Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE BLUECOAT BOY, by HUMBERT WOLFE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE BLUECOAT BOY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I met an angel in the strand
Last Line: "charles lamb."
Subject(s): Courts & Courtiers; England; Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678); Poetry & Poets; English


I

I MET an angel in the Strand
with an umbrella in his hand,
talking with Paradisal joy
to a bewildered Bluecoat boy.
"And so," he said, "I understand
this also is a Golden Strand,
that has, like heaven, for example,
an edifice they call the Temple,
and leads by such another Bar
as ours to where the glories are
of what they tell me would be witty
to name the Uncelestial City.
Well! well! Let us examine it."
And, while he spoke, the street was lit
with some strange glory. Tired faces
shone like the sun in country places;
and people's voices sounded, when
they spoke, like chords by Beethoven;
the motor-buses had the hot
splendour of a chariot;
the houses by the Aldwych were
as arrogant as Lucifer;
the island-churches, like a crowd
of golden starlings, cried aloud,
till none could say which were the bells,
and which were simply miracles;
the very paving-stones were led,
enchantingly astonished,
into a crazy pattern, laid
to trap the moss in ambuscade.
Indeed the whole excited town
glowed like a shy, delicious noun,
when some great poet lets it live
at last beside its adjective.

And then I saw, like a superb
hawker, the angel at the curb
set London working like a toy --
and give it to the Bluecoat boy.

II

KING CHARLES the First
at Charing Cross
gazes from his
solemn horse

down the street
by which he went
into Marvell's
sacrament,

while Lord Nelson
in his Square
finds Trafalgar
everywhere.

Then you'll see how
hate has drawn,
in its image,
"Brussels: Dawn"

to describe the
statue of
her, whose latest
word was "love."

Finally the pavement
crawls
with forgotten
generals,

who, preserved in
bronze or lead,
are no thicker
in the head.

These are all the
guide-book tells of
in the ambit of
the bells of

grey St. Martin's. But
for such,
as a poet's dream
can touch,

there's the ghostling
of a statue,
that, when you look up,
looks at you,

holding in his hand
a fistful
of the gay, immortal,
wistful

pictures that
one Bluecoat Boy
fashioned with
the angel's toy,

when he watched
the glory fall
softly on Christ's
Hospital.

When? & where? & who?
The date is
somewhere early in
the 'Eighties

when King George the
Third was King,
and the time (let's say) was
Spring,

when its urban
lovelinesses
lit his Temple's
"green recesses."

And his name? You'd
find, I think,
written in deliberate
ink

in his notebook, "Sirs
I am,
Yours obediently,
Charles Lamb."





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