April Midnight

By Arthur Symons 1865–1945 Arthur Symons

Side by side through the streets at midnight,

Roaming together,

Through the tumultuous night of London,

In the miraculous April weather.

Roaming together under the gaslight,

Day’s work over,

How the Spring calls to us, here in the city,

Calls to the heart from the heart of a lover!

Cool to the wind blows, fresh in our faces,

Cleansing, entrancing,

After the heat and the fumes and the footlights,

Where you dance and I watch your dancing.

Good it is to be here together,

Good to be roaming,

Even in London, even at midnight,

Lover-like in a lover’s gloaming.

You the dancer and I the dreamer,

Children together,

Wandering lost in the night of London,

In the miraculous April weather.

Biography

British poet, critic, and translator Arthur Symons was born in Wales and educated by private tutors. At 16, Symons moved to London, where he joined a vibrant literary community and participated, alongside poets like William Butler Yeats, in the notorious Rhymers’ Club, a group of poets and writers responsible for witty repartee anthologies such as The Book of the Rhymers’ Club (1892), in which Symons’s poems appeared.

Symons’s . . .

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