Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TRAFALGAR SQUARE, by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES


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TRAFALGAR SQUARE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Fool that I was! My heart was sore
Last Line: Sailing the sky with one arm and one eye.
Alternate Author Name(s): Bridges, Robert+(2)
Subject(s): Nelson, Horatio, Viscount (1758-1805); Trafalgar Square, London; World War I - Casualties


Fool that I was: my heart was sore,
Yea sick for the myriad wounded men,
The maim'd in the war: I had grief for each one:
And I came in the gay September sun
To the open smile of Trafalgar Square;
Where many a lad with a limb fordone
Loll'd by the lion-guarded column
That holdeth Nelson statued thereon
Upright in the air.

The Parliament towers and the Abbey towers,
The white Horseguards and grey Whitehall,
He looketh on all,
Past Somerset House and the river's bend
To the pillar'd dome of St. Paul
That slumbers confessing God's solemn blessing
On England's glory, to keep it ours --
While children true her prowess renew
And throng from the ends of the earth to defend
Freedom and honour -- till Earth shall end.

The gentle unjealous Shakespeare, I trow,
In his country tomb of peaceful fame,
Must feel exiled from life and glow
If he think of this man with his warrior claim,
Who looketh o'er London as if 'twere his own,
As he standeth in stone, aloft and alone,
Sailing the sky with one arm and one eye.






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