The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r, All wealth procures, its being to entrench, Await alike the writ’s appointed hour: The paths of spendthrifts lead but to the Bench. Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, That they are here, and not at large like you, That they have bills at tailor’s, and wine vault Bills that, alas! have long been overdue. Can story gay, or animated tale, Back from this mansion bid us freely run? Can honour’s voice o’er creditors prevail, Or flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of Dun? Perhaps in this confined retreat is shut Some heart, to make a splash once all on fire: Skill, that might Hobhouse to the rout have put, Or loyally play’d Doctor Southey’s lyre. But prudence to their eyes her careful page, Rich in pounds, shillings, pence, did ne’er unroll. Stern creditors repress’d their noble rage, And froze the genial current of their soul. Full many a blood, in fashion an adept, The dark, lone rooms of spunging-houses bear Full many a fair is born to bloom unkept, And waste her sweetness, none know how or where. Some cockney Petersham, that with whisker’d cheek Once moved in Bond Street, Rotten Row, Pall Mall, Some humble Mrs. Clarke[14] for rest may seek, Some Burdett, guiltless quite of speaking well. The applauses of admiring mobs to gain To be to threats of ruin, prison, lost; To see they have not spent their cash in vain, And read their triumph in the Morning Post. That lot forbade; nor circumscribed alone Their growing follies, but themselves confined; The bailiff grimly seized them for his own, And turnkeys closed the gates on them behind. The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, The King’s Bench terribly pulls down our pride For high or lowly born, ’tis all the same. Far from the city’s mad ignoble strife They still retain an eager wish to stray; They hate this cool sequester’d mode of life, And wish at liberty to work their way. And on those walls that still from duns protect Those fire-proof walls, so strongly built and high, With uncouth rhymes and mis-spelt verses deck’d, They ask the passing tribute of a sigh. Their names, their years, writ by th’ unletter’d muse The place of fame and brass plate fill up well; And many a lawyer’s too the stranger views With pious wishes he may go to hell. For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, His pleasing anxious liberty resign’d, To Banco Regis bent his dreary way, Nor cast one longing lingering look behind. On some one out, the prisoner still relies, Some one to yield him comfort, he requires; E’en from the Bench the voice of nature cries, E’en though imprison’d, glow our wonted fires.