Scherzando

DOWN through the ancient StrandThe spirit of October, mild and boonAnd sauntering, takes his wayThis golden end of afternoon,As though the corn stood yellow in all the land,And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon.

Lo! the round sun, half-down the western slope—Seen as along an unglazed telescope—Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day:Gifting the long, lean, lanky streetAnd its abounding confluences of beingWith aspects generous and bland;Making a thousand harnesses to shineAs with new ore from some enchanted mine,And every horse’s coat so full of sheenHe looks new-tailored, and every ’bus feels clean,And never a hansom but is worth the feeing;And every jeweller within the paleOffers a real Arabian Night for sale;And even the roarOf the strong streams of toil, that pause and pourEastward and westward, sounds suffused—Seems as it were bemusedAnd blurred, and like the speechOf lazy seas on a lotus-haunted beach—With this enchanted lustrousness,This mellow magic, that (as a man’s caressBrings back to some faded face, beloved before,A heavenly shadow of the grace it woreEre the poor eyes were minded to beseech)Old things transfigures, and you hail and blessTheir looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more:Till Clement’s, angular and cold and staid,Gleams forth in glamour’s very stuffs arrayed;And Bride’s, her aëry, unsubstantial charmThrough flight on flight of springing, soaring stoneGrown flushed and warm,Laughs into life full-mooded and fresh-blown;And the high majesty of Paul’sUplifts a voice of living light, and calls—Calls to his millions to behold and seeHow goodly this his London Town can be!

For earth and sky and airAre golden everywhere,And golden with a gold so suave and fineThe looking on it lifts the heart like wine.Trafalgar Square(The fountains volleying golden glaze)Shines like an angel-market. High aloftOver his couchant Lions, in a hazeShimmering and bland and soft,A dust of chrysoprase,Our Sailor takes the golden gazeOf the saluting sun, and flames superb,As once he flamed it on his ocean round.The dingy dreariness of the picture-place,Turned very nearly bright,Takes on a luminous transiency of grace,And shows no more a scandal to the ground.The very blind man pottering on the kerb,Among the posies and the ostrich feathersAnd the rude voices touched with all the weathersOf the long, varying year,Shares in the universal alms of light.The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires,The height and spread of frontage shining sheer,The quiring signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires—’Tis El Dorado—El Dorado plain,The Golden City! And when a girl goes by,Look! as she turns her glancing head,A call of gold is floated from her ear!Golden, all golden! In a golden glory,Long-lapsing down a golden coasted sky,The day, not dies but, seemsDispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shedUpon a past of golden song and storyAnd memories of gold and golden dreams.