Where once was green-limbed tree or ledge
Of greener moss or flowery lane,
Set back behind a private hedge
Each house repeats itself again.
Each house repeats itself again,
But smaller still and yet more dry;
For—just as those who live within—
So have these houses progeny.
Throughout each dusty endless year,
Whose days seem merely wet or fine,
These children constantly appear
In an unending dusty line.
As, on a rose that is ill-grown
Nature, insulted and defied,
Showers down a blight, so sends she down
On houses, those who live inside.
II.
Within each high, well-papered room,
Compressed, all darkness lay,
Darkness of night, and crypt, and tomb,
Nor ever entered day.
But through the endless black there crept,
With groping hand and groping thought,
With eyes that blinked, but never wept,
And minds that fell, but never fought,
The wonderless, the hard, the nice,
Who scurry at a ray of light,
Then, like a flock of frightened mice,
Career back into night.
From out this damning dreadful dark
(While history, thundering, rolls by)
They wait for an anæmic lark
To sing from weak blue sky.
Or if a dog is hurt, why then
They see the evil, and they cry.
But yet they watch ten million men
Go out to end in agony!