WHEN I CAME BACK TO FLEET STREET

When I came back to Fleet Street,

Through a sunset nook at night,

And saw the old Green Dragon

With the windows all alight,

And hailed the old Green Dragon

And the Cock I used to know,

Where all good fellows were my friends

A little while ago;

I had been long in meadows,

And the trees took hold of me,

And the still towns in the beech-woods,

Where men were meant to be.

But old things held; the laughter,

The long unnatural night,

And all the truth they talk in hell,

And all the lies they write.

For I came back to Fleet Street,

And not in peace I came;

A cloven pride was in my heart,

And half my love was shame.

I came to fight in fairy-tale,

Whose end shall no man know —

To fight the old Green Dragon

Until the Cock shall crow!

Under the broad bright windows

Of men I serve no more,

The groaning of the old great wheels

Thickened to a throttled roar;

All buried things broke upward;

And peered from its retreat,

Ugly and silent, like an elf,

The secret of the street.

They did not break the padlocks,

Or clear the wall away.

The men in debt that drank of old

Still drink in debt to-day;

Chained to the rich by ruin,

Cheerful in chains, as then

When old unbroken Pickwick walked

Among the broken men.

Still he that dreams and rambles

Through his own elfin air,

Knows that the street's a prison,

Knows that the gates are there:

Still he that scorns or struggles

Sees, frightful and afar.

All that they leave of rebels

Rot high on Temple Bar.

All that I loved and hated,

All that I shunned and knew,

Clears in broad battle lightning,

Where they, and I, and you,

Run high the barricade that breaks

The barriers of the street,

And shout to them that shrink within,

The Prisoners of the Fleet.