LONDON STREETS T^ .1 TT A 1 By Arthur H. Adams LONDON STREETS LONDON STREETS By ARTHUR H. ADAMS Author of "Tussock Land," etc. T. N. FOULIS LONDON AND EDINBURGH J906 TURNBUU. AND PEAR9, PRINTERS. EDINBURGH. CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION The Web ... 7 1. The Strand ..... 8 2. Fleet Street ..... 10 3. The Temple ..... 12 INTERLUDE Atropos . . .15 4. Regent Street ..... 18 5. Bond Street . . . . .20 INTERLUDE-Andromeda . . . .23 6. Bayswatcr, W. ..... 26 7. Hyde Park ..... 30 INTERLUDE Eurydice . . . .33 8. The East ...... 37 9. Cheyne Walk, Chelsea .... 40 10. Victoria Street, S.W. . . -43 INTRODUCTION THE WEB I ON DON, that like a vast grey cobweb lies i Upon green England, in i whose maze outspread Pale Youth, with all his splendours from him bled, And whining Wealth that still regrets and sighs, And meanly murdered Happiness, like flies Are caught and strangled and yet are not dead! And at the centre, silent and full-fed, A spider, old, contemplative and wise ! Ah, far from England float those filaments ; Weaving old wizardry they touch and claim Tribute of souls from unseen continents ! In that Great Greyness prisoners they lie. There, drawn by the great lure of that great name, My alien heart, shrivelled and long sucked dry! 7 THE STRAND STAND, perturbed on unknown shores : Life ruthlessly about me roars ; The turbid torrent of the Strand Along its narrow tide- way pours ! Into the fog the far street shoals, Dimming its vistas and its goals. Cabs from the mist into the mist Hurry, like hapless driven souls ! Cart-horses, alien in the loud Terror of traffic, patient, proud, Remembering quiet meadows wide Superbly triumph through the crowd. Lo ! like a mandate from the stars, One arm upraised the current bars ; And patient 'busses herded wait With squat, fierce-spitting motor cars ! There the twin churches desolate, High-islanded, their doomsday wait, When their tall spires that point reproof Shall be swept under that fierce spate. 8 For in the night a Strand unknown, Silver and spacious, swift has grown ; From the dull foam of traffic spring Nude Aphrodites of pale stone ! And in this narrow arena swirled Beat all the passions of the world ; Soul clashes endlessly on soul, Like atom upon atom hurled. And quests, adventures, vague and far, Wonders and wide enchantments are Borne on the tireless stream that goes From Charing Cross to Temple Bar. Romance lies there with outstretched hand. It is a new and faery land When I, high on a lurching 'bus, Go charioteering down the Strand ! FLEET STREET ,ENEATH this narrow, [jostling street, Unruffled by the noise of feet, Like a slow organ-note 1 1 hear The pulses of the great world beat. Unseen beneath the city's show Through this aorta ever flow The currents of the universe A thousand pulses throbbing low ! Unheard beneath the pavement's din Unknown magicians sit within Dim caves, and weave life into words On patient looms that spin and spin. There, uninspired, yet with the dower Of mightier mechanic power, Some bent, obscure Euripides Builds the loud drama of the hour ! There, from the gaping presses hurled, A thousand voices, passion-whirled, With throats of steel vociferate The incessant story of the world ! 10 So through this artery from age To age the tides of passion rage, The swift historians of each day Flinging a world upon a page ! And then I pause and gaze my fill Where cataracts of traffic spill Their foam into the Circus. Lo ! Look up, the crown on Ludgate Hill 1 Remote from all the city's moods, In high, untroubled solitudes, Like an old Buddha swathed in dream, St Paul's above the city broods ! THE TEMPLE T is a heart of silence in The city's heart. Slip from the din, Knock at a little hidden door, And peace and solitude begin ! Fleet Street's long echoes fade away, The cool, wide shadows drift and stay Staid pigeons dreaming on the flags, And large green leaves against the grey 1 About its feet the city brawls ; But deep within high sheltering walls The shadows dawdle listlessly, Reluctantly the fountain falls. For this an isle of silence seems, A cloistered peace between two streams, For Fleet Street here goes swirling past, And here the Thames remembering dreams. The city man the imminence Of this grave silence feels, and thence His loitering soul, enthralled, drifts on From reverie to reverence. 12 So like a shadow, cool, benign, Here quiet dwells, and I divine That one turned from the noisy road To rear to peace this hidden shrine. So the loud city has its deeps Of solitude, as though it keeps The silence of the country-side About the place where Goldsmith sleeps. It is as though the silence leant Above the cloisters to prevent Hurt to the heart that holds the heart Of that old Vicar of Content ! INTERLUDE-ATROPOS heart of hearts I've given her A little pale-cheeked milliner. Her name is Edith, but as all The day she plies the shears, I call Her Atropos she of the Fates Who with the quiet scissors waits. She sits and sews, with dainty care Moulding the gowns she may not wear. All day beneath her fingers fine Rich flowers of filmy wonder shine ; She seems an elfish gardener : Strange splendours blossom up to her ! She sits all day and cuts and sews, All day her restless needle goes, Above those glowing flowers of dream, Above the gossamer and gleam Glancing in haste and hovering nigh, Swift as a silver dragon-fly ! 15 The castle where my princess hides Is Westbourne Grove. Dull hours she bides, Weaving, with face as white as milk, Visions of sunlight out of silk ; Yet to her cheeks quick colour runs Once in the day, and only once ! For, trudging homeward, I can see Her throned amid her wizardry ; From castle-wall her window-seat She smiles a glory on the street, And I go by as in a swoon, And " Soon ! " my eager heart says, "Soon...!" For with the dark there comes the morn; Into another world we're borne ; And side by side so close we sit ! We see Heaven opening from the Pit The curtain lifts : with eager eyes We lean and gaze at Paradise ! 16 And when the nights forget to rain We saunter through a wide demesne A pleasaunce that is hers and mine From Marble Arch to Serpentine. And hand in hand, as lovers should, We thread a dim enchanted wood ! But when the gods in thunder speak And grant me two pounds ten a week, A loathly dragon I shall slay And reave my Atropos away, And rent a palace for my sweet In some dear dull suburban street ! Though numbered houses on each hand In dreary terraces may stand, Yet in our dreams we've always seen That cosy palace wedged between ! And there we'll live for aye because She'll drop her shears my Atropos ! REGENT STREET HE shops, like syrens, watch this strait; >With smiling lures [they lie in wait, i And the wide streams of voyagers Enchanted drift and hesitate. They hover there, strangely impelled Slaves to their tortures manacled Like dazed moths, drunken with the light, By these long splendours snared and held. About these perils glistening Negligently they pause and cling, Like bees upon the honeycomb Upon the windows clustering Yet unseen by those dreaming eyes, A piteous thing of greater price The pavement-hucksters sell, who are The merchants and the merchandise ! With punctual smile and gladness wan They glide past. Ah ! they long have gone Beyond all bitterness ; their hearts Are dead, and they live on, live on ! 18 Among the laughing, jostling show, Dead souls discarded, to and fro Winding about the ways of life, Pale ghosts of joyousness, they go ! It is as though some memory clings That back into the sunlight brings Amid this multitude of life That trail of dead, slow-gliding things. Ah ! old and grey the centuries, Yet Spring on Spring there must be these Waste souls cast out upon the heap The slag of passion's furnaces ! So as that opulence I tread Within my heart there lies a dread Lest I upon my arm should feel The piteous fingers of the dead ! Young laughter puts that awe to flight ; The day strolls by a long delight ; Till the long windows darken down, And, with a blaze of stars, the night ! And in the Circus's expanse With life's superb exuberance The glittering fire-flies of the cabs Beating about in endless dance ! 19 BOND STREET TS glittering emptiness it brings This little lane of useless things. Here peering envy arm in arm With ennui takes her saunterings. Here fretful boredom, to appease The nagging of her long disease, Comes day by day to dabble in This foamy sea of fripperies. The languid women driven through Their wearied lives, and in their view, Patient about the bakers' shops, The languid children, two and two ! The champing horses standing still, Whose veins with life's impatience thrill ; And dead beside the carriage-door The footman, masked and immobile ! And bloated pugs, those epicures Of darkened boudoirs and of sewers Lolling high on their cushioned thrones Blink feebly on their dainty wooers ! 20 And in the blossoming window-shows Each month another summer glows ; They pay the price of human souls To rear one rich and sickly rose. And a suave carven god of jade, By some enthralled old Asian made, With that thin scorn still on his lips, Waits, in a window-front displayed ; The hurrying, streaming crowds he sees. With the same smile he watches these As from his temple-dusk he saw The passing of the centuries ! INTERLUDE ANDROMEDA HE is a snared and prisoned thing A meek white moth with broken wing*. Life took her heart when it was yet Too young for grieving or regret, And slowly tamed his prisoner That glowing woman's heart of her ! She did not guess what Earth could give; She did not know she did not live ; Caught from the sun in Work's grey net And in a gloomy office set, Her breast sometimes forgot to sigh : Some days she hardly missed the sky. Her dewy gladness dull Work took To write dead figures in a book ; And on her high stool, hour by hour, 23 She sits a frail and long-stemmed flower ! And the days drag, each day the same : She is so soft a thing to maim ! She, made for love, of love compact, Has half-forgot the love she lacked ; She waits, a harp of slackened strings : One word of love its music brings. Each hour is but a death she dies : One hand in hers is Paradise. And when I kiss her lips at night She is a pool of still delight, Her low laugh a triumphant thing, Her voice a bird on buoyant wing ; And when I whisper low her name Her soul is but a shaken flame ! Her soul that dreams it is alive The grey ghouls take from nine till five. She adds up figures who to me Is a god-given mystery ! 24 They shut her heart in ledgers up Her heart that is a thirsty cup ! So long her life has bled and bled, They pay dead wages to one dead. Ah, still we chain, our gods to mock, Andromeda upon her rock ! But that young stifled heart of her Unbind me, gods ! her rescuer ! BAYSWATER, W. j BOUT me leagues of houses lie, Above me, grim and straight and high, They climb ; the terraces lean up Like long grey reefs against the sky. Packed tier on tier the people dwell ; Each narrow, hollow wall is full ; And in that hive of honeycomb, Remote and high, I have one cell. And when I turn into my street I hear in murmurous retreat A tide of noises flowing out The city ebbing from my feet ! And lo ! two long straight walls between, There dwells a little park serene, Where blackened trees and railings hem A little handkerchief of green. Yet I can see across the roof The sun, the stars and . . . God ! For proof- Between the twisted chimney-pots A pointing finger, old, aloof ! 26 The traffic that the city rends Within my quiet haven ends In a deep murmur, or across My pool a gentle ripple sends. A chime upon the silence drab Paints music ; hooting motors stab The pleasant peace, and, far and faint, The jangling lyric of the cab ! And when I wander, proud and free, Through my domain, unceasingly The endless pageant of the shops Marches along the street with me ! About me ever blossoming Like rich parterres the hoardings fling An opulence of hue and make Within my garden endless Spring ! The droning tram-cars spitting light : And, like great bees in drunken flight Burly and laden deep with bloom, The 'busses lumbering home at night ! 27 Sometimes an afternoon will fling New meaning on each sombre thing ; And low across the level roofs A strange cold sun comes shivering. Sometimes the fog that faery girl ! Her veil of wonder will unfurl, And crescent gaunt and looming flat Are sudden mysteries of pearl ! New miracles the wet streets show ; On stems of flame the gas-lamps glow. I walk upon the wave and see Another London drowned below. And when night comes strange jewels strew The winding streets I wander through : Like pearls upon a woman's throat The street lamps' swerving avenue. In every face that passes mine Unfathomed epics I divine : Each figure on the pavement is A vial of untasted wine ! 28 Through lands enchanted wandering, To all a splendour seems to cling. Lo ! from a window-beacon high Hope still the Night is questioning ! And so ere sleep I lie and mark Romance's stealthy footsteps. Hark ! The rhythm of the horse's hoof Bears some new drama through the dark So in this tall and narrow street I lie as in Death's lone retreat, And hear, in the loud pulse of Life, Eternity upon me beat ! HYDE PARK T is a robe of green dropt down A gallant blossom - broidered gown Flung by the Country as she fled From the grim onset of the Town. These quiet lawns in Winter's hold Are but a drab green cloth unrolled, Till conies that smart dressmaker, Spring, And slashes it with white and gold ! And, half-forgot, there seems to brood In these long lanes the country's mood ; The aimless lovers, mazed in joy, Dream through a strange enchanted wood. All day beneath a roof of sleep The pale green pools of sunlight creep : Between the straight black trunks all day The steady drift of browsing sheep. Bravely the human blossoms show From Marble Arch to Rotten Row : Like poppies nodding on the bank They watch the stream of fashion flow. 30 Blue eyes with all their hopes unsaid From faces beautiful and dead Stare bleakly out. Huge by them stroll Their gallants, pruned and corsetted ! Park Lane stands there a fisher set Beside a widening sea of debt Taking grim toll from a drowned world- Park Lane, slow drawing in his net ! And safe within these pleasant meads Little that gay Indifference heeds The patient menace of the Mass That in its East End sulks and breeds ! INTERLUDE-EURYDICE AM a clerk in prison held, *To a fat ledger manacled, i And she a thing of milk and pearl A little pale typewriter girl. This is her name Eurydice ; And she and I ... and I and she . . . ! High over London Town we greet : Our windows stare across the street ; And from the chasm flung between Comes up the roar of tides unseen. This solitude the gods allow Of birds upon the topmost bough ! And from my high and sheltered nook, By peering up across my book, I see her dainty fingers play, From hour to hour and day to day, That restless clacking melody That seems a song of love to me. c 33 And she can lean a little down And waft a smile back, or a frown ; For love and work a warfare wage, And in the middle of the page (That imp machine must bear the blame !) The naughty keys will type my name And though to see her I am glad, The endless columns that I add Sometimes refuse to add up right ; The figures dance upon my sight, Till I discover, tangled there, A straying tress of tawny hair ! And every day at twelve fifteen She covers up her tired machine, And like a bird she seems to drift On drooping pinion down the lift, And meets me, breathless, at the door: The wheels of life begin once more. 34 We dip into a hidden den Where our own corner waits us ; then I watch her busy with the tea One lump for her, and two for me ! Our hands may touch. Who would not be In Hades with Eurydice? And then the afternoon drags on, Till I look up and it is gone ! She nods two hat-pins in her mouth And so the end of my long drouth ! For punctually at five past five In London Town the gods arrive ! And as we saunter, every street Is a strewn carpet for our feet, Or golden staircase to a throne ; And all the city is our own ! The traffic chants a wedding psalm : Each with a dream walks arm in arm ! c* 35 At last we pause for parting where A gaping blackness waits for her. The door upon my longing clangs : A dragon has her in his fangs ! And she is swallowed up from me My little wan Eurydice ! And she is hurried far away Beneath my feet ; then dies my day. And, lacking just that little face, The city is a lonely place. On all a mist has drifted down, And London Town is London Town ! But every morn at half-past eight At those dark portals I await, Where the pale prisoners of Night Are spilled again up to the light. The black earth yields her up to me : I look not back Eurydice THE EAST ( HIS once was meadow-land ! . . The blame ? 1 Man, like a fallen angel, came ; Where his foot pressed it seared and slew, And this grey fungus rose in shame. They lie beneath those fields unseen, The gladness that long since has been : Lo, all the sombre houses stand Grey tombs above the murdered green ! And with the roofs for sunny sward Like crocuses in Spring, a horde Of soiled and crooked chimney-pots In grim array rise heavenward ! A country memory it brings One kicks a stone aside and flings Up to the unaccustomed light A pallid rout of stunted things. Beneath this sky that dulls and blurs What spacious hope within these stirs ? England an Empire sowed to reap This race of puny Englanders. 37 This grey dearth but a garden is For sickly lives of sordidness, Narrow as streets, and souls as mean And orderly as terraces. But o'er this grey sea shining fair Beacons to haven from despair From all the corners of all streets The lighthouses of London stare ! And lo ! with naphtha torches bright, In flickering bravery of light, The costers' stalls lead loudly on Their Bacchic pageant through the night ! And even here Joy beats his wings And to drab skies his madness flings : In these dull courts exultantly Life like a prisoned song-bird sings ! Solemnly rapt, on pavements wet The sombre children pirouette : These are the fields of Paradise ; The morning stars are singing yet ! And from this long monotony Of weary streets triumphantly Grimly persistent through the grey Youth flowers straight and tall and free ! 38 And oft from mean roofs one may lift Sad eyes and opens to him swift A spacious quietude of stars, Or fleets of galleon-clouds adrift ! CHEYNE WALK, CHELSEA LOW nuzzling tugs and barges brown That in the grey fog , drift and drown, 'And, dim as an old memory, The river dreaming up and down. Till, running with his torches bright, That swift incendiary, the Night, Sets the Embankment beaconing, And lo ! the tawny flood alight ! About the bridges flaming pyres Tell of loud work that never tires : The engineers unto their gods Feed nightly their great altar-fires. Sometimes the wan Magician-Mist, Weaving a world of amethyst, Draws Venice, dreaming, from her isles Venice, by tides of moonlight kissed ! River and flowing distance blur : Too still the world for breath to stir ! Like faery cobwebs floating high Vague bridges of blue gossamer ! 40 Gaunt factories melt into surmise Of dim facades in Paradise. Four chimneys over Battersea Like grim old campanili rise. Gloved fingers smudge the sun away. Below the bridge in drear array A funeral pageant passes by- Ghosts of slow barges swathed in grey ! But lovers, leaning from their dream, See, riding on a silver stream, Rich-laden argosies of Hope, For which no shipwreck waits, they deem ! Nay, immobile, with quiet eye, The serpent-river seems to lie, Watching her shores go drifting down, Londons on Londons flowing by ! And that old Hero-worshipper, His back to Man, still watches her The subtle, ancient, sullen flood Whom never any passions stir. She witched great Turner's glowing soul ; Grave Wordsworth gave her reverent dole ; She half unveiled at Whistler's grin- She passed, taking from all her toll. Contempt at Cleopatra's Stone She stares she who with Time has grown ; That frail ephemera of Man Touches her not : she moves alone. VICTORIA STREET, S.W. (The Agents-General.) . . . ~~ HERE beats the heart of Empire ? Where The hidden heart that yet shall stir Old England from her island-calm, And wake the Empire-pulse in her ? Not Whitehall, where our Lord of Sea From his mast-head sees gloomily A huge emporium of War O'er-top his shabby Admiralty ! Nor those long halls, where, lost in doubt, By party quarrels blown about, The candle lit for Liberty In windy parley gutters out ! Not that walled citadel uncouth Whose stones with blood are mortared smooth. Here History her shambles set, Maimed Faith, bled Justice, butchered Truth ! 43 Nor that fierce vortex where the Bank, Within its fortress squat and blank, Hoards gold like grain for which in turn The nations wait, like cabs on rank. Nor that old sanctuary of fame. In straight grey tongues of steady flame It beacons England ; but beyond Its radiance burns a greater name ! No. A thin pulse that is a spur To those far-sprawling limbs of her The Nations Four throbs secretly In this dour street in Westminster ! For here, with no grave splendour fit, No pomp of flags to blazon it, Behind a brass-plate on a door The Satraps of the Empire sit ! UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 708 481 7