Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Oxford Street

LIFE in its many shapes was there,
  The busy and the gay;
Faces that seemed too young and fair
  To ever know decay.

Wealth, with its waste, its pomp and pride,
  Led forth its glittering train;
And Poverty’s pale face beside
  Asked aid, and asked in vain.

The shops were filled from many lands,
  Toys, silks, and gems, and flowers;
The patient work of many hands,
  The hope of many hours.

Yet, mid life’s myriad shapes around
  There was a sigh of death;
There rose a melancholy sound,
  The bugle’s wailing breath.

They played a mournful Scottish air,
  That on its native hill
Had caught the notes the night-winds bear
  From weeping leaf and rill.

’T was strange to hear that sad wild strain
  Its warning music shed,
Rising above life’s busy train,
  In memory of the dead.

There came a slow and silent band
  In sad procession by;
Reversed the musket in each hand,
  And downcast every eye.

They bore the soldier to his grave;
  The sympathizing crowd
Divided like a parted wave
  By some dark vessel ploughed.

A moment, and all sounds were mute,
  For awe was over all;
You heard the soldier’s measured foot,
  The bugle’s wailing call.

The gloves were laid upon the bier,
  The helmet and the sword;
The drooping war-horse followed near,
  As he, too, mourned his lord.	

Slowly—I followed too—they led
  To where a church arose,
And flung a shadow o’er the dead,
  Deep as their own repose.

Green trees were there,—beneath the shade
  Of one was made a grave;
And there to his last rest was laid
  The weary and the brave.

They fired a volley o’er the bed
  Of an unconscious ear;
The birds sprang fluttering overhead,
  Struck with a sudden fear.

All left the ground, the bugles died
  Away upon the wind;
Only the tree’s green branches sighed
  O’er him they left behind.

Again, all filled with light and breath,
  I passed the crowded street:
O great extremes of life and death,
  How strangely do ye meet!