Their heads were bare: their short skirts swung
As they went along;
Their scarf-covered breasts heaved up as they sung
Their defiant Song.
It was not too clean, their feminine lay,
But it thrilled me quite
With its challenge to taskmaster villainous day
And infamous night,
With its threat to the robber Rich, the Proud,
The respectable Free.
And I laughed and shouted to them aloud,
And they shouted to me!
"Girls, that's the shout, the shout we shall utter
When, with rifles and spades,
We stand, with the old Red flag aflutter,
On the barricades!
A STREET FIGHT.
(To ———.[1])
Sir, we approve your curling lip and nose
At this vile sight.
These men, these women are "brute beasts?"—Who knows,
Sir, but that you are right?
Panders and harlots, rogues and thieves and worse,
We are a crew
Whose pitiful plunder's honoured in the purse
Of Gentlemen (like you)
Whom holy Competition's taught (like us)
"What's thine is mine!"—
How we must love you who have made us thus,
You may perhaps Divine!
- ↑ Who owns, and rack-rents, some of the vilest slums in London, and is beautifully æsthetic in private life.
