Never Melt

The soft blue sky did never melt

Anish Kapoor’s Sky Mirror, Nottingham Playhouse, Nottingham, NG1

Into his heart; he never felt
The witching of the soft blue sky!

From William Wordsworth’s Peter Bell (1888)

Strange Thoughts

Strange thoughts beget strange deeds.

Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak Street, Kansas City, MO

From Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Cenci (1819)

The Most Real Things in the World

Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus.

Weymouth Terrace, Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets, E2

The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.

From Francis Pharcellus Church’s Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus (1897)

Long Forgtten Hands

There is a temple in ruin stands,

Dunston Road, Haggerston, Hackey, E8

Fashion’d by long forgotten hands.

From Lord Byron’s Siege of Corinth (1816)

City of Destruction

In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, Hackney Road, Tower Hamlets, E2

We see no white-winged angels now.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, Hackney Road, Tower Hamlets, E2

But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may be a little child’s.

Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children, Hackney Road, Tower Hamlets, E2

From George Eliot’s Silas Marmer (1861)

Dateless Tombs Arose

Egypt! from whose all dateless tombs arose
Forgotten Pharaohs from their long repose,

Pyramid of Menkaure, Al Ahram, Giza, Egypt

And shook within their pyramids to hear
A new Cambyses thundering in their ear…

From Lord Byron’s The Age of Bronze (1823)

Drunk for Ten Years

“Jesus,” he said to himself.

King Street, Southall, Ealing, UB2

“Drunk for ten years.”

From F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Lost Decade (1939)