And, when I enter’d, misery met my view } In every shape she wears, in every hue, } And the bleak icy blast across the dungeon flew; } There frown’d the ruin’d walls that once were white; There gleam’d the panes that once admitted light; There lay unsavoury scraps of wretched food; And there a measure, void of fuel, stood. But who shall part by part describe the state Of these, thus follow’d by relentless fate? 720 All, too, in winter, when the icy air Breathed its bleak venom on the guilty pair. “That man, that Cecil!—he was left, it seems, Unnamed, unnoticed: farewell to his dreams! Heirs made by law rejected him of course, And left him neither refuge nor resource.— Their father’s? No; he was the harlot’s son } Who wrong’d them, whom their duty bade them shun; } And they were duteous all, and he was all undone. } “Now the lost pair, whom better times had led 730 To part disputing, shared their sorrow’s bed; Their bed!—I shudder as I speak—and shared Scraps to their hunger by the hungry spared.”— “Man! my good Ellis! can you sigh?”—“I can: In short, Sir Owen, I must feel as man; And could you know the miseries they endured, The poor, uncertain pittance they procured; When, laid aside the needle and the pen, Their sickness won the neighbours of their den, Poor as they are—and they are passing poor— 740 To lend some aid to those who needed more; Then, too, an ague with the winter came; } And, in this state—that wife I cannot name } Brought forth a famish’d child of suffering and of shame. } “This had you known, and traced them to this scene, Where all was desolate, defiled, unclean, A fireless room, and, where a fire had place, The blast loud howling down the empty space— You must have felt a part of the distress, Forgot your wrongs, and made their suffering less!”— 750 “Sought you them, Ellis, from the mean intent To give them succour?”— “What indeed I meant At first was vengeance; but I long pursued The pair, and I at last their misery view’d In that vile garret, which I cannot paint— The sight was loathsome, and the smell was faint; And there that wife, whom I had loved so well, And thought so happy, was condemn’d to dwell; The gay, the grateful wife, whom I was glad To see in dress beyond our station clad, 760 And to behold among our neighbours fine, More than perhaps became a wife of mine: And now among her neighbours to explore, And see her poorest of the very poor!— I would describe it, but I bore a part, Nor can explain the feelings of the heart; Yet memory since has aided me to trace The horrid features of that dismal place. There she reclined unmoved, her bosom bare To her companion’s unimpassion’d stare, 770 And my wild wonder—Seat of virtue! chaste, As lovely once! O! how wert thou disgraced!