London Voluntaries - To Charles Whibley - II - Andante Con Moto

Forth from the dust and din,     The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare,     The odour and sense of life and lust aflare,     The wrangle and jangle of unrests,     Let us take horse, Dear Heart, take horse and win -     As from swart August to the green lap of May -     To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts     Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware     In any of her innumerable nests     Of that first sudden plash of dawn,     Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large,     Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day     In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn     Forward and up, in wider and wider way,     Shall float the sands, and brim the shores,     On this our lith of the World, as round it roars     And spins into the outlook of the Sun     (The Lord's first gift, the Lord's especial charge),     With light, with living light, from marge to marge     Until the course He set and staked be run.     Through street and square, through square and street,     Each with his home-grown quality of dark     And violated silence, loud and fleet,     Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp,     The hansom wheels and plunges.    Hark, O, hark,     Sweet, how the old mare's bit and chain     Ring back a rough refrain     Upon the marked and cheerful tramp     Of her four shoes!    Here is the Park,     And O, the languid midsummer wafts adust,     The tired midsummer blooms!     O, the mysterious distances, the glooms     Romantic, the august     And solemn shapes!    At night this City of Trees     Turns to a tryst of vague and strange     And monstrous Majesties,     Let loose from some dim underworld to range     These terrene vistas till their twilight sets:     When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand     Beggared and common, plain to all the land     For stooks of leaves!    And lo! the Wizard Hour,     His silent, shining sorcery winged with power!     Still, still the streets, between their carcanets     Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep.     But see how gable ends and parapets     In gradual beauty and significance     Emerge!    And did you hear     That little twitter-and-cheep,     Breaking inordinately loud and clear     On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere?     'Tis a first nest at matins!    And behold     A rakehell cat - how furtive and acold!     A spent witch homing from some infamous dance -     Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade     Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade!     And now! a little wind and shy,     The smell of ships (that earnest of romance),     A sense of space and water, and thereby     A lamplit bridge ouching the troubled sky,     And look, O, look! a tangle of silver gleams     And dusky lights, our River and all his dreams,     His dreams that never save in our deaths can die.     What miracle is happening in the air,     Charging the very texture of the gray     With something luminous and rare?     The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire,     And, as one lights a candle, it is day.     The extinguisher, that perks it like a spire     On the little formal church, is not yet green     Across the water:    but the house-tops nigher,     The corner-lines, the chimneys - look how clean,     How new, how naked!    See the batch of boats,     Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam!     And those are barges that were goblin floats,     Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream!     And in the piles the water frolics clear,     The ripples into loose rings wander and flee,     And we - we can behold that could but hear     The ancient River singing as he goes,     New-mailed in morning, to the ancient Sea.     The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass:     The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake,     And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and take     His hobnailed way to work!     Let us too pass -     Pass ere the sun leaps and your shadow shows -     Through these long, blindfold rows     Of casements staring blind to right and left,     Each with his gaze turned inward on some piece     Of life in death's own likeness - Life bereft     Of living looks as by the Great Release -     Pass to an exquisite night's more exquisite close!     Reach upon reach of burial - so they feel,     These colonies of dreams!    And as we steal     Homeward together, but for the buxom breeze,     Fitfully frolicking to heel     With news of dawn-drenched woods and tumbling seas,     We might - thus awed, thus lonely that we are -     Be wandering some dispeopled star,     Some world of memories and unbroken graves,     So broods the abounding Silence near and far:     Till even your footfall craves     Forgiveness of the majesty it braves.