All day long the traffic goes In Lady Street by dingy rows Of sloven houses, tattered shops — Fried fish, old clothes and fortune-tellers —
Tall trams on silver-shining rails, With grinding wheels and swaying tops, And lorries with their corded bales, And screeching cars. “Buy, buy!” the sellers
Of rags and bones and sickening meat Cry all day long in Lady Street. And when the sunshine has its way In Lady Street, then all the grey
Dull desolation grows in state More dull and grey and desolate, And the sun is a shamefast thing, A lord not comely-housed, a god
Seeing what gods must blush to see, A song where it is ill to sing, And each gold ray despiteously Lies like a gold ironic rod.
Yet one grey man in Lady Street Looks for the sun. He never bent Life to his will, his travelling feet Have scaled no cloudy continent,
Nor has the sickle-hand been strong. He lives in Lady Street; a bed, Four cobwebbed walls. But all day long
A time is singing in his head Of youth in Gloucester lanes. He hears The wind among the barley-blades, The tapping of the woodpeckers
On the smooth beeches, thistle-spades Slicing the sinewy roots; he sees The hooded filberts in the copse Beyond the loaded orchard trees,
The netted avenues of hops; He smells the honeysuckle thrown Along the hedge. He lives alone, Alone — yet not alone, for sweet
Are Gloucester lanes in Lady Street. Aye, Gloucester lanes. For down below The cobwebbed room this grey man plies A trade, a coloured trade. A show
Of many-coloured merchandise Is in his shop. Brown filberts there, And apples red with Gloucester air, And cauliflowers he keeps, and round
Smooth marrows grown on Gloucester ground, Fat cabbages and yellow plums, And gaudy brave chrysanthemums. And times a glossy pheasant lies
Among his store, not Tyrian dyes More rich than are the neck-feathers; And times a prize of violets, Or dewy mushrooms satin-skinned
And times an unfamiliar wind Robbed of its woodland favour stirs Gay daffodils this grey man sets Among his treasure.
All day long In Lady Street the traffic goes By dingy houses, desolate rows Of shops that stare like hopeless eyes.
Day long the sellers cry their cries, The fortune-tellers tell no wrong Of lives that know not any right, And drift, that has not even the will
To drift, toils through the day until The wage of sleep is won at night. But this grey man heeds not at all The hell of Lady Street. His stall
Of many-coloured merchandise He makes a shining paradise, As all day long chrysanthemums He sells, and red and yellow plums
And cauliflowers. In that one spot Of Lady Street the sun is not Ashamed to shine and send a rare Shower of colour through the air;
The grey man says the sun is sweet On Gloucester lanes in Lady Street.
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