A SUBURBAN NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT |
  With a full house of other folks I pass the night at Sevenoaks; And, for the air is still outside, Push the new-painted lattice wide Where night’s blue decent quilt is drawn Over the shrubs and tennis-lawn Up to the very star-lit face Of the dim unacquainted place. A yellow street-lamp, hid to me, Haloes a dusky-headed tree, And, by a hedge-row screened from sight, Paves the still road with tranquil light, Save where the path gold-parapetted Lies by a shade of leaves o’erfretted; Leaves dangle dark above the fence, Their shadowy forms sole evidence Of their sweet-breath’d nocturnal sleeping And leaves out-face the light which leaping A war with monstrous gloom to wage Spangles a den of foliage. A second lamp that burns in sight Fronts shops fast closÈd for the night Whose white faÇades are all as mild As eye-lids of a sleeping child Which in their mute mendacity The bustle of the day belie. Among the darkling trees set back, With many a swarthy chimney-stack, The great, rich houses of the place Lie all unlit, while the slow pace Of night goes on and still lets be Their dark inert felicity. Here is all still, save when again The shuddering cries of the hid train, Deep in the cutting no one sees, Muffled below the heavy trees, Waken the sleeping shrubberies; And, with red speed and scudding spark, Disperse the arboreal-scented dark. Were’t not for these, there is no doubt But some fair daemon long cast out (The authentic goddess of the place Who far too long hath screened her face And beauty in some beechen bole Gigantic in the woods of Knole) Would choose this night for her returning, The lawns with silent footfall spurning; And such mis-shapen woodland gods As work-men with their laden hods Scattered, when Progress came with Pride And bound in brick the country-side And Sevenoaks was edified. To-night the wan demesne out-spread By star-light waits her wonted tread;— Fair! (for the dripping herb is so Fragrant and dark) forget to know That the dim grass, your sweet resort, Is branded for a tennis-court, Where silent conies scrambled through The grey-clumped fox-gloves drenched with dew In the old days so dear to you. O pardon and forget it all, The long insulting interval, Know all a dream, believe them gone, The urban race, nor having done Hurt to your oaks nor stained your streams; So stay, until the windy gleams Of dawn the occult sweet minstrels wake. Then through the gloaming by-ways take Your way bent-headed whence you stole Last night, the covert ferns of Knole, Ere the first yawning maid unbars The door and drives away the stars; Lest haply from the northern sky Smite on your ear the long-drawn sigh (There where the silence was most deep) Of London turning in her sleep.
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