Verse and Reverse (1921)/A Ward Prayer

Heat from the asphalt pavement,
And flies in its syrupy pools,
The stench of the gutter sluices,
The wheeze of labouring mules,
A ribbed, gray tom-cat's mewing,
The crunch of the street-gang's tools!

House-faces sheer on the road-line,
With meat, or fruit, or fowl,
And cow heads heaped in a yard-way
Whence rings the ragman's howl,
A shapeless mass of a woman
And a child with an old man's jowl

Tony, and Sally and Rosie,
Ivan and Ikey and Zack
Isey, and Chong and Josie,
Patrick and Donald and Jack,
These be their great Dominion!
These, and the sign-covered shack.

No stretches of Russian plateaus,
Nor Isles of the British seas,
Nor Greece, and the Roman marshes,
Nor Israel's cypress trees.
Blood of David and Arthur,
Of Caesar, Miltiades,
May the God of the Word's dark places,
Brother the souls of these!