Reuben and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

In Liverpool, the good old town, we miss
The grand old relics of a reverend past—
Cathedrals, shrines that pilgrims come to kiss—
Walls wrinkled by the blast.

Some crypt or keep, historically dear,
You find, go where you will, all England through:
But what have we to venerate, all here
Ridiculously new.

We have our Castle Street, but Castle none;
Redcross Street, but its legend who can learn;
Oldhall Street, too, we have, the old hall gone;
Tithebarn Street, but no barn.

Huge warehouses for cotton, rice, and corn,
Tea and tobacco, log and other woods,
Oils, tallow, hides that smell so foully foreign—
Yea, all things known as goods.

These we can show, but nothing to restore
The spirit of old times, save here and there
An ancient mansion with palatial door,
In some degenerate square.

Then rise the merchant princes of old days,
Their silken dames; their skippers from the strand,
Who brought their sea-borne riches, not always
Quite free from contraband.

264

And these their mansions, to base uses come—
Harbours for fallen fair ones, drifting tars;
Some, manufactories of blacking, some
Tobacco and cigars.

We have a church that one almost reveres—
St. Nicholas, nodding by the river-side—
In old times hail'd by ancient marinërs
That came up with the tide.

And there's St. Peter's, too, not quite so frail,
Yet old enough for antiquated thoughts:
Ah, many a time I lean against the rail
To hear its sweet crack'd notes.

For when the sun has clomb the middle sky,
And wander'd down the short hour after noon,
Then to the heedless world that hurries by
The clock bells clink a tune.

They give us “Home, Sweet Home” in plaintive key,
And in its turn breaks out “The Scolding Wife,”
To show that home, however sweet it be,
Is yet not free from strife.

But sometimes “Auld Lang Syne” comes clinking forth,
And surely every listening heart is charm'd;
For what are even the sorrows of the earth
When, past, they are transform'd?

265

Yet all is so ridiculously new,
Except, perhaps, the river and the sky—
The waters and the immemorial blue
For ever sailing by.

Ay they are old, but new as well as old—
For old and new are just the same sky dream—
One metal in a slightly different mould,
The same refilter'd stream.