The Last Living Rose
PJ Harvey
Let England Shake (2011)

Goddamn Europeans!
Take me back to beautiful England
and the grey, damp filthiness
of ages, and battered books, and
fog rolling down behind the mountains,
on the graveyards, and dead sea-captains.

Let me walk through the stinking alleys
to the music of drunken beatings,
past the Thames River, glistening like gold
hastily sold for nothing.

Let me watch night fall on the river,
the moon rise up and turn to silver,
the sky move,
the ocean shimmer,
the hedge shake,
the last living rose quiver.