I may not see her again, but I hold her smile in my heart,
And she is with me in my shop and about the streets.
My shop may tumble down;
West India Dock may some time suffer a drought;
Grief and Joy come for a day;
And Hope and Fear, and Desire and Deed
Arise and pass, and are no more;
But the beauty born of her quickened smile
Can never die.
Of a National Cash Register
Last week this person, desiring to make it known
That he was in all ways moving up to the date,
Introduced into his insignificant shop
A machine-that-counts,
Called a National Cash Register,
Which announces to refined and intelligent customers
The amounts of their purchases.
This week this person purchased a whole days' amusement;
And the amount he paid for this was another's discomfiture and pain.
And, after a night of cogitation,
He is moved to reflect on the far-reaching and wholesome value
Of a National Register which would announce to the face
The cost of such pleasures as this.
Under a Shining Window
A lamplit window,
At the top of a tenement house near Poplar High Street,
Shines fluently out of the night;
And looking upward I see
That the bricks of the houses are bright and fair to the eye.
There are no flowers in West India Dock Road;
Nothing but brick and stone, and iron and spent air.
But when rough brick and stone are a shrine for beauty,
They become themselves beautiful.
Perhaps if this person encloses within himself
Beautiful thoughts and amiable intentions,
His insignificant frame may acquire
The noble outlines of that tenement house.
Exchange of Compliments
At ten o'clock last night an ugly fellow,
Of skinny exterior and most ungracious manner,
Was thrown with a total loss of gravity
From the flapping doors of the Blue Lantern.
He lurched in most ungainly fashion past this person's shop—
This person standing at his door—
And used base language of an unpolished nature,
Calling him Ugly Yellow Bastard,
Hop Fiend and Dirty Doper,
Eater of Dogs and Cheater at Puckapoo,
Son-of-a-Bitch and devotee of vice.