bakerstreetbabes:

Vincent Starrett reading his poem, 221B. This is off of a new CD named Starrett Speaks: The Lost Recordings, which you can buy from Wessex Press [HERE]. It has an interview and a few of Starrett’s other poems on it, all never before released or thought to have been lost. It’s truly a beautiful piece of Sherlockian history, and should be in all of our collections.

I wanted to upload this for you all because it is not only a beautiful poem (AND it’s Poetry Month!), but it’s just so touching to hear the author himself reading it. Plus, it’s where “It’s always 1895” comes from.

221B

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.

– Vincent Starrett

(via bakerstreetbabes)