Punch: Punch (21.1851)

174

PUNCH OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

THE LAST NIGHT IN THE CRYSTAL PALACE.

THE time is close on midnight; above the roof of giass

With a tremulous touch of silver the Autumn Moon doth pass ;
Now with paly fire uplighting a stretch of crystal wall,
And anon her level glories on the Transept letting fall:
But with the night she waneth, and her lamp is getting low,
And her fair head she hath hooded, forth from the sky to go;
But timidly, and tenderly, she first hath raised her veil,
To press a fond and farewell kiss on the Statue faces pale,
That in the Crystal Palace look down so chaste and chill,
Now the bells have ceased their booming, and the groaning gongs
are still,

And for buzz of myriad voices, and tramp of myriad feet,
There reigns so deep a silence you may hear your own heart beat.

'Twas in this awful silence I stood within the place,
And thought of all this toiling and triumph of my race ;
Of the weary stretch of ocean, the weary waste of shore,
That for this wondrous gathering must have been travelled o'er;
What toiling hands and thinking heads; what wealth, and want,
and woe;

What hopes and fears, and joys and griefs, have joined to make
the show;

How, under contribution, my country, strong of will,
Hath laid both forge and workshop, quarry, and mine, and mill;
How into Art's high studio she hath come with bold demand,
And all she found there worthiest, hath swept, from every land ;
Through the wide field of Nature hath sent labourers everywhere,
To garner up the harvest of water, earth, and air:
How, not recking creed or colour, her summons she sent forth
Erom African Saharas, to the snow-fields of the North ;
And how, with hand all weaponless, and with a naked breast,
She folded in her great embrace the whole World for a guest—
And my heart swell'd high with thankful pride that I was England's son,
When came the sad and sudden thought—what's done must be undone !
That, the day now on its closing the last day was to be,
That those flood-gates would open to let in their human sea ;
That with to-morrow's sunrise the mighty trophy falls,
Beared by the Industry of Earth within these crystal walls.