Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AUTHORS IN LONDON, by CHARLES WILLIAM BRODRIBB


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AUTHORS IN LONDON, by                    
First Line: If shakespeare is the abbey, a shrine and shell
Last Line: It shall be—where the shining horse guards are.
Subject(s): Authors & Authorship; London


If Shakespeare is the Abbey, a shrine and shell
Of bygone dynasties and regnal glory,
Then Chaucer, licensed by like allegory,
Is medieval Southwark's church, whose bell
Incited palmer Mirth his tales to tell
And drew dan English from his dormitory.
Think also what a labyrinth of story
The Tower is, which is Spenser; and mark well
How Paul's, in sun or mist a Milton, keeps
Dome lifted above dome to be light's tent.
What else? There's London Bridge that overleaps
The warehoused tideway—Dickens seeking Kent!—
Not unespied of the white Monument,
That spectre in the City and ghost of Pepys:
That pillar upbreathed from heaps
Of ashes so renewed that not even Pope
Might find there for old sarcasm present scope,
But rather nurse the hope
That if his own correctness win through war,
It shall be—where the shining Horse Guards are.





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