th,
And became suddenly old,
And marched away to defend the aged.

And I observed how the aged
Became suddenly young;
And mouthed fair phrases one to the other upon the Supreme Sacrifice,
And turned to their account-books, murmuring gravely:
Business as Usual;
And brought out bottles of wine and drank the health
Of the young men they had sent out to die for them.

At the Time of Clear Weather

In the agreeable public gardens of Poplar
The bushes are bright with buds,
For this is the season of Clear Weather.
There blossom the quiet flowers of this country:
The timid lilac,
The unassuming hawthorn,
The dignified chestnut,
And the girlish laburnum;
And the mandarin of them all is the rhododendron.

In the untilled field of my heart
Many simple buds are bursting.
There is a little bush of kindliness towards all men.
There is a slender tree of forgiveness for all wrongs.
There is a humble growth of repentance for past sins.
And around the field is a thick hedge of thankfulness.

And Ho! in the midst of all
Stands the tree of a hundred boughs
Laden with the sweetest of all buds
Which are breaking to flower under the sun of a maiden's eyes.

Parent and Child

Often of an evening I take the air
And linger on the bridge by the Isle of Dogs,
And sometimes see
The swan-like shape of the ship that brought me hither.
Often since then that ship has gone
To the land from which it brought me;
And on each voyage my heart accompanies it.

Should I some day in person journey with it,
My honourable father would welcome his little son.
He would not see this worn and tattered one,
This lean and sorrowful son of the waterside.
He would not see this parchment face,
This figure without lustre.
He would see his little son who left him long ago;
For love would brush away the husk of years,
And leave a little child.

Of Worship and Conduct

At the corner of the Causeway on every seventh evening
Gathers the band of Salvation Army,
Making big noise of Washed-in-Blood-of-Lamb.

At temple in East India Dock Road
Men gather in white clothes, and sing,
And march with candles and pray to Lady.

At shop in Pennyfields, many times a day,
This person pays respect to Big Man Joss,
And burns to him prayer-papers and punk-sticks.

And all day long men toil for wife and child;
Wife suffer and stint to