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Home  »  The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse  »  187 . O City, look the Eastward Way

Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.

By Enid Derham

187 . O City, look the Eastward Way

O CITY, look the Eastward way!

Beyond thy roofs of shadowy red and grey

Floats like a lily on the airy stream,

Radiant and vast, a cloud,

Around whose billowy head

Splendour from out the glooming West is shed

As if it were not ever to take flight,—

And on its edge of gleam

In the clear blue of waning afternoon,

Faint as a spirit slipping from the shroud,

Faint, and yet gathering light,

The Moon.

O city, dream and pray!

This is thy evensong at close of day.