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.