Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
By the Statue of King Charles at Charing CrossLionel Johnson (18671902)
S
Great glooms, and starry plains;
Gently the night wind sighs;
Else a vast silence reigns.
Around me: and around
The saddest of all Kings,
Crown’d, and again discrown’d.
Hard by his own Whitehall.
Only the night wind glides:
No crowds, nor rebels, brawl.
The stars his courtiers are:
Stars in their stations set;
And every wandering star.
The fair and fatal King:
Dark night is all his own,
That strange and solemn thing.
The stars; or those sad eyes?
Which are more still and great:
Those brows, or the dark skies?
In passionate tragedy,
Never was face so stern
With sweet austerity.
By beauty made amends:
The passing of his breath
Won his defeated ends.
Through death, life grew sublime.
Speak after sentence? Yea:
And to the end of time.
Bare to the stars of doom;
He triumphs now, the dead,
Beholding London’s gloom.
Vex’d in the world’s employ:
His soul was of the saints;
And art to him was joy.
Men hunger for thy grace:
And through the night I go,
Loving thy mournful face.
When all the cries are still,
The stars and heavenly deeps
Work out a perfect will.