Islington

Here slow decay with creeping finger peels

The yellow plaster from the grimy walls,

Like leprous lichen, day by day which falls,

And, day by day, more rotting stone reveals!

Here are old mournful squares through which there steals

No cheerful music, or the heedless calls

Of laughing children; and the smoke, which crawls

Across the sky, the heavy silence seals!

Lean, blackened trees stretch up their withered boughs

Behind the rusty railings, prison-bound,

In vain they seek the summer sunlight's gold

In which their long-dead fathers used to drowse:

For pallid terraces lie far around,

In gloomy sadness ever growing old.