Only page of title Moderate
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Hark how their breath draws lank and hard,
The sallow stern police!
Breaking the desultory midnight peace
With plangent call, to cry
'Division'! This their first especial charge.
And now, low, luminous, and large,
The slumbrous Member hurries by.
Let us take cab, Dear Heart, take cab and go
From out the lith of this loud world (I know
The meaning of the word). Come, let us hie
To where the lamp-posts ouch the troubled sky, --
(And if there is one thing for which I vouch
It is my knowledge of the verb to ouch.)
Homeward together, we shall feel
The buxom breeze, --
(Observe the epithet; an apt one, if you please.)
Down through the sober paven street,
Which, purged and sweet,
Gleams in the ambient deluge of the water-cart,
Bemused and blurred and pinkly lustrous, where
The blandest lion in Trafalgar Square
Seems but a part
Of the great continent of light, --
An attribute of the embittered night, --
How new, how naked and how clean!
Couchant, slow, shimmering, superb!
Constant to one environment, nor even seen
Pottering aimlessly along the kerb.
On the pavement, one of those
Grim men who go down to the sea in ships,
Blaspheming, reeling in a foul ellipse,
Home to some tangled alley-bedside goes, --
Oozing and flushed, sharing his elemental mirth
With all the jocund undissembling earth;
Drooping his shameless nose,
Nor hitching up his drifting, shifting clothes.
And here is Piccadilly! Loudly dense,
Intractable, voluminous, immense!
(Dear, dear my heart's desire, can I be talking sense? )
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