The world and wife are out of town,
The blast sweeps down the empty street;
The bobby in a study brown
Thinks of the sea upon his beat.
The cab-horse dozes on the rank,
The empty ’buses cease to race;
The hungry cat roams, lean and lank—
The blinds are down in Portland Place.
The birds still sing in Regent’s Park,
The ducks emit their bronchial quack;
But all day long from dawn to dark
The crossing-sweeper’s trade is slack.
The Langham porter’s wand’ring eye
Encounters ne’er a human face;
No smoke curls upward to the sky—
The blinds are down in Portland Place.
The thoroughfare is broad and wide,
The vestry keeps the roadway clean,
And I can walk on either side,
Or ’gainst each separate lamp-post lean.
I’m king of all that I survey—
As sad as Selkirk’s is my case—
Oh, soon, to save my reason, may
The blinds go up in Portland Place!