The Hope of the Streets

The still sweet meadows shimmered: and I stoodAnd cursed them, bloom of hedge and bird of tree,And bright and high beyond the hunch-backed woodThe thunder and the splendour of the sea.

Give back the Babylon where I was born,The lips that gape give back, the hands that grope,And noise and blood and suffocating scornAn eddy of fierce faces - and a hope

That 'mid those myriad heads one head find place,With brown hair curled like breakers of the sea,And two eyes set so strangely in the faceThat all things else are nothing suddenly.