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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Scotland: Vols. VI–VIII. 1876–79.

Glasgow

Glasgow

By Alexander Smith (1830–1867)

SING, Poet, ’t is a merry world;

That cottage smoke is rolled and curled

In sport, that every moss

Is happy, every inch of soil;—

Before me runs a road of toil

With my grave cut across.

Sing, trailing showers and breezy downs,—

I know the tragic hearts of towns.

City! I am true son of thine;

Ne’er dwelt I where great mornings shine

Around the bleating pens;

Ne’er by the rivulets I strayed,

And ne’er upon my childhood weighed

The silence of the glens.

Instead of shores where ocean beats,

I hear the ebb and flow of streets.

Black Labor draws his weary waves

Into their secret-moaning caves;

But with the morning light

That sea again will overflow

With a long, weary sound of woe,

Again to faint in night.

Wave am I in that sea of woes,

Which, night and morning, ebbs and flows.

I dwelt within a gloomy court,

Wherein did never sunbeam sport;

Yet there my heart was stirred,—

My very blood did dance and thrill,

When on my narrow window-sill

Spring lighted like a bird.

Poor flowers! I watched them pine for weeks,

With leaves as pale as human cheeks.

Afar, one summer, I was borne;

Through golden vapors of the morn

I heard the hills of sheep:

I trod with a wild ecstasy

The bright fringe of the living sea:

And on a ruined keep

I sat and watched an endless plain

Blacken beneath the gloom of rain.

O, fair the lightly sprinkled waste,

O’er which a laughing shower has raced!

O, fair the April shoots!

O, fair the woods on summer days,

While a blue hyacinthine haze

Is dreaming round the roots!

In thee, O city! I discern

Another beauty, sad and stem.

Draw thy fierce streams of blinding ore,

Smite on a thousand anvils, roar

Down to the harbor-bars;

Smoulder in smoky sunsets, flare

On rainy nights, while street and square

Lie empty to the stars.

From terrace proud to alley base,

I know thee as my mother’s face.

When sunset bathes thee in his gold,

In wreaths of bronze thy sides are rolled,

Thy smoke is dusty fire;

And from the glory round thee poured,

A sunbeam like an angel’s sword

Shivers upon a spire.

Thus have I watched thee, Terror! Dream!

While the blue Night crept up the stream.

The wild train plunges in the hills,

He shrieks across the midnight rills;

Streams through the shifting glare,

The roar and flap of foundry fires,

That shake with light the sleeping shires;

And on the moorlands bare

He sees afar a crown of light

Hang o’er thee in the hollow night.

At midnight, when thy suburbs lie

As silent as a noonday sky

When larks with heat are mute,

I love to linger on thy bridge,

All lonely as a mountain ridge,

Disturbed but by my foot;

While the black lazy stream beneath

Steals from its far-off wilds of heath.

And through thy heart, as through a dream,

Flows on that black disdainful stream;

All scornfully it flows,

Between the huddled gloom of masts,

Silent as pines unvexed by blasts,—

’Tween lamps in streaming rows,

O wondrous sight! O stream of dread!

O long, dark river of the dead!

Afar the banner of the year

Unfurls: but dimly prisoned here,

’T is only when I greet

A dropt rose lying in my way,

A butterfly that flutters gay

Athwart the noisy street,

I know the happy Summer smiles

Around thy suburbs, miles on miles.

’T were neither pæan now, nor dirge,

The flash and thunder of the surge

On flat sands wide and bare:

No haunting joy or anguish dwells,

In the green light of sunny dells,

Or in the starry air.

Alike to me the desert flower,

The rainbow laughing o’er the shower.

While o’er thy walls the darkness sails,

I lean against the churchyard rails;

Up in the midnight towers

The belfried spire, the street is dead,

I hear in silence overhead

The clang of iron hours:

It moves me not,—I know her tomb

Is yonder in the shapeless gloom.

All raptures of this mortal breath,

Solemnities of life and death,

Dwell in thy noise alone:

Of me thou hast become a part,—

Some kindred with my human heart

Lives in thy streets of stone;

For we have been familiar more

Than galley-slave and weary oar.

The beech is dipped in wine; the shower

Is burnished; on the swinging flower

The latest bee doth sit.

The low sun stares through dust of gold,

And o’er the darkening heath and wold

The large ghost-moth doth flit.

In every orchard Autumn stands,

With apples in his golden hands.

But all these sights and sounds are strange;

Then wherefore from thee should I range?

Thou hast my kith and kin;

My childhood, youth, and manhood brave;

Thou hast that unforgotten grave

Within thy central din.

A sacredness of love and death

Dwells in thy noise and smoky breath.