The noise of women bargaining their flesh,
The noise of singers in the ships,
Sounds of threat and sounds of fear,
Blasts of hammer and steel and iron,
The scream of syren, the wail of hooter,
The clangour of angry bells,
The boom of guns, the clatter of factories,
The panic of feet, and malevolent words.

All these sounds I know, and they disturb me not.
The sound that is to me most terrible,
That snatches slumber from me,
Is the sound that is most common:
The scream of a child at night.



Reproof and Approbation

Because I gave a piece of silk
To my friend of the golden curls,
One (may the dogs devour him) threw a stone at my window,
And hooted and jeered and made base noise with his mouth.
Nay, worse, this son of a sea-slug (may his line perish)
Hurled hard names at my friend,
Calling her Tart, and Flusey, and Tom; and, as we walked together,
Cried: `Watcher, Nancy, who's yer friend with the melon face
And the bug-eaten cabbage-leaf on his head?'

The lean and scurvy dog that slinks about Pennyfields