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| THE SUN is on the crowded street; | |
| It kindles those old towers, | |
| Where England’s noblest memories meet, | |
| Of old historic hours. | |
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| Vast, shadowy, dark, and indistinct, | 5 |
| Tradition’s giant fane, | |
| Whereto a thousand years are linked | |
| In one electric chain. | |
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| So stands it when the morning light | |
| First steals upon the skies, | 10 |
| And, shadowed by the fallen night, | |
| The sleeping city lies. | |
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| It stands with darkness round it cast, | |
| Touched by the first cold shine; | |
| Vast, vague, and mighty as the past, | 15 |
| Of which it is the shrine. | |
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| ’T is lovely when the moonlight falls | |
| Around the sculptured stone, | |
| Giving a softness to the walls, | |
| Like love that mourns the gone. | 20 |
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| Then comes the gentlest influence | |
| The human heart can know, | |
| The mourning over those gone hence | |
| To the still dust below. | |
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| The smoke, the noise, the dust of day, | 25 |
| Have vanished from the scene; | |
| The pale lamps gleam with spirit ray | |
| O’er the park’s sweeping green. | |
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| Sad shining on her lonely path, | |
| The moon’s calm smile above, | 30 |
| Seems as it lulled life’s toil and wrath | |
| With universal love. | |
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| Past that still hour, and its pale moon, | |
| The city is alive; | |
| It is the busy hour of noon, | 35 |
| When man must seek and strive. | |
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| The pressure of our actual life | |
| Is on the waking brow; | |
| Labor and care, endurance, strife, | |
| These are around him now. | 40 |
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| How wonderful the common street, | |
| Its tumult and its throng, | |
| The hurrying of the thousand feet | |
| That bear life’s cares along. | |
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| How strongly is the present felt, | 45 |
| With such a scene beside; | |
| All sounds in one vast murmur melt | |
| The thunder of the tide. | |
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| All hurry on,—none pause to look | |
| Upon another’s face: | 50 |
| The present is an open book | |
| None read, yet all must trace. | |
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| The poor man hurries on his race, | |
| His daily bread to find; | |
| The rich man has yet wearier chase, | 55 |
| For pleasure ’s hard to bind. | |
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| All hurry, though it is to pass | |
| For which they live so fast,— | |
| What doth the present but amass | |
| The wealth that makes the past? | 60 |
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| The past is round us,—those old spires | |
| That glimmer o’er our head; | |
| Not from the present is their fires, | |
| Their light is from the dead. | |
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| But for the past the present’s powers | 65 |
| Were waste of toil and mind | |
| But for those long and glorious hours | |
| Which leave themselves behind. | |
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