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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Return to London

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

London

Return to London

By Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

FROM the dull confines of the drooping west,

To see the day spring from the pregnant east,

Ravisht in spirit, I come, nay more, I flie

To thee, blest place of my nativitie!

Thus, thus with hallowed foot I touch the ground,

With thousand blessings by thy fortune crown’d.

O fruitful genius! that bestowest here

An everlasting plenty, yeere by yeere.

O place! O people! manners! fram’d to please

All nations, customes, kindreds, languages!

I am a free-born Roman; suffer then,

That I amongst you live a citizen.

London my home is; though by hard fate sent

Into a long and irksome banishment,

Yet since call’d back, henceforward let me be,

O native countrey, repossest by thee!

For, rather then I ’le to the west return,

I ’le beg of thee first here to have mine urn.

Weak I am grown, and must in short time fall;

Give thou my sacred reliques buriall.