The dense grey fog is rolling over,
The river is running fast;
The stars are twinkling brightly,
Though the smog is moving past.
The careful clopping of the taxis
Atop the cobblestone
Is stifling the fading murmur
Of passersby’s baritone.

The clock is tolling 9 p.m.,
Night has already fallen;
And yet out in the streets somewhere
Lurks a hunter quite uncommon.
The rain is pouring down in waves,
The gas lamps are flickering out;
But still, persistent,
He follows the scent, utterly devout

To pulling back the curtain,
To reading like a book
Each facet of a person,
Every little nook.
To pulling off the masks
Of they who’d hide their wrath,
And together with the aged vet’ran
Unveiling their path.

Few could match His name
For the weight it still holds;
Or His long-suffering friend
For the artistry in how it unfolds.

So here’s to that great Hound,
Both the feller and the felled,
And may He remain eternal
In this time in which He dwelled. *


* I feel like I should explain since this is such a strange ending; this is a reference to Vincent Starrett's iconic Sherlockian sonnet, 221b, wherein it ends:

“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.”

In a way it has become the unspoken Sherlockian anthem, and it is my small meta-salute to his legacy