I wander through a crowd of women,
Whose hair and teeth are false,
Whose lips and cheeks have artificial colours,
Whose dress is artificial silk and velvet,
Whose talk is mainly lies.
And I remember
How once I dreamed of Truth:
It was a fair green tree,
Growing in an open grassy place
Beside cool flowing water…
They have cut down the tree.
Its sap dried up long ago.
Perhaps some fragment of it still remains
Embedded in an ugly garish building.
But most of it is turn’d to poisonous dust,
Blown through the stifling streets of slums.
