Dirge
To those under smoke-blackened tiles, and cavernous echoing arches,
In tortuous hid courts, where the roar never ceases
Of deep cobbled streets wherein dray upon dray ever marches,
The sky is a broken lid, a litter of smashed yellow pieces.
To those under mouldering roofs, where life to an hour is crowded,
Life, to a div of the floor, to an inch of the light,
And night is all fevrous-hot, a time to be bawded and rowdied,
Day is a time of grinding, that looks for rest to the night.
Those who would live, do it quickly, with quick tears, sudden laughter,
Quick oaths—terse blasphemous thoughts about God the Creator:
Those who would die, do it quickly, with noose from the rafter,
Or the black shadowy eddies of Thames, the hurry-hater.
Life is the Master, the keen and grim destroyer of beauty:
Death is a quiet and deep reliever, where soul upon soul
And wizened and thwarted body on body are loosed from their duty
Of living, and sink in a bottomless, edgeless impalpable hole.
Dead, they can see far above them, as if from the depth of a pit,
Black on the glare small figures that twist and are shrivelled in it.