Classic Poem

Closes and courts and lanes,
—Devious, clustered thick,
The thoroughfare, mains and drains,
—People and mortar and brick,
Wood, metal, machinery, brains,
—Pen and composing stick:
——Fleet Street, but exquisite flame
———In the nebula once ere day and night
——Began their travail, or earth became,
———And all was passionate light.

Networks of wire overland,
—Conduits under the sea,
Aerial message from strand to strand
—By lightning that travels free,
Hither in haste to hand
—Tidings of destiny,
——These tingling nerves of the world's affairs
———Deliver remorseless, rendering still
——The fall of empires, the price of shares,
———The record of good and ill.

Tidal the traffic goes
—Citywards out of the town;
Townwards the evening ebb o'erflows
—This highway of old renown,
When the fog-woven curtains close,
—And the urban night comes down,
——Where souls are spilt and intellects spent
———O'er news vociferant near and far,
——From Hesperus hard to the Orient,
———From dawn to the evening star.

This is the royal refrain
—That burdens the boom and the thud
Of omnibus, mobus, wain,
—And the hoofs on the beaten mud,
From the Griffin at Chancery Lane
—To the portal of old King Lud—
——Fleet Street, diligent night and day,
———Of news of the mart and the burnished hearth,
——Seven hundred paces of narrow way,
———A notable bit of the earth.