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Riots are nightly heard, the curse, the criesOf 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,
