A little, bearded man, pale, peaked in sleeping, With a face like a chickweed flower. And a heavy woman, sleeping still keeping Callous and dour. Over the pallor of only two places Tossed on the low, black, ruffled heap Passes the light of the tram as it races Out of the deep. Eloquent limbs In disarray Sleep-suave limbs of a youth with long, smooth thighs Hutched up for warmth; the muddy rims Of trousers fray On the thin bare shins of a man who uneasily lies. The balls of five red toes As red and dirty, bare Young birds forsaken and left in a nest of mud-- Newspaper sheets enclose Some limbs like parcels, and tear When the sleeper stirs or turns on the ebb of the flood-- One heaped mound Of a woman's knees As she thrusts them upward under the ruffled skirt-- And a curious dearth of sound In the presence of these Wastrels that sleep on the flagstones without any hurt. Over two shadowless, shameless faces Stark on the heap Travels the light as it tilts in its paces Gone in one leap. At the feet of the sleepers, watching, Stand those that wait For a place to lie down; and still as they stand, they sleep, Wearily catching The flood's slow gait Like men who are drowned, but float erect in the deep. Oh, the singing mansions, Golden-lighted tall Trams that pass, blown ruddily down the night! The bridge on its stanchions Stoops like a pall To this human blight. On the outer pavement, slowly, Theatre people pass, Holding aloft their umbrellas that flash and are bright Like flowers of infernal moly Over nocturnal grass Wetly bobbing and drifting away on our sight. And still by the rotten Row of shattered feet, Outcasts keep guard. Forgotten, Forgetting, till fate shall delete One from the ward. The factories on the Surrey side Are beautifully laid in black on a gold-grey sky. The river's invisible tide Threads and thrills like ore that is wealth to the eye. And great gold midges Cross the chasm At the bridges Above intertwined plasm. WINTER IN THE BOULEVARD THE frost has settled down upon the trees And ruthlessly strangled off the fantasies Of leaves that have gone unnoticed, swept like old Romantic stories now no more to be told. The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought, Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt. Has some hand balanced more leaves in the depths of the twigs? Some dim little efforts placed in the threads of the birch?-- It is only the sparrows, like dead black leaves on the sprigs, Sitting huddled against the cerulean, one flesh with their perch. The clear, cold sky coldly bethinks itself. Like vivid thought the air spins bright, and all Trees, birds, and earth, arrested in the after-thought Awaiting the sentence out from the welkin brought. SCHOOL ON THE OUTSKIRTS