is noisiest, and the tides Of trade run highest and widest, there and then You shall behold him, edging with equal strides Along the kerb; hawking in either hand Some artful nothing made of twine and tin, Cardboard and foil and bits of rubber band: Some penn’orth of wit-in-fact that, with a grin, The careful City marvels at, and buys For nurselings in the Suburbs to despise!

p. 76IV. BEEF-EATER

p. 76

His beat lies knee-high through a dust of story— A dust of terror and torture, grief and crime; Ghosts that are England’s wonder, and shame, and glory Throng where he walks, an antic of old time; A sense of long immedicable tears Were ever with him, could his ears but heed; The stern Hic Jacets of our bloodiest years Are for his reading, had he eyes to read, But here, where Crookback raged, and Cranmer trimmed, And More and Strafford faced the axe’s proving, He shows that Crown the desperate Colonel nimmed, Or simply keeps the Country Cousin moving, Or stays such Cockney pencillers as would shame The wall where some dead Queen hath traced her name.

England’s

Crookback

Cranmer

More

Strafford

p. 77V. SANDWICH-MAN

p. 77

An ill March noon; the flagstones gray with dust; An all-round east wind volleying straws and grit; St. Martin’s Steps, where every venomous gust Lingers to buffet, or sneap, the passing cit; And in the gutter, squelching a rotten boot, Draped in a wrap that, modish ten-year syne, Partners, obscene with sweat and grease and soot, A horrible hat, that once was just as fine; The drunkard’s mouth a-wash for something drinkable, The drunkard’s eye alert for casual toppers, The drunkard’s neck stooped to a lot scarce thinkable, A living, crawling blazoning of Hot-Coppers, He trails his mildews towards a Kingdom-Come Compact of sausage-and-mash and two-o’-rum!

St. Martin’s Steps

p. 78VI. ’LIZA

p. 78

’Liza’s old man’s perhaps a little shady, ’Liza’s old woman’s prone to booze and cringe; But ’Liza deems herself a perfect lady, And proves it in her feathers and her fringe. For ’Liza has a bloke her heart to cheer, With pearlies and a barrer and a jack, So 

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