Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, IN REGENT STREET, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IN REGENT STREET, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: One of the nightly hundreds who pass
Last Line: Or ever I look on the like again.
Subject(s): Poverty; Widows & Widowers


ONE of the nightly hundreds who pass
Wearily, hopelessly, under the gas.

But the old sad words had a strange new tone,
And the wild laugh seemed to sink to a moan.

So that turning as one constrained to look,
The strange sight stifled the voice of rebuke:

For I looked on a girl's face pure and fair,
Blue-eyed, and crowned with a glory of hair,

Such as my dead child-sister might own,
Were she not a child still, but a woman grown;

Full of the tender graces that come
To the cherished light of an ancient home;

Even to that touch of a high disdain,
Which is born of a name without blot or stain.

Strange; as if one should chance to meet
An angel of light in that sordid street!

"O child, what misery brings you here,
To this place of vileness and weeping and fear?"

"I am no more than the rest," she said,
Proudly averting her beautiful head!

Then no response, till some kinder word
Stole in unawares, and her heart was stirred.

"I was a wife but the other day,
Now I am left without hope or stay!

"Work did I ask? What work is for you?
What work can those delicate fingers do?

"Service? But how could I bear to part
From the child with whom I had left my heart?

"Alms? -- Yes, at first; then a pitiless No:
The State would provide me whither to go.

"But in sordid prisons it laid my head
With the thief and the harlot; therefore I fled.

"One thing alone had I left untried,
Then I put off the last rag of pride."

"What came? 'You were of an honoured race,
Now you must live with your own disgrace.'

"But many will buy where few will give,
And I die every day that my child may live."

Motherly love sunk to this! Ah, well,
Teach they not how He went down into hell:

Only blind me in heart and brain,
Or ever I look on the like again.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net