The Heir at Law
Oh, London is a fine town,
A very famous city,
Where all the streets are paved with gold,
And all the maidens pretty.
Cowper William 1731-1800
‘John Gilpin'
John Gilpin was a citizen
Of credit and renown,
A train-band captain eke was he
Of famous London Town.
Dickens Charles 1812-1870
Bleak House
This is a London particular ... A fog, miss.
Disraeli Benjamin 1804-1881
Lothair
London: a nation, not a city.
Doyle Sir Arthur Conan 1959-1930
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin that does the smiling and beautiful countryside.
Doyle Sir Arthur Conan 1959-1930
A Study in Scarlet
London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.
Gershwin Ira 1896-1983
Damsel in Distress
A foggy day in London Town
Had me low and had me down.
I viewed the morning with alarm,
The British Museum had lost its charm.
How long, I wondered, could this thing last?
But the age of miracles hadn't passed,
For, suddenly, I saw you there
And through foggy London town the sun was
shining everywhere.
Johnson Samuel 1709-1784
Bosweel - Life
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.
Larkin Philip 1922-1985
‘The Whitsun Weddings'
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat.
Macaulay Baron (Thomas Babington) 1800-1859
Essays ... ‘Von Ranke'
She [the Roman Catholic Church] may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St Paul's.
Masefield John 1878-1967
Roadways
One road leads to London,
One road runs to Wales,
My road leads me seawards
To the white dipping sails.
Morris William 1834-1896
The Earthly Paradise
Forget six counties overhung with smoke,
Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke,
Forget the spreading of the hideous town;
Think rather of the pack-horse on the down,
And dream of London, small and white and clean,
The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green.
Pitt William (The Elder) 1708-1778
The parks are the lungs of London.
Shelley Percy Bysshe 1792-1822
‘Peter Bell the Third'
Hell is a city much like London -
A populous and smoky city.
Thomas Dylan 1914-1953
‘A Refusal to Mourn the Death ...'
Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.