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| IN Liverpool, the good old town, we miss | |
| The grand old relics of a reverend past,— | |
| Cathedrals, shrines that pilgrims come to kiss,— | |
| Walls wrinkled by the blast. | |
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| Some crypt or keep, historically dear, | 5 |
| You find, go where you will, all England through: | |
| But what have we to venerate,—all here | |
| Ridiculously new. | |
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| We have our Castle Street, but castle none; | |
| Redeross Street, but its legend who can learn; | 10 |
| Oldhall Street, too, we have, the old hall gone; | |
| Tithebarn Street, but no barn. | |
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| Huge warehouses for cotton, rice, and corn, | |
| Tea and tobacco, log and other woods, | |
| Oils, tallow, hides that smell so foully foreign, | 15 |
| Yea, all things known as goods,— | |
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| These we can show, but nothing to restore | |
| The spirit of old times, save here and there | |
| An ancient mansion with palatial door, | |
| In some degenerate square. | 20 |
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| Then rise the merchant princes of old days, | |
| Their silken dames, their skippers from the strand, | |
| Who brought their sea-borne riches, not always | |
| Quite free from contraband. | |
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| And these their mansions, to base uses come,— | 25 |
| Harbors for fallen fair ones, drifting tars; | |
| Some manufactories of blacking, some | |
| Tobacco and cigars. | |
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| We have a church that one almost reveres,— | |
| St. Nicholas, nodding by the river-side,— | 30 |
| In old times hailed by ancient mariners | |
| That came up with the tide. | |
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| And there ’s St. Peter’s, too, not quite so frail, | |
| Yet old enough for antiquated thoughts: | |
| Ah, many a time I lean against the rail | 35 |
| To hear its sweet cracked notes. | |
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| For when the sun has clomb the middle sky, | |
| And wandered down the short hour after noon, | |
| Then to the heedless world that hurries by | |
| The clock bells clink a tune. | 40 |
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| They give us “Home, Sweet Home” in plaintive key, | |
| And in its turn breaks out “The Scolding Wife,” | |
| To show that home, however sweet it be, | |
| Is yet not free from strife. | |
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| But sometimes “Auld Lang Syne” comes clinking forth, | 45 |
| And surely every listening heart is charmed; | |
| For what are even the sorrows of the earth | |
| When, past, they are transformed? | |
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| Yet all is so ridiculously new, | |
| Except, perhaps, the river and the sky, | 50 |
| The waters and the immemorial blue | |
| Forever sailing by. | |
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| Ay, they are old, but new as well as old, | |
| For old and new are just the same sky dream,— | |
| One metal in a slightly different mould, | 55 |
| The same refiltered stream. | |
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