The Landau Poem by David Lewis Paget

The winter fogs roll in from the Thames
While frost forms up on the eaves,
The damp will settle in aching bones,
While the trees are bereft of leaves;
The streets were stark in the old East End
A footfall echoed and died,
And nights when the homes were shuttered in
They listened to wheels outside.

A Landau, black as the devil's sin
And drawn by a single horse,
Rolled slowly up to The Black Dog Inn
By the side of the watercourse,
When out there came from the bawdy house
In black from her head to tail,
A dollymop with a nosegay,
Wearing a bonnet, black, with a veil.

She'd climb up into the Landau while
The coachman, clad in a cloak,
Would give one flick with the reins,
And pull on the bit ‘til the horse had choked,
He'd take them off with a clatter
Wheels a-rattle on cobblestones,
His eyes agleam like a demon
While he whipped the horse to the bone.

The horse's hooves on the cobbles
Warned ahead through the fog and mist,
As people cowered in doorways
Shouted a curse as the Landau passed,
They followed the glow of the gaslamps
Shedding their weak and feeble light,
And raced by the mighty river
Into the dark of the endless night.

They came to a halt at Wapping
Down where the river cast its spawn,
The bodies of dead and drowned who'd
Cursed their mothers for being born,
And hung on poles at the river's edge
Was another terrible sight,
The bodies of sailor mutineers
That swung in their chains at night.

Hung on the Tyburn gallows
Then cut down and shackled again,
The bodies were coated with tallow
For a post mortem hanging in chain,
They'd bind them up with a winding cloth
Then coat them again in tar,
Hang them in chains at the riverside
‘Til their dust blew near and far.

The woman climbed out of the Landau
Took one look, and fell to her knees,
Her lover hung gently swaying,
Swaying in time to the river breeze,
His eyes stared out from the candle wax
And his mouth was shaped in an ‘Oh! '
He seemed to be saying, ‘Goodbye, my love;
What a terrible way to go! '

She wept like a woman demented,
Seized his legs, and pulled to her breast,
Clung to his swinging figure
Moaned like a creature, quite obsessed,
She tried transferring her warmth to him
But his cold was the cold of death,
And his eyes stared straight ahead of him
No thoughts, no love, no breath!

She climbed back into the Landau
As the coachman whipped it away,
And often at night they hear it go,
Those folks down Wapping way,
They say it spattered a stream of blood
On the road as it raced on by,
From the dollymop who'd slashed her throat
And lay in the coach to die.

And when there's a mighty river fog
In the winter, down by the Thames,
They sit in the Inn they call Black Dog
And they drink to the health of friends,
They drink to the ones who've gone before
As they hear the wheels outside,
And hold their breath at the emptiness
As the door is opened wide!

22 October 2012