Between various post-offices,
Messages of business and messages of love,
Rates of advertisements and all the winners,
Are vibrating and thrumming
Like a thousand lutes.

Is the old grey heart of the telegraph pole stirred by these messages?
I fancy not.
Yet it all seems very strange;
And even stranger still, now that I notice it,
Is the fact that the thing is after all not absolutely naked,
For a short way up it, half obliterated with age,
Discoloured and torn,
Fastened on by tintacks,
There is a paper _affiche_
Relating to swine fever.

The sun sinks lower and I pass on,
On to the fifteenth pole from Shere to Havering,
And the twentieth
From Havering to Shere;
It is even more naked and desolate than the last.
I pause (as before)....

[_Author._ We can start all over again now if you like. _Editor._ I
don't like.]

EVOE.

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