Ballad Of The Londoner

Evening falls on the smoky walls,
And the railings drip with rain,
And I will cross the old river
To see my girl again.

The great and solemn-gliding tram,
Love's still-mysterious car,
Has many a light of gold and white,
And a single dark red star.

I know a garden in a street
Which no one ever knew;
I know a rose beyond the Thames,
Where flowers are pale and few.

James Elroy Flecker

James Elroy Flecker was an English poet and playwright born in London. He is best remembered for his poem "The Golden Journey to Samarkand" and his plays. Flecker was associated with the neo-romantic movement, and his works often explored themes of travel and classical antiquity. He died of tuberculosis at a young age, cutting short a promising literary career.

James Elroy Flecker

Destroyer Of Ships, Men, Cities

James Elroy Flecker, Simple Poetry

Felo De Se

James Elroy Flecker, Simple Poetry

Don Juan In Hell

James Elroy Flecker, Simple Poetry

Ideal

James Elroy Flecker, Simple Poetry

English

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The Ballad Of Camden Town

I walked with Maisie long years back
The streets of Camden Town,
I splendid in my suit of black,
And she divine in brown.

Hers was a proud and noble face,
A secret heart, and eyes
Like water in a lonely place
Beneath unclouded skies.

A bed, a chest, a faded mat,
And broken chairs a few,
Were all we had to grace our flat
In Hazel Avenue.

But I could walk to Hampstead Heath,
And crown her head with daisies,
And watch the streaming world beneath,
And men with other Maisies.

When I was ill and she was pale
And empty stood our store,
She left the latchkey on its nail,
And saw me nevermore.

Perhaps she cast herself away
Lest both of us should drown:
Perhaps she feared to die, as they
Who die in Camden ...

James Elroy Flecker

A Ballad Of London - (To H. W. Massinsham)

Ah, London! London! our delight,
Great flower that opens but at night,
Great City of the Midnight Sun,
Whose day begins when day is done.

Lamp after lamp against the sky
Opens a sudden beaming eye,
Leaping alight on either hand,
The iron lilies of the Strand.

Like dragonflies, the hansoms hover,
With jewelled eyes, to catch the lover;
The streets are full of lights and loves,
Soft gowns, and flutter of soiled doves.

The human moths about the light
Dash and cling close in dazed delight,
And burn and laugh, the world and wife,
For this is London, this is life!

Upon thy petals butterflies,
But at thy root, some say, there lies
A world of weeping trodden things,
Poor worms that have not eyes or wings.

From out corr...

Richard Le Gallienne

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;...

William Ernest Henley

London Voluntaries - To Charles Whibley - I - Grave

St. Margaret's bells,
Quiring their innocent, old-world canticles,
Sing in the storied air,
All rosy-and-golden, as with memories
Of woods at evensong, and sands and seas
Disconsolate for that the night is nigh.
O, the low, lingering lights!    The large last gleam
(Hark! how those brazen choristers cry and call!)
Touching these solemn ancientries, and there,
The silent River ranging tide-mark high
And the callow, grey-faced Hospital,
With the strange glimmer and glamour of a dream!
The Sabbath peace is in the slumbrous trees,
And from the wistful, the fast-widowing sky
(Hark! how those plangent comforters call and cry!)
Falls as in August plots late roseleaves fall.
The sober Sabbath stir -
Leisurely voices, desultory feet! -
Comes from the dry, dus...

William Ernest Henley

Summer In London

    Oh, the noise of Piccadilly - its rumble and its roar!
    A tide of life's broad ocean surging toward the shore.
    Who once has listened, ever can hear its long refrain
    With haunting echo drowning or dirge or flaunting strain.
    Who heeds it, in his vision may see a world-throng pass -
    And over there the Green Park with laughing lad and lass;
    While weary men and women and careless youth go by,
    Where windows glow and glitter, and in the evening sky
    A crescent moon is watching the laughing lass and lad.
    The long, warm London twilight! Happy they are, though sad.
    With kiss and tear they are parting. 'Tis late - the rush and roar -
    The life of Picadilly is waning - is no more.

    Ah, the dark, the cold, the stillness of the trenches in ...

Helen Leah Reed

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),
...

William Ernest Henley