And though I change, my valley knows no change.
And when I look on London's teeming streets,
On grim grey houses, and on leaden skies,
When speech seems but the babble of a crowd,
And music fails me, and my lamp of life
Burns low, and Art, my mistress, turns from me, --
Then do I pass beyond the Gate of Dreams
Into my kingdom, walking unconstrained
By ways familiar under Southern skies;
Nor unaccompanied; the dear dumb things
I lov'd once, have their immortality.
There too is all fulfilment of desire:
In this the valley of my Paradise
I find again lost ideals, dreams too fair
For lasting; there I meet once more mine own
Whom Death has stolen, or Life estranged from me, --
And thither, with the coming of the dark,
Thou comest, and the night is full of stars.
Ernest Currie.
Laudabunt Alii
There are some that long for a limpid lake by a blue Italian shore,
Or a palm-grove out where the rollers break and the coral beaches roar;
There are some for the land of the Japanee, and the tea-girls' twinkling feet;
And some for the isles of the summer sea, afloat in the dancing heat;
And others are exiles all their days, midst black or white or brown,
Who yearn for the clashing of crowded ways, and the lights of London town.
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