"England and Yesterday": A Book of Short Poems

Chapter 10: VIII. IN THE READING-ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

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About This Book

The collection gathers sonnets and shorter lyrics that observe English locales, chiefly London and Oxford, and move between public bustle and quiet precincts. Urban pieces register fog, crowds, docks, and social inequality alongside civic and ecclesiastical history; Oxford poems and pastoral lyrics dwell on college gardens, ancient churches, and memory. The verse balances formal sonnet discipline with lyrical interludes, employing vivid sensory detail and reflective, often elegiac tone. Recurring concerns include transience, the persistence of historical presence, spiritual consolation, and a moral awareness of poverty and beauty.

VIII.
IN THE READING-ROOM OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

Praised be the moon of books! that doth above

A world of men, the sunken Past behold,

And colour spaces else too void and cold,

To make a very heaven again thereof;

As when the sun is set behind a grove,

And faintly unto nether ether rolled,

All night, his whiter image and his mould

Grows beautiful with looking on her love.

Thou, therefore, moon of so divine a ray,

Lend to our steps both fortitude and light!

Feebly along a venerable way

They climb the infinite, or perish quite;

Nothing are days and deeds to such as they,

While in this liberal house thy face is bright.