Crystal Palace - II

A heavy shower; the Palace fills; begins
The business and the office of the day,
The eating and the drinking— only real
Enjoyment to be had, they tell you straight
Now that the shifty weather fails them too.


But what's the pother here, the blank dismay?
Money has lost its value at the bars:
Like tavern-tokens when the Boar's Head rang
With laughter and the Mermaid swam in wine,
Tickets are now the only currency.
Before the buffets, metal tables packed
As closely as mosaic, with peopled chairs
Cementing them, where damsels in and out
Attend with food, like disembodied things
That traverse rock as easily as air—
These are the havens, these the happy isles!
A dozen people fight for every seat —
Without a quarrel, unturbently: O,
A peaceable, a tame, a timorous crowd!
And yet relentless: this they know they need;
Here have they money's worth — some food, some drink;
And so alone, in couples, families, groups,
Consuming and consumed — for as they munch
Their victuals all their vitals ennui gnaws —
They sit and sit, and fain would sit it out
In tedious gormandize till firework-time.
But business beats them : those who sit must eat.
Tickets are purchased at besieged kiosks,
And when their value's spent — with such a grudge!—
They rise to buy again, and lose their seats;
For this is Mob, unhappy locust-swarm,
Instinctive, apathetic, ravenous.

Beyond a doubt a most unhappy crowd!
Some scores of thousands searching up and down
The north nave and the south nave hungrily
For space to sit and rest to eat and drink:
Or captives in a labyrinth, or herds
Imprisoned in a vast arena; here
A moment clustered ; there entangled; now
In reaches sped and now in whirlpools spun
With noises like the wind and like the sea,
But silent vocally: they hate to speak:
Crowd; Mob; a blur of faces featureless,
Of forms inane; a stranded shoal of folk.

[Extract]