I will wrap you around with verses and cover you with fair thoughts.

There is yet one little corner left,
Free from the world's defilement;
One little corner where not a breath of wrong
Shall enter to disturb your slumbering.
And I will cherish you there
In the nest you will make so pure.
I will hold you and guard you safe from the snares of the stony streets.
Be at peace, little maid, and lie in trust;
For though my feet may stumble, and I may fall,
The corner that houses you I will ever keep whole.



Of Two Dwellings

At the lower end of Limehouse Causeway
Is a house where girls surrender their bodies
To the pleasures of base-minded and unpolished men,
In return for shillings.
And on the walls about this house
Blossoms at summer the wild white rose.

In a tiny room at the top of a tenement
Lives a white maid of surpassing virtue,
Gentle in manner and quiet and dutiful,
Combing her golden curls each morning
Before a window that looks out to hell;
That looks upon cesspools of mud, and mounds of refuse and the offal of the shops.