LONDON AT NIGHT by JOHN GOULD FLETCHER

ALONG the river squats and towers
The city: life and death and lust
Light up in flames its darkening hours,
In splendour, terrible, august.
Misshapen bulks of shadow starred
With orange fire sweep straight along:
Their roofs with blazing light are barred;
A gorgeous and a sordid throng!
From a thousand chimney-stacks and more,
That shatter the sky-line's black brute jumble,
Vast curls of white smoke upward pour,
That through the sky roll on and tumble
Down the horizons red with lights,
Down keel-thronged rivers, thundering bridges,
Following the lines of endless streets
That swoop down vales, and swarm up ridges;
Wherever the city flames to-night,
As mocking that poor show of stars,
The hot smoke streams, and in its flight
It throbs with the iron wheels of cars.
In every street, in every square,
In a million door- and window-frames,
Life lights its terrible tawdry glare,
Proclaiming loud its strength, its shames.
Before thee, time and space were not:
And ages fade before thy throne,
O city, ever freshly wrought,
Among the mighty, mightiest one!
Poet and prophet, king and priest,
Have filled thee with their gloom and joy:
Building the structures, greatest, least,
That all indifferent, dost destroy,
To build anew more glorious walls,
With feverish toil that never stops:
To fill the desert with vast halls,
To cram the woodland with roof-tops!
The toil of ages on thy winds
Vanishes, swift as puffs of steam;
And time, with all its saints and sins,
Is as the tide upon thy stream
That laps the same bed evermore,
But always sides of newer ships;
Has risen, fallen, while a score
Of centuries have touched thy lips.
Meanwhile from ends of all the earth
The flame-shod steeds of steel must bring,
Defying river, peak, and firth,
And the great sea, thy furnishing.
I see thee grow out of thy past
Into new shape, again, again,
Ever thy present real and vast,
The pride and the despair of men.
No more a city, but a world
Of smoke and stone in furious strife,
A challenge down all ages hurled
To match man's utmost might of life!
Along the river squats and towers
The city: life and death and lust
Light up in flames its darkening hours,
Its splendour, terrible, august.

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