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Title: London Dawn
Author: John Presland [
More Titles by Presland]
Dawn over London; all the pearly light
Trembles and quivers over street and park,
The houses are a strange, unearthly white;
Pavement and roof grow slowly, palely bright;
There is no shadow, neither light nor dark
But everything is steeped in glimmering dawn.
Oh, purity of dawn; oh, milk-and-pearl
Translucent splendour, spreading far and wide,
As on a yellow beach the small waves curl
--Almost as noiselessly as buds unfurl--
On windless mornings with the rising tide,
So flows the dawn o'er London, all asleep.
Indeed, I think that heaven is a sea,
And London is a city of old rhymes
Sunk fathoms deep in its transparency,
That folk of living lands may dream they see
And muse on, and have thoughts about our times,
How we were great and splendid, and now gone.
For never light the common earth has born,
This crystalline pale wonder that so falls
On streets and squares the daily toil has worn,
On blind-eyed houses, holding lives forlorn,
For the grey roads and wide, blank, grey-brick walls
Shine with a glory that is new and strange.
And not more wonderful, nor otherwise
Shall dawn come up upon the dewy hills,
Nor in the mountains, where the rivers rise
That water Eden; and no lovelier lies
The dawn on Paradise, than this that fills
The space 'twixt house and house with tremulous light.
Yet, on the pavement, huddled fast asleep,
A thing of dusty, ragged misery,
Grotesque in wretchedness, from London's deep
Spumed off, a strange, distorted thing to creep
From God knows where, and lie, and let all be
Unheeding, whether of the day or night.
Such tired, hopeless angles of the knees
And neck and elbows--and the dawning grey
Trembling to sunrise; in the park the trees
Begin to shiver lightly in a breeze,
And turning watchful kindly eyes away
The policeman passes slowly on his beat.
[The end]
John Presland's poem: London Dawn
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