John Gould Fletcher - Back Streets lyrics

You that have gazed long on the city s splendour, Behold its life, how thick and red it runs! From dawn to dusk and on through countless suns, Self-spending, self-creating, fixed, untender, Coarse, d**hless, changeless! Do you homage render To that which with its power the spirit stuns: And will, until all things are as they once Were, in the grip of d**h, the sole amender. Thousands of years ago thus in the grime Life struggled, as it struggles on to-day, As it must struggle till its latest scene: No change shall ever be except in time, Until all things as dreams are swept away, And the earth is as if it ne'er had been.