In his poem, John Gambril Nicholson writes of the many boys he sees and admires as he stares out of his window, rides the train, or walks the streets of London. The obvious theme in this poem is simply being queer, but there is also a hint at a theme of unrequited love towards the end. Aside from the hinted theme, Nicholson is surprisingly blatant for the time period. The lines, “And gazing from my window high / I like to watch them passing by” (Nicholson), and the fact that he is referring solely to the “boys” in the street make it quite clear that he is interested in men, not women.

After the first stanza, which just introduces the topic of the poem, Nicholson lists the boys he watches. While he does interact with several of them, he never calls anyone by his real name. He refers to all of them by various characteristics such as “The boy that tidies up the bar” (7), and “The lad that’s lettered G.P.O.” (12). This could be a way to lead up to the last stanza, which suddenly shifts from a personal narrative with no target audience, to a sort of message to a specific person.

And though I never see you there

All boys your name and nature share,

And almost every day I make

Some new acquaintance for your sake.

Nicholson could be directing this stanza towards the object of his affection, whom he is unable to have a relationship with. There is not much information other than the fact that this nameless person is never where the narrator goes, yet the narrator always sees a reflection of the person in all of the other boys.

This poem surprises me because of its straightforwardness, but the themes do not surprise me at all. It seems like nearly every poem in the archive deals with unrequited love, and this is most likely due to the fact that queerness was obviously not acceptable during the Victorian era, so most people were forced to mask their feelings.