Evening falls on the smoky walls,
And the railings drip with rain,
And I will cross the old river
To see my girl again.
The great and solemn-gliding tram,
Love’s still-mysterious car,
Has many a light of gold and white,
And a single dark red star.
I know a garden in a street
Which no one ever knew;
I know a rose beyond the Thames,
Where flowers are pale and few.
I found this poem by James Elroy Flecker (1884–1915) quite by chance when I was looking through one of those Poems on the Underground anthologies in a charity shop.
I have a personal connection with the poem because it reminds me that my father said he had never actually been south of the river until he met my mother.
I’m not sure exactly when it was written. Although it is more traditional in form, I think the opening lines have something of the same urban feel as T S Eliot’s Preludes.
Flecker was only thirty when he died, not as you might imagine a casualty of the first world war, but from TB.
He’s best known for poems that have a connection to the middle east, where he worked as a diplomat, such as The Gate of Damascus. With Ballad of the Londoner he created a fine, evocative poem of the city, adding to the great collective picture of London that so many poets have left behind.
The Good Reader 