Eros And Psyche

In an old dull yard near Camden Town, Which echoes with the rattle of cars and 'busses And freight-trains, puffing steam and smoke and dirt To the steaming, sooty sky-- There stands an old and grimy statue, A statue of Psyche and her lover, Eros.

A little nearer Camden Town, In a square of ugly sordid shops, Is another statue, facing the Tube, Staring with a heavy, purposeless glare At the red and white shining tiles-- A tall stone statue of Cobden. And though no one ever pauses to see What hero it is that faces the Tube, I can understand very well indeed That England must honour its national heroes, Must honour the hero of Free Trade-- Or was it the Corn Laws?-- That I can understand. But what I shall never understand Is the little group in the dingy yard Under the dingier sky, The Eros and Psyche-- Surrounded with pots and terra-cotta busts And urns and broken pillars-- Eros, naked, with his wings stretched out Just lighting down to kiss her on the lips.

What are they doing here in Camden Town In the midst of all this clamour and filth? They who should stand in a sun-lit room Hung with deep purple, painted with gods, Paved with white porphyry, Stand for ever embraced By the side of a rustling fountain Over a marble basin Carved with leopards and grapes and young men dancing; Or in a garden leaning above Corinth, Under the ilices and the cypresses, Very white against a very blue sky; Or growing hoary, if they must grow old, With lichens and softly creeping moss. What are they doing here in Camden Town? And who has brought their naked beauty And their young fresh lust to Camden Town, Which settled long ago to toil and sweat and filth, Forgetting--to the greater glory of Free Trade-- Young beauty and young love and youthful flesh?

Slowly the rain settles down on them, Slowly the soot eats into them, Slowly the stone grows greyer and dirtier, Till in spite of his spreading wings Her eyes have a rim of soot Half an inch deep, And his wings, the tall god's wings, That should be red and silver Are ocherous brown.

And I peer from a 'bus-top As we splash through the grease and puddles, And I glimpse them, huddled against the wall, Half-hidden under a freight-train's smoke, And I see the limbs that a Greek slave cut In some old Italian town, I see them growing older And sadder And greyer.