National Poetry Day does - Sherlock!

I love reading and rereading the Sherlock Holmes stories but I wasn't aware that there was Sherlock-inspired poetry until I read about here at the "I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere" website. This accompanies the excellent IHOSE podcast and is a fascinating resource for fans of The Detective. 

I'd also heard of National Poetry Day but not this poem. You can also hear a recording of the poem being read aloud here at the University of Minnesota Library’s Media Archive.

It seems perfect for a grey October day . . .

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Here dwell together still two men of note

Who never lived and so can never die:

How very near they seem, yet how remote

That age before the world went all awry.

But still the game’s afoot for those with ears

Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:

England is England yet, for all our fears–

Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane

As night descends upon this fabled street:

A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,

The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.

Here, though the world explode, these two survive,

And it is always eighteen ninety-five.

                             

                                        - Vincent Starrett  

(October 26, 1886 – January 5, 1974; author of the Adventure of the Unique Hamlet, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and other writings)