Not within a granite pass, <br />Dim with flowers and soft with grass-- <br />Nay, but doubly, trebly sweet <br />In a poplared London street, <br />While below my windows go <br />Noiseless barges, to and fro, <br />Through the night's calm deep, <br />Ah! what breaks the bonds of sleep? <br /> <br />No steps on the pavement fall, <br />Soundless swings the dark canal; <br />From a church-tower out of sight <br />Clangs the central hour of night. <br />Hark! the Dorian nightingale! <br />Pan's voice melted to a wail! <br />Such another bird <br />Attic Tereus never heard. <br /> <br />Hung above the gloom and stain-- <br />London's squalid cope of pain-- <br />Pure as starlight, bold as love, <br />Honouring our scant poplar-grove, <br />That most heavenly voice of earth <br />Thrills in passion, grief or mirth, <br />Laves our poison'd air <br />Life's best song-bath crystal-fair. <br /> <br />While the starry minstrel sings <br />Little matters what he brings, <br />Be it sorrow, be it pain, <br />Let him sing and sing again, <br />Till, with dawn, poor souls rejoice, <br />Wakening, once to hear his voice, <br />Ere afar he flies, <br />Bound for purer woods and skies.<br /><br />Edmund William Gosse<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/philomel-in-london/
