A Ballad Of Whitechapel
God's mercy shines ;
And our full hearts must make record of this,
For grief that burst from out its dark confines
Into strange sunlit bliss.
I stood where glowed
The merry glare of golden whirring lights
Above the monstrous mass that seethed and flowed
Through one of London's nights.
1 watched the gleams
Of jagged warm lights on shrunk faces pale :
I heard mad laughter as one hears in dreams
Or Hell's harsh lurid tale.
The traffic rolled,
A gliding chaos populous of din,
A steaming wail at doom the Lord had scrawled
For perilous loads of sin.
And my soul thought :
'What fearful land have my steps wandered to ?
God's love is everywhere, but here is naught
Save love His anger slew.'
And as I stood
Lost in promiscuous bewilderment,
Which to my 'mazed soul was wonder-food,
A girl in garments rent
Peered 'neath lids shamed
And spoke to me and murmured to my blood.
My soul stopped dead, and all my horror
Named At her forgot of God.
Her hungered eyes,
Craving and yet so sadly spiritual,
Shone like the unsmirched corner of a jewel
Where else foul blemish lies.
I walked with her
Because my heart thought, 'Here the soul is clean,
The fragrance of the frankincense and myrrh
Is lost in odours mean.'
She told me how
The shadow of black death had newly come
And touched her father, mother, even now
Grim-hovering in her home,
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poem by Isaac Rosenberg
Added by Poetry Lover
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