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

London

London

By Robert Leighton (1822–1869)

TO live in London was my young wood-dream,—

London, where all the books come from, the lode

That draws into its centre from all points

The bright steel of the world; where Shakespeare wrote,

And Eastcheap is, with all its memories

Of gossip Quickly, Falstaff, and Prince Hal;

Where are the very stones that Milton trod,

And Johnson, Garrick, Goldsmith, and the rest;

Where even now our Dickens builds a shrine

That pilgrims through all time will come to see,—

London! whose street names breathe such home to all:

Cheapside, the Strand, Fleet Street, and Ludgate Hill,

Each name a very story in itself.

To live in London!—London, the buskined stage

Of history, the archive of the past,—

The heart, the centre of the living world!

Wake, dreamer, to your village and your work.