Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE CURFEW TOWER, by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES


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THE CURFEW TOWER, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Thro' innocent eyes at the world awond'ring
Last Line: See never the tow'r that spoke to me.
Alternate Author Name(s): Bridges, Robert+(2)
Subject(s): Windsor Castle


Thro' innocent eyes at the world awond'ring
Nothing spake to me more superbly
Than the round bastion of Windsor's wall

That warding the Castle's southern angle
An old inheritor of Norman prowess
Was call'd by the folk the Curfew Tow'r.

Above the masonry's rugged courses
A turreted clock of Caroline fashion
Told time to the town in black and gold.

It charmed the hearts of Henry's scholars
As kingly a mentor of English story
As Homer's poem is of Ilion:

Nor e'er in the landscape look'd it fairer
Than when we saw its white bulk halo'd
In a lattice of slender scaffoldings.

Month by month on the air platforms
Workmen labour'd hacking and hoisting
Till again the tower was stript to the sun:

The old tow'r? Nay a new tow'r stood there
From footing to battlemented skyline
And topt with a cap the slice of a cone

Archaeoligic and counterfeited
The smoothest thing in all the high-street
As Eton scholars to-day may see:

They -- wherever else they find their wonder
And feed their boyhood on Time's enchantment --
See never the Tow'r that spoke to me.






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