From My London Album

Like you I've seen the Waxworks and the Tower and the Zoo,
Traipsed Oxford Street to buy fine clothes to wear.
In many West End theatres I've applauded many a show,
and I've demonstrated in Trafalgar Square.
I love St Paul's Cathedral, with its silences and space,
And when I reached the cupola, what pleasure
To see for miles and miles around, the river and the streets
And the parks of the metropolis I treasure.

But there's a secret place between the river and the Strand
Where Dickens took his notebook long ago
In the clangour, fog and filth and overcrowding of his day
And wrote it down that everyone should know.
But now there's public gardens and a concrete edifice,
And the hovels and the vermin's swept away,
And westward Civil Servants lunch in clean canteens,
And eastward mothers walk and children play.
And down a quiet passageway a woman walks alone
Amid the alternating light and shade.
She wears a tawny jacket but you cannot see her face,
The girl in the Shell-Mex colonnade.

Maybe you haven't met the varied Londoners I knew,
Like the Parliamentary Secret'ry-to-be
And the clerks I used to work with, and those who cooked and swept,
And helped to make me what I've come to be,
Like Robert, Mary, Margaret - but then you have your own
Acquaintances and friends and foes you've made,
But I never knew the name or the nature of the girl
That I glimpsed in the Shell-Mex colonnade.