'T WAS neither day nor night, but both together
Mix'd in a muddy smear of London weather,
And the dull pouring of perpetual
Dim rain was vague, and vast, and over all.

She stray'd on thro' the rain, and thro' the mud,
That did the slop-fed filmy city flood,
Meekly unmindful as are wretches, who,
Accustom'd to discomfortings, pursue
Their paths scarce conscious of the more or less
Of misery mingled with each day's distress.
Albeit the ghostly rag, too thin to call
Even the bodily remnant of a shawl,
As, at each step, the fretful cough, in vain
By its vext victim check'd, broke loose again,
And shiver'd thro' it, dripping drop by drop,
Contrived the flaccid petticoat to sop
With the chill surcharge of its oozy welt.

The mud was everywhere. It seem'd to melt
Out of the grimy houses, trickling down
Those brickwork blocks that at each other frown,
Unsociable, tho' squeezed and jamm'd so close
Together; all monotonously morose,
And claiming each, behind his iron rail,
The smug importance of a private jail.
She stray'd on thro' the mud: 'twas nothing new:
And thro' the rain — the rain? it was mud too!
The woman still was young, and Nature meant,
Doubtless, she should be fair; but that intent
Hunger, in haste, had marr'd, or toil, or both.
There was no colour in the quiet mouth,
Nor fulness; yet it had a ghostly grace
Pathetically pale. The thin young face
Was interpenetrated tenderly
With soft significance. The warm brown eye,
And warm brown hair, had gentle gleams. Perchance
Those gracious tricks of gesture and of glance,
Those dear and innocent arts, — a woman's ways
Of wearing pretty looks, and winning praise,
— The pleasantness of pleasing, and the skill,
Were native to this woman, — woman still,
Tho' woman wither'd. There's a last degree
Of misery that is sexless wholly. She
Was yet what ye are, mothers, sisters, wives,
That are so sweet and lovely in our lives; —
A woman still, for all her wither'd look,
Even as a faded flower in a book
Is still a flower.