Classic Poem

JAMES SHIRLEY

The dusk of day's decline was hard on dark
 When evening trembled round thy glowworm lamp
 That shone across her shades and dewy damp
A small clear beacon whose benignant spark
Was gracious yet for loiterers' eyes to mark,
 Though changed the watchword of our English camp
 Since the outposts rang round Marlowe's lion ramp,
When thy steed's pace went ambling round Hyde Park.

And in the thickening twilight under thee
Walks Davenant, pensive in the paths where he,
The blithest throat that ever carolled love
 In music made of morning's merriest heart,
Glad Suckling, stumbled from his seat above
 And reeled on slippery roads of alien art.