To those under smoke-blackened tiles, and cavernous echoing arches,

In tortuous hid courts, where the roar never ceases

Of deep cobbled streets wherein dray upon dray ever marches,

The sky is a broken lid, a litter of smashed yellow pieces.

To those under mouldering roofs, where life to an hour is crowded,

Life, to a div of the floor, to an inch of the light,

And night is all fevrous-hot, a time to be bawded and rowdied,

Day is a time of grinding, that looks for rest to the night.

Those who would live, do it quickly, with quick tears, sudden laughter,

Quick oaths—terse blasphemous thoughts about God the Creator:

Those who would die, do it quickly, with noose from the rafter,

Or the black shadowy eddies of Thames, the hurry-hater.

Life is the Master, the keen and grim destroyer of beauty:

Death is a quiet and deep reliever, where soul upon soul

And wizened and thwarted body on body are loosed from their duty

Of living, and sink in a bottomless, edgeless impalpable hole.

Dead, they can see far above them, as if from the depth of a pit,

Black on the glare small figures that twist and are shrivelled in it.