Concrete and Clay

As many of my fellow posters may realise, the metropolis, and, so it would seem, the UK in general is currently in the fervorous grip of a deadly pestilence and drought, and hence a lament, after Gray (see last month):

The curfew tolls the hell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly through the street,
The barman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering hope of green so bright,
And all the air a solemn cleaness holds,
Save where the pigeon wheels his moaning flight,
And boozy inklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder council flatted tower
The moping dealer does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret grower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged pylons, that green's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap once lay,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the city trying, vainly, to sleep.