The use of the street in T.S Eliot's "Rhapsody on a Windy Night", "Preludes" and Henry Lawson's "Faces In The Street."

ESSAY: RHAPSODY ON A WINDY NIGHT, FACES IN THE STREET, PRELUDES. In three separate poems the theme of the street is bought out and examined. It is seen as a grey depressing window into people's lives. Both T.S Eliot and Henry Lawson used the street as a metaphor for the lives of the poor. Eliot in Preludes seems to be searching for the one good thing amongst all the misery, but Henry Lawson is …

…for sorrow. This view is not held by all, others may see life and the street as a happy thing, but these two men saw it as a harsh, cruel ugly thing. Lawson's solution is a revolution, Eliot doesn't really provide a solution, but in Preludes resigns himself to the fact that that is what life is like and comforts himself with small, fleeting, bittersweet things that are not happiness, but something almost like it.