36
Riots are nightly heard, the curse, the cries
Of beaten wife, perverse in her replies;
While shrieking children hold each threat'ning hand,
And sometimes life and sometimes food demand:
Boys in their first stol'n rags, to swear begin,
And girls, who knew not sex, are skill'd in gin;
Snarers and Smuglers here their gains divide,
Ensnaring females here their Victims hide;
And here is one, the Sybil of the Row,
Who knows all secrets, or affects to know;
Seeking their fate, to her the simple run,
To her the guilty, theirs awhile to shun;
Mistress of worthless arts, deprav'd in will.
Her care unblest and unrepaid her skill,
Slave to the tribe, to whose command she stoops,
And poorer than the poorest maid she dupes.
Between the road-way and the walls, offence
Invades all eyes and strikes on every sense;
There lie, obscene, at every open door,
Heaps from the hearth and sweepings from the floor;
And day by day the mingled masses grow,
As sinks are disembogu'd and gutters flow.
There hungry dogs from hungry children steal,
There pigs and chickens quarrel for a meal;
There dropsied infants wail without redress,
And all is want, and woe, and wretchedness:
Yet should these Boys, with bodies bronz'd and bare,
High-swoln and hard, outlive that lack of care—
Forc'd on some farm the unexerted strength,
Though loth to action, is compell'd at length,
Of beaten wife, perverse in her replies;
While shrieking children hold each threat'ning hand,
And sometimes life and sometimes food demand:
Boys in their first stol'n rags, to swear begin,
And girls, who knew not sex, are skill'd in gin;
Snarers and Smuglers here their gains divide,
Ensnaring females here their Victims hide;
And here is one, the Sybil of the Row,
Who knows all secrets, or affects to know;
Seeking their fate, to her the simple run,
To her the guilty, theirs awhile to shun;
Mistress of worthless arts, deprav'd in will.
Her care unblest and unrepaid her skill,
Slave to the tribe, to whose command she stoops,
And poorer than the poorest maid she dupes.
Between the road-way and the walls, offence
Invades all eyes and strikes on every sense;
There lie, obscene, at every open door,
Heaps from the hearth and sweepings from the floor;
And day by day the mingled masses grow,
As sinks are disembogu'd and gutters flow.
There hungry dogs from hungry children steal,
There pigs and chickens quarrel for a meal;
There dropsied infants wail without redress,
And all is want, and woe, and wretchedness:
Yet should these Boys, with bodies bronz'd and bare,
High-swoln and hard, outlive that lack of care—
Forc'd on some farm the unexerted strength,
Though loth to action, is compell'd at length,
