April Twilights and Other Poems

<h3><SPAN name="LONDON_ROSES" id="LONDON_ROSES"></SPAN>LONDON ROSES</h3> <div class="poetry"> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> <span class="iq"><span class="letra">“R</span>owses, Rowses! Penny a bunch!” they tell you&mdash;<br/></span> <span class="i0">Slattern girls in Trafalgar, eager to sell you.<br/></span> <span class="i0">Roses, roses, red in the Kensington sun,<br/></span> <span class="i0">Holland Road, High Street, Bayswater, see you and smell you&mdash;<br/></span> <span class="i0">Roses of London town, red till the summer is done.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">Roses, roses, locust and lilac, perfuming<br/></span> <span class="i0">West End, East End, wondrously budding and blooming<br/></span> <span class="i0">Out of the black earth, rubbed in a million hands,<br/></span> <span class="i0">Foot-trod, sweat-sour over and under, entombing<br/></span> <span class="i0">Highways of darkness, deep gutted with iron bands.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">“Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!” they tell you,<br/></span> <span class="i0">Ruddy blooms of corruption, see you and smell you,<br/></span> <span class="i0">Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears&mdash;<br/></span> <span class="i0">North shire, south shire, none are like these, I tell you,<br/></span> <span class="i0">Roses of London perfumed with a thousand years.<br/></span> <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page_22" id="page_22">{22}</SPAN></span></div> </div></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />