His minstrelsy may be unchaste —
     ’Tis much unto that motley taste,
     And loud the laughter he provokes
     From those sad slaves of obscene jokes.

     But woe is many a passer by
     Who as he goes turns half an eye,
     To see the human form divine
     Thus Circe-wise changed into swine!

     Make up the sum of either sex
     That all our human hopes perplex,
     With those unhappy shapes that know
     The silent streets and pale cock-crow.

     And can I trace in such dull eyes
     Of fireside peace or country skies? 
     And could those haggard cheeks presume
     To memories of a May-tide bloom?

     Those violated forms have been
     The pride of many a flowering green;
     And still the virgin bosom heaves
     With daisy meads and dewy leaves.

     But stygian darkness reigns within
     The river of death from the founts of sin;
     And one prophetic water rolls
     Its gas-lit surface for their souls.

     I will not hide the tragic sight —
     Those drown’d black locks, those dead lips white,
     Will rise from out the slimy flood,
     And cry before God’s throne for blood!

     Those stiffened limbs, that swollen face, —
     Pollution’s last and best embrace,
     Will call, as such a picture can,
     For retribution upon man.

     Hark! how their feeble laughter rings,
     While still the ballad-monger sings,
     And flatters their unhappy breasts
     With poisonous words and pungent jests.

     O how would every daisy blush
     To see them ’mid that earthy crush! 
     O dumb would be the evening thrush,
     And hoary look the hawthorn bush!

     The meadows of their infancy
     Would shrink from them, and every tree,
     And every little laughing spot,
     Would hush itself and know them not.

     Precursor to what black despairs
     Was that child’s face which once was theirs! 
     And O to what a world of guile
     Was herald that young angel smile!

     That face which to a father’s eye
     Was balm for all anxiety;
     That smile which to a mother’s heart
     Went swifter than the swallow’s dart!

     O happy homes! that still they know
     At intervals, with what a woe
     Would ye look on them, dim and strange,
     Suffering worse than winter change!

     And yet could I transplant them there,
     To breathe again the innocent air
     Of youth, and once more reconcile
     Their outcast looks with nature’s smile;

     Could I but give them one clear day
     Of this delicious loving May,
     Release their souls from anguish dark,
     And stand them underneath the lark; —

     I think that Nature would have power
     To graft again her blighted flower
     Upon the broken stem, renew
     Some portion of its early hue; —