Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, EUSTON, by PATRICK REGINALD CHALMERS


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

EUSTON, by                    
First Line: Now, when the sportsman is flitting from market and mammon
Last Line: Till the last tail-light has twinkled, and gone in the dark!
Subject(s): Nature; Night; Bedtime


NOW, when the sportsman is flitting from market and Mammon,
Now, when the courts, swept and garnished, stand silent and lone,
Now, with her challenging grouse, and her sea-silver salmon,
August, of mountains and memories, comes to her own;
Would you gaze into the crystal, and see the long valleys,
Braes of the North, and the rivers that wander between,
Crags with whose coating the tint of the ptarmigan tallies?
Come up to Euston to-night about 7.15.

There, if you've got to make shift with a fortnight at Margate,
Humbly content with the codling you catch from the pier,
Making the booth's mere mechanical rabbit your target,
There,—if your "heart's in the highlands a-chasing the deer"—
Shall you slip past, all unchallenged, the magical wicket,
Portal that opens at will on to heather and streams;
No need to bother for berth or for booking of ticket,
When you would sojourn a space in the Kingdom of Dreams.

Come, then, and stand on the platform, and see through the arches,
Full of the evening that flushes the chimneys with light,
Gold-burnished rails that run out to the pines and the larches,
See the long corridor carriages busking for flight;
Board them in fancy, and then, when the twilight grows deeper,
Speed through the moon-mantled Midlands— by fell and by firth,
Wake with your tea, in the smooth-swinging rush of the sleeper,
When the white glamour of morning is pale over Perth.

So, spite of luggage and crowds and of engines that whistle,
Over the riggings—in spirit—once more you'll descry,
On to the perilous butts, where the batteries bristle,
Blotting the heather, the well-driven coveys come by;
Bracken and blaeberry, murderous midges that bite you,
Summits that stand to the sunset, tremendous and stark,—
Come up to Euston, for lo, it has dreams to requite you,
Till the last tail-light has twinkled, and gone in the dark!





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