Lapsing Into Oblivion

The darkness does not lift but becomes yet heavier as I think how little we can hold in mind…

Regents Canal, Lisson Grove, Westminster, NW8

…how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself…

Leake Street, Waterloo, Lambeth, SE1

…in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power or memory is never heard, never described or passed on.

Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, Hackney, N16

From WG Sebald’s Austerlitz (2001)

Experimental Lighthouse

And as the evening darkens, lo!

Experimental Lighthouse, Trinity Buoy Wharf, Tower Hamlets, E14

How bright, through the deep purple of the twilight air,

Experimental Lighthouse, Trinity Buoy Wharf, Tower Hamlets, E14

Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light,

Jem Finer's Longplayer, Experimental Lighthouse, Trinity Buoy Wharf, Tower Hamlets, E14

with strange, unearthly splendour in the glare!

From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Lighthouse (1850)

And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright,
through the deep purple of the twilight air,
Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light,
with strange, unearhly splendor in the glare!And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright, 

through the deep purple of the twilight air,

Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light,

with strange, unearhly splendor in the glare!And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright, through the deep purple of the twilight air, Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light, with strange, unearhly splendor in the glare!

St George-in-the-East

When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown…

Nicholas Hawksmoor's St George-in-the-East, Cannon Street Road, Shadwell, Tower Hamlets, E1

Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town…

From Robert Bridges’ London Snow (1890)