Favorite Sherlockian Poetry

221B

Vincent Starrett, BSI

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.

`A Long Evening with Holmes`

William P. Schweickert, BSI

When the world closes in with its worries and cares
And my problems and headaches are coming in pairs
I just climb in my mind up those seventeen stairs
And spend a long evening with Holmes.

The good Doctor greets me and motions me in
Holmes grasps my hand and lays down his violin
Then we sit by the fire and sip a tall gin
When I spend a long evening with Holmes.

And while we're discussing his cases galore
If I'm lucky there comes a loud knock on the door
In stumbles a client, head splattered with gore
When I spend a long evening with Holmes.

Watson binds up the client's poor face
While Holmes soon extracts all the facts of the case
Then off in a hansom to Brixton we race
When I spend a long evening with Holmes.

The Adventure is solved, Holmes makes it all right
So back to the lodgings by dawn's early light
And a breakfast by Hudson to wind up the night
When I spend a long evening with Holmes.

So the modern rat race can't keep me in a cage
I have a passport to a far better age
As close as my bookcase, as near as a page
I can spend a long evening with Holmes.