LONDON ROSES
by: Willa Cather (1873-1947)
- "OWSES,
Rowses! Penny a bunch!" they tell you--
- Slattern girls in Trafalgar, eager to sell you.
- Roses, roses, red in the Kensington sun,
- Holland Road, High Street, Bayswater, see you and smell you--
- Roses of London town, red till the summer is done.
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- Roses, roses, locust and lilac, perfuming
- West End, East End, wondrously budding and blooming
- Out of the black earth, rubbed in a million hands,
- Foot-trod, sweat-sour over and under, entombing
- Highways of darkness, deep gutted with iron bands.
-
- "Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!" they tell you,
- Ruddy blooms of corruption, see you and smell you,
- Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears--
- North shire, south shire, none are like these, I tell you,
- Roses of London perfumed with a thousand years.
"London Roses" is reprinted
from April Twilights. Willa Cather. Boston: The Gorham
Press, 1903. |
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POEMS BY WILLA CATHER |
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