Newcastle Upon Tyne, England
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, ENGLAND
Half-Scot, half-English and ill at ease with the past,
Newcastle is sooty black from its coaly drama,
And the breathless town was always in a hurry to grow,
Narrowly avoiding destruction of its past or leaping over it.
Up on the plateau, industrial power-engine city:
Its earlier Norman Castle and Black Gate narrowly missed
By the frenetic hammers of eager Victorian builders.
Elegantly-proportioned Grainger Street and Central Rail Station
Pause unwillingly to admit the Scottish-style lantern-spired
Sandstone cathedral with its delicate shade of sooty industrial black.
Down at the riverside - an earlier town of shipyards and arms factories,
Quayside warehouses with watertight flood-doors,
Its precipitous narrow old port-streets carved into the gorge walls
And pierced by cold winds from the North Sea,
Is leaped over by a platoon of high-level metal bridges.
Across the Tyne, inelegant, they grab the opposite bank and bind the city to England.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
NOTE: 1 Newcastle is situated on the north ( = Scottish ) side of the River Tyne.
The town was an epicenter of the Industrial Revolution,
with coal, steel, chemical, engineering, and shipbuilding
industries, and was also a major seaport.
2 Norman Castle, Black Gate are remnants of a pre-medieval past.
3 Grainger Street, Central Rail Station are 19th century redeveloped areas.
4 Cathedral (St. Nicholas) dates from 14th century.
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2011
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