But for those whose place it is not, memories and dreams can do nothing
to transform it. Dockland would seem to others as any alien town would
seem to me. There is something, though, you must grant us, a heritage
peculiarly ours. Amid our packed tenements, into the dark mass where
poorer London huddles as my shipping parish, are set our docks.
Embayed in the obscurity are those areas of captured day, reservoirs of
light brimmed daily by the tides of the sun, silver mirrors through
which one may leave the dark floor of Poplar for radiant other worlds.
We have our ships and docks, and the River at Blackwall when night and
the flood come together, and walls and roofs which topmasts and funnels
surmount, suggestions of a vagabondage hidden in what seemed so arid a
commonplace desert. These are of first importance. They are our ways
of escape. We are not kept within a division of the map. And Orion,
he strides over our roofs on bright winter nights. We have the
immortals. At the most, your official map sets us only lateral bounds.
The heavens here are as high as elsewhere. Our horizon is beyond our
own limits. In this faithful chronicle of our parish I must tell of
our boundaries as I know them. They are not so narrow as you might
think. Maps cannot be so carefully planned, nor walls built high
enough nor streets confined and strict enough, to hold within limits
our lusty and growing population of thoughts. There is no census you
can take which will give you forewarning of what is growing here, of
the way we increase and expand. Take care. Some day, when we discover
the time has come for it, we shall tell our numbers, and be sure you
will then learn the result. Travelling through our part of the
country, you see but our appearance. You go, and report us casually to
your friends, and forget us. But when you feel the ground moving under
your feet, that will be us.