All speak aloud, are happy and are free, And glad they seem and gaily they agree. What, though fastidious ears may shun the speech, Where all are talkers and where none can teach; Where still the Welcome and the Words are old, And the same Stories are for ever told; Yet their’s is joy that bursting from the heart, Prompts the glad tongue these nothings to impart; That forms these tones of gladness we despise, That lifts their steps, that sparkles in their eyes; That talks or laughs or runs or shouts or plays, And speaks in all their looks and all their ways. Fair scenes of peace! ye might detain us long, But Vice and Misery now demand the song; And turn our view from Dwellings simply neat, To this infected Row, we term our Street. Here, in cabal, a disputatious crew Each evening meet; the Sot, the Cheat, the Shrew; 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 heed not dress, are skill’d in gin: Snarers and Smugglers 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 kennels 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, When warm’d by health, as serpents in the spring, Aside their slough of indolence they fling. Yet ere they go, a greater evil comes-- See! crowded beds in those contiguous rooms; Beds but ill parted, by a paltry screen, Of paper’d lath or curtain dropt between; Daughters and Sons to yon compartments creep, And Parents here beside their Children sleep: Ye who have power, these thoughtless people part, Nor let the Ear be first to taint the Heart. Come! search within, nor sight nor smell regard; The true Physician walks the foulest ward.