Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ANNUS MIRABILIS (1902), by LAURENCE HOUSMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ANNUS MIRABILIS (1902), by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Daylight was down, and up the cool
Last Line: And nightingales at battersea!
Subject(s): London


DAYLIGHT was down, and up the cool
Bare heaven the moon, o'er roof and elm,
Daughter of dusk most wonderful,
Went mounting to her realm:
And night was only half begun
Round Edwardes Square in Kensington.

A Sabbath-calm possessed her face,
An even glow her bosom filled;
High in her solitary place
The huntress-heart was stilled:
With bow and arrows all laid down
She stood and looked on London town.

Nay, how can sight of us give rest
To that far-travelled heart, or draw
The musings of that tranquil breast?
I thought -- and gazing, saw
Far up above me, high, oh, high,
From south to north a heron fly!

Oh, swiftly answered! yonder flew
The wings of freedom and of hope!
Little of London town he knew,
The far horizon was his scope.
High up he sails, and sees beneath
The glimmering ponds of Hampstead Heath,

Hendon, and farther out afield
Low water-meads are in his ken,
And lonely pools by Harrow Weald,
And solitudes unloved of men,
Where he his fisher's spear dips down:
Little he knows of London town.

So small, with all its miles of sin,
Is London to the grey-winged bird,
A cuckoo called at Lincoln's Inn
Last April; in Soho was heard
The missel-thrush with throat of glee,
And nightingales at Battersea!





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