Where every traffic-thridden street

Is ribboned o'er with shade and shine,

And webbed with wire and choked with heat;

Where smokes with fouler smokes entwine;

And where, at evening, darkling lanes

Fume with a sickly ribaldry—

Above the squalors and the pains,

A wild rose blows by Bermondsey.

Somewhere beneath a nest of tiles

My little garret window squats,