Nocturne: Blue & Gold, Old Battersea Bridge, 1872

James Abbot McNeill Whistler (USA 1834-1903)

Oil on canvas, 68 cm x 51 cm

Tate Gallery, London-

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To James Mcneill Whistler
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Under a stagnant sky,
Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom,
The River, jaded and forlorn,
Welters and wanders wearily -- wretchedly -- on;
Yet in and out among the ribs
Of the old skeleton bridge, as in piles
Of some dead lake-built city, full of skulls,
Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories,
Lingers to bable to a broken tune
(Once, O, the unvoiced music of my heart!)
So melancholy a soliloquy
It sounds as it might tell
The secret of the unending grief-in-grain,
The terror of Time and Change and Death,
That wastes this floating, transitory world.
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What of the incantation
That forced the huddled shapes on yonder shore
To take and wear the night
Like a material majesty?
That touched the shafts of wavering fire
About this miserable welter and wash --
(River, O River of Journeys, River of Dreams!)--
Into long, shining signals from the panes
Of an enchanted pleasure-house,
Where life and life might live life lost in life
For ever and evermore?

O Death! O Change! O Time!
Without you, O, the insufferable eyes
Of these poor Might-Have-Beens,
These fatuous, ineffectual Yesterdays!
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William Ernest Henley (Great-Britain 1849 -1903)
The Works of William Ernest Henley
London, 1921
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