Of Two Dwellings

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Title:     Of Two Dwellings
Author: Thomas Burke [More Titles by Burke]

At the lower end of Limehouse Causeway
Is a house where girls surrender their bodies
To the pleasures of base-minded and unpolished men,
In return for shillings.
And on the walls about this house
Blossoms at summer the wild white rose.

In a tiny room at the top of a tenement
Lives a white maid of surpassing virtue,
Gentle in manner and quiet and dutiful,
Combing her golden curls each morning
Before a window that looks out to hell;
That looks upon cesspools of mud, and mounds of refuse
and the offal of the shops.

[The end]
Thomas Burke's poem: Of Two Dwellings

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