Classic Poem

If to the PUmp Room in the morn we go
To drink the waters and remove some woe,
Idle the project we too late explore;
And find, to move one plague, we've dared a score.
What tumult, hurry, noise and nonsense blend,
T' annoy the senses, and the soul t' offend!
What sickly, crude, offensive vapours there
The nostrils snuff up with the tainted air!
Whole groups of foppish slovens foully fine
In dirty shirts and tinsel stink and shine,
Midst crowds of dames who, in their nightly trim,
Just reeking from their beds, still stew and steam:
An ill-bred, restless, wild and cackling host,
Noisy as goslings spreading from their roost.
Shocked at the light and sound, I onward rush
To whence th' up-driven streams hot-smoking gush:
Forced to wade through a mob of unwashed beaus
At th' ill expense of elbows and of clothes.
By patient squeezing to the pump I get;
There, roughly thrust next to some clown, I wait,
Who, when he's rudely swilled his potion up,
Leaves me the slobbered favour of his cup.
Glad at all rates t' obtain the healing draught,
I take the glass with all his drivel fraught.
The pumper dips it, fills; and I (convinced,
By the foul fingerprints, the glass is rinsed)
Attempt to drink: when by my next fool pressed,
The slipping beaker pours along my breast.
Urged by despair I plunge into the bath.
But!--here still heavier plagues incense my wrath:
Nameless diseases joined pollute the stream,
And mix their foul infections with its steam.
Here, long ere Lucifer leads in the dawn,
Each greasy cook has seethed away his brawn:
And sweepers from their chimneys, smeared with soot,
Hither have brought, and left behind, their smut.
Jilts, porters, grooms, and guides, and chairmen bring
Their sev'ral ordures to corrupt the spring.
Add to these nuisances the 'wild'ring noise
Of splashing swimmers and of dabbling boys,
Whose bold, loose, rustic gestures move my rage,
Which Celia's presence scarcely can assuage.
Here lepra too, and scabies more unclean,
Divest their scurf t' invest a purer skin,
Whose peeling scales upon the surface swim,
Till what th' unwholesome shed the wholesome skim.
Nor this the greatest grievance in the flood;
The worst I scarcely wish were understood:
All (from the porter to the courtly nymph)
Pay liquid tributes to the swelling lymph.
What benefit such mixtures can impart,
To know--or ev'n to guess--is past my art.
This I affirm: however great it were,
To such a cure I'd ev'ry plague prefer.
Hence mad and poisoned, from the bath I fling
With all the scales and dirt that round me cling:
Then looking back, I curse that jakes obscene,
Whence I come sullied out who entered clean.