In Lady Street

All day long the traffic goesIn Lady Street by dingy rowsOf sloven houses, tattered shops--Fried fish, old clothes and fortune-tellers--Tall trams on silver-shining rails,With grinding wheels and swaying tops,And lorries with their corded bales,And screeching cars. “Buy, buy!” the sellersOf rags and bones and sickening meatCry all day long in Lady Street.

And when the sunshine has its wayIn Lady Street, then all the greyDull desolation grows in stateMore dull and grey and desolate,And the sun is a shamefast thing,A lord not comely-housed, a godSeeing what gods must blush to see,A song where it is ill to sing,And each gold ray despiteouslyLies like a gold ironic rod.

Yet one grey man in Lady StreetLooks for the sun. He never bentLife to his will, his travelling feetHave scaled no cloudy continent,Nor has the sickle-hand been strong.He lives in Lady Street; a bed,Four cobwebbed walls.

But all day longA time is singing in his headOf youth in Gloucester lanes. He hearsThe wind among the barley-blades,The tapping of the woodpeckersOn the smooth beeches, thistle-spadesSlicing the sinewy roots; he seesThe hooded filberts in the copseBeyond the loaded orchard trees,The netted avenues of hops;He smells the honeysuckle thrownAlong the hedge. He lives alone,Alone--yet not alone, for sweetAre Gloucester lanes in Lady Street.

Aye, Gloucester lanes. For down belowThe cobwebbed room this grey man pliesA trade, a coloured trade. A showOf many-coloured merchandiseIs in his shop. Brown filberts there,And apples red with Gloucester air,And cauliflowers he keeps, and roundSmooth marrows grown on Gloucester ground,Fat cabbages and yellow plums,And gaudy brave chrysanthemums.And times a glossy pheasant liesAmong his store, not Tyrian dyesMore rich than are the neck-feathers;And times a prize of violets,Or dewy mushrooms satin-skinnedAnd times an unfamiliar windRobbed of its woodland favour stirsGay daffodils this grey man setsAmong his treasure.

All day longIn Lady Street the traffic goesBy dingy houses, desolate rowsOf shops that stare like hopeless eyes.Day long the sellers cry their cries,The fortune-tellers tell no wrongOf lives that know not any right,And drift, that has not even the willTo drift, toils through the day untilThe wage of sleep is won at night.But this grey man heeds not at allThe hell of Lady Street. His stallOf many-coloured merchandiseHe makes a shining paradise,As all day long chrysanthemumsHe sells, and red and yellow plumsAnd cauliflowers. In that one spotOf Lady Street the sun is notAshamed to shine and send a rareShower of colour through the air;The grey man says the sun is sweetOn Gloucester lanes in Lady Street.