From stately Georgian houses 

The summer evening fills

With Georgian ladies’ laughter

As they meet to dance Quadrilles

Their laughter tinkles down the years

From Hope and Rodney Street

On wreaths of smoke it gently steers

Their tiny Georgian feet

 

So delicate the tracery 

Of plastered ceiling coves

Fanlights warmly candlelit

And Palladian porticoes

The city sits in fogged content

Riches flow in with the tide

Ivory, gold, Byzantine scents

To perfume civic pride

 

And in the depth of 

darkening holds

Salted dampness caulked with tar

Piratic strategies unfold

For far West Africa

We’ll fill the ships with shells and brass

To exchange for human cargo

And return with sugar and molasses

There will be no embargo

 

We’ll all be rich and statues 

Will adorn and mark this town

Of Bold and Penny, Gladstone

Slave merchants of renown

Our burghers’ mercantile prowess

Will never be exceeded

Until the sun sets on Atlantic shores

And our Empire has receded

 

Albion’s sons and daughters

Now trample those same cobbles

Their voices loud and raucous

As on stiletto heels they hobble

With fleshy toes and thighs exposed

They play by their own rules

The contemporary English Rose

Sweet pride of Liverpool