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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


LONDON EVENING by JOHN GOULD FLETCHER

First Line: THE CITY IS LIKE A VAGUE DREAM-TAPESTRY
Last Line: WATCHING MY SORROW FIND IN NIGHT RELIEF.
Subject(s): EVENING; LONDON; SUNSET; TWILIGHT;

THE city is like a vague dream-tapestry
On which are breathed, not woven, shapes of blue:
Perhaps they are towers and wet slopes of roof,
Perhaps they are only my embodied dreams:
For the city is strangely still as if it were dead,
And my soul had built on the dusk a city new;
Its only life in the lights that glow aloof,
Its only movement, the unseen traffic-streams.
O city of my desire! It rains in you,
A slow incessant fall of quiet showers:
The blue sky melts to grey, pale the lights glow,
And all is still, while sunless move the hours.
Could you be ever thus, half-hid from sight,
I would think, grey one, that your rain was my grief:
And so, content, know hope and calm delight,
Watching my sorrow find in night relief.



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