A VISION OF LONDON.

Colonist, Volume XXVII, Issue 3820, 22 January 1884, Page 3

A VISION OF LONDON.

By Dagonet. Herded together, like pigs in a sty, • Men and women and children lie, Huddled together in filth and rags, Boys and girls and dissolute hags ; Thieves and workers and wives and maids; All the vices and all the trades— Every horror and every sin Born of poverty, bred of gin. Here is a cellar—look at it well. What did the Florentine see in hell ? What doom of the damned in his vision came Could ever compare to our city's shame ? Look at the ceiling, the crumbling walls, The hideous floor where a baby crawls. Well may you sicken and turn and fly; But this is where Christians must live and die. Christians ? No, they are beasts, not men— They are vermin bred in the filthy den; Gin-sodden, horrible beasts of prey, Parasites born of a town's decay. Fever and pestilence, dirt, disease, i Are the fathers and mothers of such as these; And the wretches who herd in this awful place Are the sires and dams of the coming race. Think of it well—shall we let them rot, . Packed in the slums by the landlord lot, Who squeeze the gold from the seething mob, And murder their victims, as well as rob ? Or shall we, letting the heathen wait, Spare one thought for our own folks' fate, And Tory and Bad unite to give Their poorer brothers a chance to live ? —From the «Eeferee.'