Down Tottenham Court Road they ululate,
The droning choruses of Fate.
They walk the length of every wind,
The women who sin, the women who have sinned.
This evening's crime, all immemorial crimes,
Here gather from all lands and times.
Here with Orestes through the mart
Walks the grey lad who stabbed his mother's heart.
Gaunt Clytæmnestra stumbles round the feet
Of Sarah from a Soho street,
Who slew her sallow man to-night
With thin-lipped poison in the street lamp-light.
Pale Helen braids her legendary hair,
Lurking outside a gallery-stair,
While softly through the music calls
Aspasia to her lover in the stalls.
Here broken Orpheus searches, drunken-wild,
Eurydice, the fallen child,
Who, leagues down in the underworld,
Flaunts her white bosom, rouged lips, and gilt hair curled.
Behind the plate-glass windows drum the looms
Of Destinies spinning antique dooms.
The droning choruses of Fate,
Down Tottenham Court Road they ululate.