Poor yet industrious, modest, quiet, neat, Such claim compassion in a night like this, And have a friend in ev'ry feeling heart. Warm'd, while it lasts, by labour, all day long They brave the season, and yet find at eve, Ill clad, and fed but sparely, time to cool. The frugal housewife trembles when she lights Her scanty stock of brushwood, blazing clear, But dying soon, like all terrestrial joys. The few small embers left she nurses well; And, while her infant race, with outspread hands, And crowded knees, sit cow'ring oer the sparks, Retires, content to quake, so they be warm'd. The man feels least, as more inur'd than she To winter, and the current in his veins More briskly mov'd by his severer toil; Yet he too finds his own distress in theirs. The taper soon extinguished, which I saw Dangling along at the cold finger's end Just when the day declin'd; and the brown loaf Lodg'd on the shelf, half eaten without sauce Of savory cheese, or butter, costlier still; Sleep seems their only refuge: for alas, Where penury is felt the thought is chain'd, And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few! They live, and live without extorted alms From grudging hands; but other boast have none, To soothe their honest pride, that scorns to beg, Nor comfort else, but in their mutual love. _London, Published by R. Miller, Old Fish Street, Doctors Commons._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ N^o. 12. [Illustration] On Providence Thomson.