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.
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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!
_Laurence Housman._