'ROWSES, Rowses! Penny a bunch!' they tell you-- <br />Slattern girls in Trafalgar, eager to sell you. <br />Roses, roses, red in the Kensington sun, <br />Holland Road, High Street, Bayswater, see you and smell you-- <br />Roses of London town, red till the summer is done. <br /> <br /> <br />Roses, roses, locust and lilac, perfuming <br />West End, East End, wondrously budding and blooming <br />Out of the black earth, rubbed in a million hands, <br />Foot-trod, sweat-sour over and under, entombing <br />Highways of darkness, deep gutted with iron bands. <br /> <br />'Rowses, rowses! Penny a bunch!' they tell you, <br />Ruddy blooms of corruption, see you and smell you, <br />Born of stale earth, fallowed with squalor and tears-- <br />North shire, south shire, none are like these, I tell you, <br />Roses of London perfumed with a thousand years.<br /><br />Willa Sibert Cather<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/london-roses/
