London Voluntaries - To Charles Whibley - III - Scherzando

Down through the ancient Strand     The spirit of October, mild and boon     And sauntering, takes his way     This golden end of afternoon,     As though the corn stood yellow in all the land,     And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon.     Lo! the round sun, half-down the western slope -     Seen as along an unglazed telescope -     Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day:     Gifting the long, lean, lanky street     And its abounding confluences of being     With aspects generous and bland;     Making a thousand harnesses to shine     As with new ore from some enchanted mine,     And every horse's coat so full of sheen     He looks new-tailored, and every 'bus feels clean,     And never a hansom but is worth the feeing;     And every jeweller within the pale     Offers a real Arabian Night for sale;     And even the roar     Of the strong streams of toil, that pause and pour     Eastward and westward, sounds suffused -     Seems as it were bemused     And blurred, and like the speech     Of lazy seas on a lotus-haunted beach -     With this enchanted lustrousness,     This mellow magic, that (as a man's caress     Brings back to some faded face, beloved before,     A heavenly shadow of the grace it wore     Ere the poor eyes were minded to beseech)     Old things transfigures, and you hail and bless     Their looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more:     Till Clement's, angular and cold and staid,     Gleams forth in glamour's very stuffs arrayed;     And Bride's, her aery, unsubstantial charm     Through flight on flight of springing, soaring stone     Grown flushed and warm,     Laughs into life full-mooded and fresh-blown;     And the high majesty of Paul's     Uplifts a voice of living light, and calls -     Calls to his millions to behold and see     How goodly this his London Town can be!     For earth and sky and air     Are golden everywhere,     And golden with a gold so suave and fine     The looking on it lifts the heart like wine.     Trafalgar Square     (The fountains volleying golden glaze)     Shines like an angel-market.    High aloft     Over his couchant Lions, in a haze     Shimmering and bland and soft,     A dust of chrysoprase,     Our Sailor takes the golden gaze     Of the saluting sun, and flames superb,     As once he flamed it on his ocean round.     The dingy dreariness of the picture-place,     Turned very nearly bright,     Takes on a luminous transiency of grace,     And shows no more a scandal to the ground.     The very blind man pottering on the kerb,     Among the posies and the ostrich feathers     And the rude voices touched with all the weathers     Of the long, varying year,     Shares in the universal alms of light.     The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires,     The height and spread of frontage shining sheer,     The quiring signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires -     'Tis El Dorado - El Dorado plain,     The Golden City!    And when a girl goes by,     Look! as she turns her glancing head,     A call of gold is floated from her ear!     Golden, all golden!    In a golden glory,     Long-lapsing down a golden coasted sky,     The day, not dies but, seems     Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shed     Upon a past of golden song and story     And memories of gold and golden dreams.