Listen to me, for a moment, though I may not say a word
That you have not felt and suffered, that you have not read or heard!
Standing there beneath your glare-lamps, shivering on the cold damp flags
While the wheel-flung slush bespatters your poor, washed and mended rags.
Washed and mended, patched and mended — coarse and colourless and creased —
Say! what fingers clicked the stitches? Men of Hell and London East!

What are those that slip behind you, blurred against the blackened walls:
Women-shapes whose heads are shrouded in their ragged wisps of shawls?
They're the wives of Care and Coppers, dead to love and gratitude,
Buying bricks of tar and shavings to warm farthing-worths of food:
Braver, stronger than the highest, reckoned lower than the beast —
They're our wives, and we are helpless, men of Hell and London East.

What are they beneath the street-lamp, some with faces sharp and old,
Aping hagdom! aping childhood, dancing to keep out the cold?
Street-lamps in the mud reflected are their lights of fairyland,
None has ever trod on grass or picked a flower with its own hand;
None has ever seen the country for one little hour at least —
They're our children — they're your children, men of Hell and London East.

No, not mine. You know I followed — (let me see, 'twas Sunday last) —
Two small coffins in a cheap hearse with the horses trotting fast.
O they hurry us in London, living, dying, or the dead.
But it's better over quickly, and the prayers or curses said:
What use had I or my children for a parson or a priest?
They were dead, and I was soulless, men of Hell and London East.

And she's dying, too, the mother! God! if this be motherhood —
(There's a Catholic sister with her, but she will not take her food.)
Some of us this very winter have a chance to emigrate
To a land where men are wanted — I am one, but — such is Fate!
Tell me, what have I to take them — childless, wifeless and " released " —
Save a storm of bitter feelings, men of Hell and London East?

Say Good-night, for I am weary, and our usual time is past;
Some of you and I've been working in the dock since midnight last.
We heard much of foreign nations, and our Realms Across the Seas;
We hear much of strained relations and our blarsted colonies,
Of the dignity of England, and of armaments increased —
What of Home, Sweet Home? O tell me! Men of Hell and London East.