One Service Breeds Another
One of this person's white-skinned friends, Bill Hawkins,
Who labours at the waterside,
Had occasion, at the time of unkind weather,
To rescue from the certain peril of drowning
One who had slipped from the edge of a wharf to the dock.
Without reward the flower serves the bee.
The mother serves the child with pain and toil.
The soldier serves his king without king's gratitutde.
And this person has noted with much private amusement,
How, since this one service rendered,
Bill Hawkins goes ever from his accustomed path
To add service to service to the one he rescued;
While the rescued one looks ever upon Bill Hawkins
With eyes of no-approval, indeed, with intense disgust.
An Offer of a Lodging
Little maid of the yellow curls
You look sad as you pass my window.
You look as though you would like to creep into some warm nest,
And hide your golden head.
Oh, look, little maid! I have made you a nest!
Creep into it, and I will hide you away,
Quietly, in the nest of my heart,
I will wrap you around with verses and cover you with fair thoughts.
There is yet one little corner left,
Free from the world's defilement;
One little corner where not a breath of wrong
Shall enter to disturb your slumbering.
And I will cherish you there
In the nest you will make so pure.
I will hold you and guard you safe from the snares of the stony streets.
Be at peace, little maid, and lie in trust;
For though my feet may stumble, and I may fall,
The corner that houses you I will ever keep whole.
Of Two Dwellings
At the lower end of Limehouse Causeway
Is a house where girls surrender their bodies
To the pleasures of base-minded and unpolished men,
In return for shillings.
And on the walls about this house
Blossoms at summer the wild white rose.
In a tiny room at the top of a tenement
Lives a white maid of surpassing virtue,
Gentle in manner and quiet and dutiful,
Combing her golden curls each morning
Before a window that looks out to hell;
That looks upon cesspools of mud, and mounds of refuse
and the offal of the shops.