Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Liverpool

The Mersey and the Irwell

By Bessie Rayner Parkes (1829–1925)

Suggested by a very curious and interesting model of the little town of Liverpool, as it existed in the earlier part of the last century.

A CENTURY since the Mersey flowed

Unburdened to the sea;

In the blue air no smoky cloud

Hung over wood and lea,

Where the old church with the fretted tower

Had a hamlet round its knee.

And all along the eastern way

The sheep fed on the track;

The grass grew quietly all the day,—

Only the rooks were black;

And the pedler frightened the lambs at play

With his knapsack on his back.

Where blended Irk and Irwell streamed

While Britons pitched the tent,

Where legionary helmets gleamed,

And Norman bows were bent,

An ancient shrine was once esteemed

Where pilgrims daily went.

A century since the pedler still

Somewhat of this might know,—

Might see the weekly markets fill

And the people ebb and flow

Beneath St. Mary’s on the hill

A hundred years ago.

Since then a vast and filmy veil

Is o’er the landscape drawn,

Through which the sunset hues look pale,

And gray the roseate dawn;

And the fair face of hill and dale

Is apt to seem forlorn.

Smoke, rising from a thousand fires,

Hides all that passed from view;

Vainly the prophet’s heart aspires,—

It hides the future too;

And the England of our slow-paced sires

Is thought upon by few.

Yet man lives not by bread alone,—

How shall he live by gold?

The answer comes in a sudden moan

Of sickness, hunger, and cold;

And, lo! the seed of a new life sown

In the ruins of the old!

The human heart, which seemed so dead,

Wakes with a sudden start;

To right and left we hear it said,

“Nay; ’t is a noble heart,”

And the angels whisper overhead,

“There ’s a new shrine in the mart!”

And though it be long since daisies grew

Where Irk and Irwell flow,

If human love springs up anew,

And angels come and go,

What matters it that the skies were blue

A hundred years ago?