London in a haze of yellow
Symphony in Yellow
"Lies like a rod of rippled jade."
Poem
An omnibus across the bridgeCrawls like a yellow butterfly,And, here and there, a passer-byShows like a little restless midge.
Big barges full of yellow hayAre moored against the shadowy wharf,And, like a yellow silken scarf,The thick fog hangs along the quay.
The yellow leaves begin to fadeAnd flutter from the Temple elms,And at my feet the pale green ThamesLies like a rod of rippled jade.
In brief
SummaryThree stanzas paint a London riverside scene in shades of yellow. An omnibus crawls across a bridge 'like a yellow butterfly', with passers-by as small as midges. Barges full of yellow hay lie moored at a shadowy wharf, and the thick fog hangs along the quay like 'a yellow silken scarf'. Yellow leaves fade and fall from the Temple elms, and at the speaker's feet the pale green Thames 'Lies like a rod of rippled jade'. The one contrasting colour, the green of the river, is kept for the last line.
Key themes
"Crawls like a yellow butterfly"
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The first stanza looks up at a bridge. 'An omnibus across the bridge / Crawls like a yellow butterfly', and here and there a passer-by 'Shows like a little restless midge'. Seen from a distance, the heavy traffic of the city is turned into insects, light and small.
The second stanza moves down to the water's edge. 'Big barges full of yellow hay / Are moored against the shadowy wharf', and 'like a yellow silken scarf, / The thick fog hangs along the quay'. Hay, fog and shadow give the riverside a soft, blurred look, as if seen through gauze.
The third stanza comes close to the speaker's own place on the bank. 'The yellow leaves begin to fade / And flutter from the Temple elms', a sign of autumn, and 'at my feet the pale green Thames / Lies like a rod of rippled jade'. After so much yellow, the river's cool green gives the picture its final note.
Themes
Painting in words
The title borrows its word from music and its method from painting. Yellow runs through the omnibus, the hay, the fog and the leaves, as a picture might be built around one colour, and the last line sets against it 'the pale green Thames'. The poem arranges colour and shape without comment, like a quick sketch of the river on an autumn day.
The city made delicate
Heavy, ordinary things become light and precious. A lumbering omnibus is 'a yellow butterfly', passers-by are 'restless' midges, the London fog is 'a yellow silken scarf', and the Thames is 'a rod of rippled jade'. Silk and jade bring the modern city into the same world of fine materials as a garden or a jewel box.
Quotes
Context
Symphony in Yellow is set in London: it names the Thames and the elms of the Temple, the district of lawyers' inns beside the river. Its title uses a musical word for a picture built around a single colour. It has three four-line stanzas rhyming ABBA in eight-syllable lines, and nearly every image is a simile: the omnibus a butterfly, the fog a scarf, the river a rod of jade.
About this edition
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