Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A NOCTURNE AT GREENWICH, by VICTOR GUSTAVE PLARR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A NOCTURNE AT GREENWICH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Far out, beyond my window, in the gloom
Last Line: Out yonder in the gloom.
Subject(s): Cities; Night; Rivers; Ships & Shipping; Urban Life; Bedtime


Far out, beyond my window, in the gloom
Nightly I see thee loom,
Thou vast black city. Oh, but night is kind,
Here where Thames' waters wind,
To the grim formless features of thy face.
They do assume such grace
In the deep darkness, starred through leagues of night,
With long streets, fringed with light,
Or with the lanthorns of the ships that aye
Ascend the water-way,
Coasting from East and West, and North and South,
To this, Earth's harbour-mouth.
Up from the darkness echoes sleepily
The shipman's wandering cry,
Or, like a wild beast's call heard in a dream,
The siren's undulant scream
Whistles the darkling midnight through and through,
While with her labouring screw
Some dim leviathan of ships drops down
Past storied Greenwich town,
Showing her swiftly-gliding starboard light,
Green 'gainst the wide dark night.
Past the great hospital she drops, and past
The marshes, still and vast,
Below the lines of Woolwich and the lines
Of Bostal's shadowy pines,
On to that world of Saxon brine and fen,
Old races, vanished men,
Where Thames, from heron-haunted shores set free,
Merges in northern sea.
Here, in my chamber, 'mong my books, at peace,
I watch thee without cease,
Thou ancient stream, mysterious as the sky
Which starless glooms on high.
About me, on the volume-peopled wall,
The famed old authors all
Sleep their just sleep, and in the hearth's clear beams
Dante's medallion gleams,
And Brutus and great Tully o'er the shelves
Commune among themselves.
This silent music of what once hath been
Suits well with that night scene:
Nay, its essential sweetness sweeter grows,
Because that river flows
Through northern midnight, big with life and doom,
Out yonder in the gloom.





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