Strange far lives, manifold, each from the other, Sundered and secret and hid, that the waste sea hath sundered And the round earth and the sun, The marching stars and the soul's inexpugnable walls— Threads on the loom of London The lives of the world are woven, and her life is the warp of the world. But the grey weavers toil, Sightless men, beholding never the woof tremendous Nor its colours, but clamouring of idle things, Weave incurious here in the darkness webs of Destiny. Diverse colours: the colour of lions and of tawny deserts, Of thronged secular shrines and dim bazaars, Rich-gleaming, silent-floored— The colour of populous plains immense and of mighty rivers, And clouds flowing round the feet of the mountain walls of the world. All the fair colours of time-enduring cities, All the ashen tones of rude ephemeral camps And sudden seething towns, The sheen of the wide pampas, the shade of the lone estancia. The colour of monstrous Life, wallowing in great waters And deep shadow of forests, where glittering-eyed The stealthy hunters crawl, And one by one, silently footing the silent pathway, Dusk burden-bearers pass, balancing their loads. The blackness of under-earth and the soft gloaming of caverns Under the green sea— Thence with a swift shudder emerges, races a splendour Along the loom, as of fabulous jewels ranged On white bosoms of women, shaken with laughter, or sinister Flaming century-long, sole, the eye of a god. The gleaming of gold is there, of steel, the sword and the ploughshare, The long shimmer of rails vanishing in remote perspectives, The solemn stain of blood, This is the web of London dipped in the dyes of the world. Blindly the weavers toil, But deep tides are driving the measureless loom and the spindles That are spinning through all the hours with the spinning of Earth. The Sea wrought it, the Sea brought it, and therefore exulting The welcoming water chants with the garrulous keel, "Life, Life we bear!" And again whispers to the walls of the unheeding city "Life." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AFTER WINTER by STERLING ALLEN BROWN ANOTHER SPRING by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI THE HEART OF THE WOMAN by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS FALSE FRIEND by GHALIB IBN RIBAH AL-HAJJAM GREENES FUNERALLS: SONNET 7 by RICHARD BARNFIELD THE HOUREGLASSE by JOSEPH BEAUMONT |