Bethnal Green 1850
It is a Sunday morning in spring the bright sun shines in Bethnal-green,
Wander along a path between the church, the railway towards Whitechapel,
For one day there are beautiful flowering gardens thrown open to anybody
And at their gates there are beautiful plants and flower-roots for sale.
There is every flower imaginable radiant under the English morning sun,
Old flowers to take you back childhood and your grandparents childhood,
There are lads loves, sweet williams, daisies, pinks to warm your heart,
Wallflowers, polyanthuses, thrifts, tufts of sweet-peas, with daisies
Tufts of larkspurs, violets with columbines all for sale at one penny,
For one penny the poor can stock a small plot by a door, or corner tub,
Or it could be a pot in the window, where these poor plants will fade,
Under the admiring eyes of those who are older and fading themselves.
Out of the alleys and courts and unknown streets many people come to see,
And those pale and sickly weavers are streaming along to feast their eyes,
Different from stenches and factory grime, miserable times over the years,
magical, beautiful and delicate, for a moment their grim lives forgotten.
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