Where only insolence and misery come? 
(Save that the curious will by chance appear,
Or some in pity drop a fruitless tear);
To a damp Prison, where the very sight
Of the warm sun is favour and not right;
Where all we hear or see the feelings shock,
The oath and groan, the fetter and the lock? 
   Who could bear this and live?—­Oh! many a year
All this is borne, and miseries more severe;
And some there are, familiar with the scene,
Who live in mirth, though few become serene. 
   Far as I might the inward man perceive,
There was a constant effort—­not to grieve: 
Not to despair, for better days would come,
And the freed debtor smile again at home: 
Subdued his habits, he may peace regain,
And bless the woes that were not sent in vain. 
   Thus might we class the Debtors here confined,
The more deceived, the more deceitful kind;
Here are the guilty race, who mean to live
On credit, that credulity will give;
Who purchase, conscious they can never pay;
Who know their fate, and traffic to betray;
On whom no pity, fear, remorse, prevail. 
Their aim a statute, their resource a jail; —
These are the public spoilers we regard,
No dun so harsh, no creditor so hard. 
   A second kind are they, who truly strive
To keep their sinking credit long alive;
Success, nay prudence, they may want, but yet
They would be solvent, and deplore a debt;
All means they use, to all expedients run,
And are by slow, sad steps, at last undone: 
Justly, perhaps, you blame their want of skill,
But mourn their feelings and absolve their will. 
   There is a Debtor, who his trifling all
Spreads in a shop; it would not fill a stall: 
There at one window his temptation lays,
And in new modes disposes and displays: 
Above the door you shall his name behold,
And what he vends in ample letters told,
The words ‘Repository,’ ‘Warehouse,’ all
He uses to enlarge concerns so small: 
He to his goods assigns some beauty’s name,
Then in her reign, and hopes they’ll share her fame,
And talks of credit, commerce, traffic, trade,
As one important by their profit made;
But who can paint the vacancy, the gloom,
And spare dimensions of one backward room? 
Wherein he dines, if so ’tis fit to speak
Of one day’s herring and the morrow’s steak: 
An anchorite in diet, all his care
Is to display his stock and vend his ware. 
   Long waiting hopeless, then he tries to meet
A kinder fortune in a distant street;
There he again displays, increasing yet
Corroding sorrow and consuming debt: 
Alas! he wants the requisites to rise —
The true connections, the availing ties: 
They who proceed on certainties advance,
These are not times when men prevail by chance;
But still he tries, till, after years of pain,
He finds, with anguish, he has tried in vain. 
Debtors are these on whom ’tis hard to press,