Ye Flags of Picadilly

Ye flags of Piccadilly,
Where I posted up and down,
And wished myself so often
Well away from you and town.

Are the people walking quietly
And steady on their feet,
Cabs and omnibuses plying
Just as usual in the street?

Do the houses look as upright
As of old they used to be,
And does nothing seem affected
By the pitching of the sea?

Through the Green Park iron railings
Do the quick pedestrians pass?
Are the little children playing
Round the plane-tree in the grass?

This squally wild northwester
With which our vessel fights,
Does it merely serve with you to
Carry up some paper kites?

Ye flags of Piccadilly,
Which I hated so, I vow
I could wish with all my heart
You were underneath me now!

Arthur Hugh Clough

Arthur Hugh Clough was born on January 1, 1819, in Liverpool, England. He was a prominent Victorian poet known for his thoughtful and somewhat unconventional works. Clough was educated at Rugby School and later at Balliol College, Oxford, where he became closely associated with the intellectual reformist circles of the time. His poetry often explored themes of doubt, faith, and societal conventions. Despite his relatively short life, Clough made a significant impact on English literature and remains a respected figure of the Victorian literary scene. He passed away on November 13, 1861.

Arthur Hugh Clough

The Bothie of Tober-na-vuolich

Arthur Hugh Clough, Simple Poetry

?ò ???ó? (Greek Poems - Poems and Prose Remains, Vol II)

Arthur Hugh Clough, Simple Poetry

The Questioning Spirit

Arthur Hugh Clough, Simple Poetry

Easter Day II

Arthur Hugh Clough, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Green fields of England! wheresoeer

Green fields of England! wheresoeer
Across this watery waste we fare,
Your image at our hearts we bear
Green fields of England, everywhere.

Sweet eyes in England, I must flee
Past where the waves last confines be,
Ere your loved smile I cease to see,
Sweet eyes in England, dear to me.

Dear home in England, safe and fast
If but in thee my lot lie cast,
The past shall seem a nothing past
To thee, dear home, if won at last;
Dear home in England, won at last.

Arthur Hugh Clough

The Exiles' Line

Now the new year reviving old desires,
The restless soul to open sea aspires,
Where the Blue Peter flickers from the fore,
And the grimed stoker feeds the engine-fires.
Coupons, alas, depart with all their rows,
And last year's sea-met loves where Grindley knows;
But still the wild wind wakes off Gardafui,
And hearts turn eastward with the P. and O's.

Twelve knots an hour, be they more or less,
Oh slothful mother of much idleness,
Whom neither rivals spur nor contracts speed!
Nay, bear us gently! Wherefore need we press?

The Tragedy of all our East is laid
On those white decks beneath the awning shade,
Birth, absence, longing, laughter, love and tears,
And death unmaking ere the land is made.

And midnight madnesses of souls distraught
Wh...

Rudyard

Written on a Bridge

When soft September brings again
To yonder gorse its golden glow,
And Snowdon sends its autumn rain
To bid thy current livelier flow;
Amid that ashen foliage light
When scarlet beads are glistering bright,
While alder boughs unchanged are seen
In summer livery of green;
When clouds before the cooler breeze
Are flying, white and large; with these
Returning, so may I return,
And find thee changeless, Pont-y-wern.

Arthur Hugh Clough

Thoughts of Home.1

I watched them from the window, thy children at their play,
And I thought of all my own dear friends, who were far, oh, far away,
And childish loves, and childish cares, and a childs own buoyant gladness
Came gushing back again to me with a soft and solemn sadness;
And feelings frozen up full long, and thoughts of long ago,
Seemed to be thawing at my heart with a warm and sudden flow.

I looked upon thy children, and I thought of all and each,
Of my brother and my sister, and our rambles on the beach,
Of my mothers gentle voice, and my mothers beckoning hand,
And all the tales she used to tell of the far, far English land;
And the happy, happy evening hours, when I sat on my fathers knee,
Oh! many a wave is rolling now betwixt that seat and me!

And many a day has p...

Arthur Hugh Clough

Puck's Song

See you the ferny ride that steals
Into the oak-woods far?
O that was whence they hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar.

And mark you where the ivy clings
To Bayham's mouldering walls?
O there we cast the stout railings
That stand around St. Paul's.

See you the dimpled track that runs
All hollow through the wheat?
O that was where they hauled the guns
That smote King Philip's fleet.

(Out of the Weald, the secret Weald,
Men sent in ancient years,
The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field,
The arrows at Poitiers!)

See you our little mill that clacks,
So busy by the brook?
She has ground her corn and paid her
Ever since Domesday Book.

See you our stilly woods of oak,
And the dread ditch beside?
O that was ...

Rudyard

Ite Domum Saturæ, venit Hesperus

The skies have sunk, and hid the upper snow
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),
The rainy clouds are filing fast below,
And wet will be the path, and wet shall we.
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

Ah dear, and where is he, a year agone,
Who stepped beside and cheered us on and on?
My sweetheart wanders far away from me,
In foreign land or on a foreign sea.
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

The lightning zigzags shoot across the sky
(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),
And through the vale the rains go sweeping by;
Ah me, and when in shelter shall we be?
Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

Cold, dreary cold, the stormy winds feel they
Oer foreign lands and foreign seas that stray
(Home...

Arthur Hugh Clough