Sonnet XLIII
London.
BLACK in the midnight lies the City vast.
Its dim horizon from my window high
I see shut in beneath a misty sky
Red with the light a million lamp-fires cast
Up from the humming streets. And now at last
With lessening roar the weary wheels go by.
At last in sleep all discords swoon and die.
Now wakes the solemn visionary Past,
Peopled with spirits of the mighty dead
Whose names are London’s glory and her shame—
Seers, poets, heroes, martyrs—deathless lives
Long blazoned in the chronicles of fame.
The inglorious Present veils its dwarfish head.
England’s ideal life alone survives!
