Joy of the Milliner, Envy of the Line,
Star of the Parks, jack-booted, sworded, helmed,
He sits between his holsters, solid of spine;
Nor, as it seems, though Westminster were whelmed,
With the great globe, in earthquake and eclipse,
Would he and his charger cease from mounting guard,
This Private in the Blues, nor would his lips
Move, though his gorge with throttled oaths were charred!
He wears his inches weightily, as he wears
His old-world armours; and with his port and pride,
His sturdy graces and enormous airs,
He towers, in speech his Colonel countrified,
A triumph, waxing statelier year by year,
Of British blood, and bone, and beef, and beer.
III. HAWKER
Far out of bounds he’s figured—in a race
Of West-End traffic pitching to his loss.
But if you’d see him in his proper place,
Making the browns for bub and grub and doss,
Go East among the merchants and their men,
And where the press is noisiest, and the tides
Of trade run highest and widest, there and then
You shall behold him, edging with equal strides
Along the kerb; hawking in either hand
Some artful nothing made of twine and tin,
Cardboard and foil and bits of rubber band:
Some penn’orth of wit-in-fact that, with a grin,
The careful City marvels at, and buys
For nurselings in the Suburbs to despise!
IV. BEEF-EATER
His beat lies knee-high through a dust of story—
A dust of terror and torture, grief and crime;
Ghosts that are England’s wonder, and shame, and glory
Throng where he walks, an antic of old time;
A sense of long immedicable tears
Were ever with him, could his ears but heed;
The stern Hic Jacets of our bloodiest years
Are for his reading, had he eyes to read,
But here, where Crookback raged, and Cranmer trimmed,
And More and Strafford faced the axe’s proving,
He shows that Crown the desperate Colonel nimmed,
Or simply keeps the Country Cousin moving,
Or stays such Cockney pencillers as would shame
The wall where some dead Queen hath traced her name.
V. SANDWICH-MAN
An ill March noon; the flagstones gray with dust;
An all-round east wind volleying straws and grit;
St. Martin’s Steps, where every venomous gust
Lingers to buffet, or sneap, the passing cit;
And in the gutter, squelching a rotten boot,
Draped in a wrap that, modish ten-year syne,
Partners, obscene with sweat and grease and soot,
A horrible hat, that once was just as fine;
The drunkard’s mouth a-wash for something drinkable,
The drunkard’s eye alert for casual toppers,
The drunkard’s neck stooped to a lot scarce thinkable,
A living, crawling blazoning of Hot-Coppers,
He trails his mildews towards a Kingdom-Come
Compact of sausage-and-mash and two-o’-rum!
VI. ’LIZA
’Liza’s old man’s perhaps a little shady,
’Liza’s old woman’s prone to booze and cringe;
But ’Liza deems herself a perfect lady,
And proves it in her feathers and her fringe.
For ’Liza has a bloke her heart to cheer,
With pearlies and a barrer and a jack,
So all the vegetables of the year
Are duly represented on her back.
Her boots are sacrifices to her hats,
Which knock you speechless—like a load of bricks!
Her summer velvets dazzle Wanstead Flats,
And cost, at times, a good eighteen-and-six.
Withal, outside the gay and giddy whirl,
’Liza’s a stupid, straight, hard-working girl.