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| IT is a goodly sight through the clear air, | |
| From Hampstead’s heathy height to see at once | |
| England’s vast capital in fair expanse,— | |
| Towers, belfries, lengthened streets, and structures fair. | |
| St. Paul’s high dome amidst the vassal bands | 5 |
| Of neighboring spires, a regal chieftain stands, | |
| And over fields of ridgy roofs appear, | |
| With distance softly tinted, side by side | |
| In kindred grace, like twain of sisters dear, | |
| The towers of Westminster, her Abbey’s pride: | 10 |
| While far beyond the hills of Surrey shine | |
| Through thin soft haze, and show their wavy line. | |
| Viewed thus, a goodly sight! but when surveyed | |
| Through denser air when moistened winds prevail, | |
| In her grand panoply of smoke arrayed, | 15 |
| While clouds aloft in heavy volumes sail, | |
| She is sublime. She seems a curtained gloom | |
| Connecting heaven and earth,—a threatening sign of doom. | |
| With more than natural height, reared in the sky, | |
| ’T is then St. Paul’s arrests the wondering eye; | 20 |
| The lower parts in swathing mist concealed, | |
| The higher through some half-spent shower revealed, | |
| So far from earth removed, that well, I trow, | |
| Did not its form man’s artful structure show, | |
| It might some lofty alpine peak be deemed,— | 25 |
| The eagle’s haunt, with cave and crevice seamed. | |
| Stretched wide on either hand, a rugged screen | |
| In lurid dimness, nearer streets are seen | |
| Like shoreward billows of a troubled main | |
| Arrested in their rage. Through drizzly rain | 30 |
| Cataracts of tawny sheen pour from the skies, | |
| Of furnace smoke black curling columns rise, | |
| And many tinted vapors slowly pass | |
| O’er the wide draping of that pictured mass. | |
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| So shows by day this grand imperial town, | 35 |
| And, when o’er all the night’s black stole is thrown, | |
| The distant traveller doth with wonder mark | |
| Her luminous canopy athwart the dark, | |
| Cast up, from myriads of lamps that shine | |
| Along her streets in many a starry line: | 40 |
| He wondering looks from his yet distant road, | |
| And thinks the northern streamers are abroad. | |
| “What hollow sound is that?” Approaching near, | |
| The roar of many wheels breaks on his ear. | |
| It is the flood of human life in motion! | 45 |
| It is the voice of a tempestuous ocean! | |
| With sad but pleasing awe his soul is filled, | |
| Scarce heaves his breast, and all within is stilled, | |
| As many thoughts and feelings cross his mind,— | |
| Thoughts, mingled, melancholy, undefined, | 50 |
| Of restless, reckless man, and years gone by, | |
| And time fast wending to eternity. | |
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