Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HIGH TIDE ON THE VICTORIA EMBANKMENT: 3. THE LOOM OF LONDON, by MARGARET LOUISA WOODS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HIGH TIDE ON THE VICTORIA EMBANKMENT: 3. THE LOOM OF LONDON, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Strange far lives, manifold, each from the other
Last Line: "and again whispers to the walls of the unheeding city ""life."
Alternate Author Name(s): Woods, Mrs. Margaret Louisa Bradley
Subject(s): London; Seashore; Ships & Shipping; Victoria, Queen Of England (1819-1901); Beach; Coast; Shore


Strange far lives, manifold, each from the other,
Sundered and secret and hid, that the waste sea hath sundered
And the round earth and the sun,
The marching stars and the soul's inexpugnable walls—
Threads on the loom of London
The lives of the world are woven, and her life is the warp of the world.

But the grey weavers toil,
Sightless men, beholding never the woof tremendous
Nor its colours, but clamouring of idle things,
Weave incurious here in the darkness webs of Destiny.

Diverse colours: the colour of lions and of tawny deserts,
Of thronged secular shrines and dim bazaars,
Rich-gleaming, silent-floored—
The colour of populous plains immense and of mighty rivers,
And clouds flowing round the feet of the mountain walls of the world.

All the fair colours of time-enduring cities,
All the ashen tones of rude ephemeral camps
And sudden seething towns,
The sheen of the wide pampas, the shade of the lone estancia.

The colour of monstrous Life, wallowing in great waters
And deep shadow of forests, where glittering-eyed
The stealthy hunters crawl,
And one by one, silently footing the silent pathway,
Dusk burden-bearers pass, balancing their loads.

The blackness of under-earth and the soft gloaming of caverns
Under the green sea—
Thence with a swift shudder emerges, races a splendour
Along the loom, as of fabulous jewels ranged
On white bosoms of women, shaken with laughter, or sinister
Flaming century-long, sole, the eye of a god.

The gleaming of gold is there, of steel, the sword and the ploughshare,
The long shimmer of rails vanishing in remote perspectives,
The solemn stain of blood,
This is the web of London dipped in the dyes of the world.

Blindly the weavers toil,
But deep tides are driving the measureless loom and the spindles
That are spinning through all the hours with the spinning of Earth.
The Sea wrought it, the Sea brought it, and therefore exulting
The welcoming water chants with the garrulous keel,
"Life, Life we bear!"
And again whispers to the walls of the unheeding city "Life."





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