POEMS
And crime and hunger and lust
Raged in the noisy dust.
Lightly went Madala,
Unshaken still of that spell,
Coral beads and jade to buy,
While her thoughts roamed easily—
Thoughts like bees in lavender,—
Thoughts gay and fragile as a robin's shell.
Till suddenly she had come
To grim age-stubborned wall
Behind whose mask of bars
Starts up in shame the Foundlings' Hospital[1]
At the gates to watch her pass
A caged thing eyed her dumb,
Most mercifully unaware
Of its own hurt, but Madala
Stopped short of Spring that day.,
The air grew pinched and wan,
A hand came over the sun,
Birds huddled, stones went grey.
Her lace and linen white
Seemed but her body's sin,
Her flesh unscarred and bright
Burnt like a leper's skin.
Raged in the noisy dust.
Lightly went Madala,
Unshaken still of that spell,
Coral beads and jade to buy,
While her thoughts roamed easily—
Thoughts like bees in lavender,—
Thoughts gay and fragile as a robin's shell.
Till suddenly she had come
To grim age-stubborned wall
Behind whose mask of bars
Starts up in shame the Foundlings' Hospital[1]
At the gates to watch her pass
A caged thing eyed her dumb,
Most mercifully unaware
Of its own hurt, but Madala
Stopped short of Spring that day.,
The air grew pinched and wan,
A hand came over the sun,
Birds huddled, stones went grey.
Her lace and linen white
Seemed but her body's sin,
Her flesh unscarred and bright
Burnt like a leper's skin.
43
- ↑ Guilford Street, London, the gates of which face the street.
