THE DEAD TREE.

(Being a terrible result of reading too much poetry in the modern manner.)

Slushy is the highway between the unspeakable hedges;

I pause

Irresolute under a telegraph-pole,

The fourteenth telegraph-pole on the way

From Shere to Havering,

The twenty-first

From Havering to Shere.

Crimson is the western sky; upright it stands,