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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


LONDON'S POET: 1 by ANNIE MATHESON

First Line: LONDON, THOU HAST THY POET; LIFT THY HEAD!
Last Line: A SACRED ALTAR TO THE LORD OF LOVE.

LONDON, thou hast thy poet; lift thy head!
Florence may find sweet homage in his lays,
But thou,—thou art his home, with thee he stays;
And in his poems loving eyes have read
Thy very self; the multitudinous tread
Of that quick motley throng that crowds thy ways,
Where all the game is tangled, and who plays
For this world only, wins a stone for bread.
Standing on solid earth, with heaven above,
The squalor and splendour of life thy poet sees,
The sordid seeming, and the fact divine;
Grim byways, lacking not their almond-trees,
And, in the midmost noise and whirl, a shrine,
A sacred altar to the Lord of Love.



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