LITERARY LONDONERS SHADES – The colors of Amy Levy, George Eliot and William Blake

LONDON IN JULY – Amy Levy

About Soho we went before the light. We went, unresting six, craving new fun, new scenes, new raptures, for the fevered night of rollicking laughter, drink and song, was done. The vault was void, but for the dawn’s great star that shed upon our path its silver flame, when La Paloma on a low guitar, abruptly from a darkened casement came. Harlem! All else shut out, I saw the hall, and you in your red shoulder sash come dancing, with Val against me languid by the wall, your burning coffee-colored eyes keen glancing aslant at mine, proud in your golden glory! I loved you, Cuban girl, fond sweet Diory. https://www.amazon.com/Amy-Levy-Critical-Naomi-Hetherington/dp/0821419064

IN A LONDON DRAWINGROOM – George Eliot

The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke. For view there are the houses opposite, cutting the sky with one long line of wall, like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch. Monotony of surface & of form, without a break to hang a guess upon. No bird can make a shadow as it flies, for all is shadow, as in ways o’erhung by thickest canvass, where the golden rays are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering pauses to feed the hunger of the eye, or rest a little on the lap of life. All hurry on & look upon the ground, or glance unmarking at the passers by the wheels are hurrying too, cabs, carriages all closed, in multiplied identity. The world seems one huge prison-house & court, where men are punished at the slightest cost, with lowest rate of colour, warmth & joy. https://www.amazon.com/George-Eliot-Complete-Collection-ebook/dp/B01HSTI6TM/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487604605&sr=1-1&keywords=George+Eliot+poems

LONDON – William Blake

I wandered through each chartered street, near where the chartered Thames does flow, a mark in every face I meet, marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every man, in every infant’s cry of fear, in every voice, in every ban, the mind-forged manacles I hear: How the chimney-sweeper’s cry, every blackening church appals, and the hapless soldier’s sigh runs in blood down palace-walls. But most, through midnight streets I hear how the youthful harlot’s curse, blasts the new-born infant’s tear, and blights with plagues the marriage-hearse. https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Poems-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140422153/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487604648&sr=1-2&keywords=William+Blake+poems

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