Islington
Paul Bewsher 1894 – 1966
Here slow decay with creeping finger peels
The yellow plaster from the grimy walls,
Like leprous lichen, day by day which falls,
And, day by day, more rotting stone reveals!
Here are old mournful squares through which there steals
No cheerful music, or the heedless calls
Of laughing children; and the smoke, which crawls
Across the sky, the heavy silence seals!
Lean, blackened trees stretch up their withered boughs
Behind the rusty railings, prison-bound,
In vain they seek the summer sunlight's gold
In which their long-dead fathers used to drowse:
For pallid terraces lie far around,
In gloomy sadness ever growing old.
Ochey-les-Bains, 1917.
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 32 sec read
- 6 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABBAABBA XCDACD |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 639 |
Words | 106 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 6 |
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"Islington" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/56374/islington>.
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