<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</SPAN></span>
<h2 class="nobreak">UNEASY REFLECTIONS</h2>
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<div class="verse"><div class="drop-cap2">DETERMINEDLY peppered with signs,</div>
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<div class="verse">The omnibus ambles without curiosity.</div>
<div class="verse">Southampton Row, Malborne Road, Charing Cross—</div>
<div class="verse">These names have no relation</div>
<div class="verse">To the buildings they partition</div>
<div class="verse">If one mutters, “I shall go to Euston Road,”</div>
<div class="verse">Imagination is relieved of all errands</div>
<div class="verse">And, decently ticketed, enters the omnibus.</div>
<div class="verse">If one muttered, “I shall go to protesting angles,</div>
<div class="verse">Surreptitiously middle-aged,</div>
<div class="verse">And find a reticent line to play with,”</div>
<div class="verse">One would violate</div>
<div class="verse">The hasty convenience of labels</div>
<div class="verse">And seriously examine one’s destination.</div>
<div class="verse">If poplar-trees, brief violets and green glades</div>
<div class="verse">On any country road had each received</div>
<div class="verse">An incongruous name—Smith’s Tree,</div>
<div class="verse">C. Jackson’s Clump, or Ferguson’s Depression—</div>
<div class="verse">And city streets had never known a label,</div>
<div class="verse">Most poets would have turned their fluid obsession</div>
<div class="verse">On lamp-posts and the grandeur of ash-cans.</div>
<div class="verse">It would be grimly realistic now</div>
<div class="verse">To write about a violet or a cow.</div>
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