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Robert Laurence Binyon - The Wharf On Thames—Side; Winter Dawn
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Day begins cold and misty on soiled snow
 That frost has ridged and crusted. Sound of steps
 Comes, then a shape emerges from the mist
 Without haste, trudging tracks the feet know well,
 With his breath white upon the air before him,
 To old work. Over the river hangs a crane
 At the wharf`s edge. Scarved, wheezing, buttoned up,
 The stubble--bearded crane--man eyes the tide
 Ruckling against moored barges under the bridge,
 Considers the blank moon, the obstinate frost,
 Swings arms and beats them on his breast for warmth,
 And to his engine--cabin disappears.
 Full, fast, impetuous the tide floods up Thames,
 And the solitary morning steals abroad
 Over a million roofs, intensely still
     And distant in a dark sleep. For whose joy
 Was it, the February moon all night
 Beamed silence, like the healing of all noise,
 And beauty, like compassion, upon mean
 Litter of energy and trading toil,--
 Cinder--heaps, sacks, tarpaulins, and stale straw;
 Empty and full trucks; rails; and rows of carts,
 Shafts tilted backwards; musty railway--arch,
 Dingy brick wall, huddled slate roofs? It shone
 On the clean snow and the fouled; touches of light
 Mysterious as a dreamer`s smile! For whom
 Rose before dawn the spiritual pale mist,
 When imperceptibly the hue of the air
 Was altered, and the dwindled beamless moon
 Looked like an exiled ghost; till opposite
 The vapour flushed to airy rose, and dawn
     Made the first long faint shadows? Now the smoke
 Begins to go up from those chimnied roofs
 Across the water. Trains with hissing speed
 And frosty flashes cross the shaken bridge,
 Filled each with faces, eager and uneager,
 Tired and fresh, young and old; bound for the desk,
 The stool, the counter--threads in the roaring loom
 Of London. What thoughts have they in their eyes
 That idly fall on the familiar river
 This passive moment before toil usurps
 Hand and brain? Each a separate--memoried world
 Of scheme and fancy, of dreads and urgent hopes,
 Hungers and solaces! But which keeps not
 A private corner deep in heart or mind
 Where dwells what no one else knows? And they pass
 Nameless, in thousands, with their mysteries, by us.

 Slowly the city is waking in all its streets,
 But dark, impetuous, silent, full, up Thames
 The tide comes, like a lover to his own;
 Comes like a lover, as if it sought to pour
 Secrets to its listener, of vast night, and the old
 Bright moon--lit oceans; of wild breaths of brine;
 Of tall ships that it swung to an anchorage
 In the misty dawn, and wanderers far away
 On the outer seas among adventurous isles
 Whose names are homely here. As if the blood
 Of this our race poured back upon its heart,
 Drawn by that moon of pale farewell, it comes
 Brimming and buoyant, with an eager ripple
 Against the black--stemmed barges, and swift swirl
 Of sucking eddies by stone piers, and sound
 Like laughter along the grimed wall of the wharf.

 A great horse, tugging at a truck, stamps hoofs
 Upon the frozen ground. A man beside him
 Shouts or is silent. Labourers here and there
 Deliberately, in habit`s motion, take
 Each his work: from the barges lighter--men
 Call, and the crane moves, rattling in its iron.
      It is plain day. Still the up--streaming tide
 Pours its swift secret, and the fading moon
 Lingers aloft. But now the wakened wharf,
 Stirred from its numbness, the bright rails, the trucks
 With snow upon them, and the hoisting crane,
 Are touched with all the difference of mankind;
 And the river whispering out of the travelled seas
 Of foreign ships and countries, comes to them
 With a familiar usage; each appears
 As a faculty of the morning, that begins
 Once more the inter--threaded toil of men.
Source
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