With bloody shoes and spinning-wheels of traffic
Vermilion-splashed, the city rushes onward,
And thorns of death and lust and fruitless labour
Lie underneath the feet forever dancing.
Gay tunes are rasped upon a weary fiddle,
Or voice of moaning in the tinkling cymbal,
Offspring of humour from disaster's bowels.
I love the bitter and the rude, the drunken,
The tramps and thieves that skulk among the shadows;
The faces red as fire and dead as ashes,