Explore "Dockside Noises" by Thomas Burke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There are in Limehouse many sounds; / A hundred different sounds by day and night.
The crash and mutter of the dockside railway, / The noise of quarrel, the noise of fist on face, / My country's songs, guitars, and gramophones, / The noise of boot on stone, / The noise of women bargaining their flesh, / The noise of singers in the ships, / Sounds of threat and sounds of fear, / Blasts of hammer and steel and iron, / The scream of syren, the wail of hooter, / The clangour of angry bells, / The boom of guns, the clatter of factories, / The panic of feet, and malevolent words.
All these sounds I know, and they disturb me not. / The sound that is to me most terrible, / That snatches slumber from me, / Is the sound that is most common: / The scream of a child at night.