Behold Athens! What is Athens now?
Cinders and weeds where the eyeballs were, filth for
the marble brow.
Ilissus, Ilissus of the plain?
—Sardine-tins and a dead cat in a drain!
Dead, dead, dead are the Caryatids
Because of the horror that smote their petal-thin lids.
And the Parthenon now is a jawful of yellow teeth
In the snarling skull of an animal humped in death.
For Athens is only a squalor of traders that hope
To retire on the profits from soap.
And the trousers of half of the children of Pallas are
dirty with grease,
And the other half ardently brush them and keep them
in crease.
Then pray, O London, my city, when you are dead,
That none know the place where you reared your mad proud head;
That there be not a mound nor a stone nor even a tree,
But only the ignorant river or the desert sea!