zenana and minor poems of L. E. L. [i.e. Landon] | ||