The Ballad of a Motor ’Bus
You get in at Ludgate Circus,
Where in regiments they stand,
All throbbing underneath the bridge,
And pointing to the Strand—
All pageantry with colours,
All poetry with words,
Wait those blazoned motor-’buses
In their fiercely panting herds.
There are ’buses for the East,
There are ’buses for the West,
For North and South and Central
And where heaven pleases best—
For the Elephant and Castle,
Gospel Oak and Parson’s Green,
Some for Chelsea, some for Putney,
Some for Barnes, and some for Sheen.
There are some that cross the river,
And they see the steamers crawl
With dirty belching smoke-stacks
To the Pool or London Wall—
They rumble down the dingy streets
Where dingy houses grow
Like quickly sprouting toadstools
In an evil yellow row.
And some go plunging northward
Up the hills to Kensal Rise,
And some are bound for Hampstead
And the smokeless windy skies,
And some go east to Hackney,
And the long Commercial Road,
Past the buying and the selling,
To poverty’s abode.
But the ’bus I take goes westward—
It leaves Charing Cross behind,
Then it bounds up Piccadilly,
Through the smokey dusty wind—
The first lamps have been lighted,
And across St James’s Park
The early lights of Westminster
Are splashing on the dark.
The dusk is falling gently,
And from the streets below
The London glare climbs upward
To make the sad skies glow—
Through the mingled dusk and dazzle
We hum swiftly on our way,
While the wind brings to our faces
The first damps of the day.
It is Summer, it is evening,
Early stars are in the sky,
Shining dim above the smoke-wreaths,
While the western bonfires die—
And the wind sings of the river
That beyond the city flows,
Of the pleasant westward reaches
That no cargo-tramper knows.
So we spin through holy Brompton,
We leave Kensington behind,
We thunder down to Fulham,
Past churches tall and blind—
Till we come at last to Putney,
And the starlit river gleams
Through darkness up to Richmond,
A thoroughfare of dreams.
And it’s there that you are waiting,
O my faithful love, for me!
Through the dark your eyes are straining
My chariot to see—
For the working-day is over,
All its dust and hurry past,
And we go to the river,
With my hand in yours at last.
While the motor-’bus rolls onward—
And we stop to watch it tear
All burning through the twilight,
Mysterious and fair.
It was our love’s bright chariot,
The torch of our desires,
Kindling the London darkness
With youth’s eternal fires.
O youth!—O youth in London!
Shall they ever be forgot,
Those young and eager footsteps
On pavements hard and hot?
The dust is in the breezes,
Stinks of petrol stain the air,
But youth has come to London,
And has found a garden there.