Morning Scavengers

Over the city the morning light
     Comes stealing, like "Policeman X,"
Pouncing down on the shadows of night, 
Arresting our slumbers, and putting to flight 
     The dreams of the Watchmen, and orgies that vex 
     Alley and cellar, where crime collects 
Like gutter drench, by the natural flow 
Of every thing loose to the pits below.

Out of a thousand chimney-pots
     Curl the smokes of the early day,
As if so many lounging sots,
Through one great groggery, stretched in knots,
     Cocked their pipes and puffed away,
     With yet " no smoking aloud" as they say,—
While the State House, their fat landlord, lies 
Looking on from his sleepy eyes.

Stanza Three Unreadable – will be repaired

A lumbering cart comes jarringly now
     Like an earthquake’s ??? ??? ??? ???
‘T is a dusty sexton, you might vow,
Who steers that one-horse side-wheel scow
     For “ashes to ashes” he brings and sings
     Out father’s ashes! such ??? things
He tosses into his cart, and goes
With weeping eyes, but a tickled nose.

Up from cellar-ways, don from garrets
     Out from back-yards, boxes, bins,
Stove, or furnese, or range makes ???
Treasures of dust, and the future of carrots,
     Corn and potatoes, that fancy begins
     To see, in a metaphor, warming their ????
At the embers of our city fires,
To return in Sept-embers and new ????

Another car, what an offal sight!
     Comes heavily trundling up the street,
With a rattling of bones ever rough stones, quite
As the “paupers” were hustled from [mostly light]???
     ;Cause nobody “owned” him, bones or ???
     And the rides who sits on that awful seat
Like “fe-fe-fum, alive or dead”
Grinds your bones to make him bread.

“Ho, bring ‘em out!” he says in funny tones,
     Harsh and hoarse, and shrilly by turns,
“Marrow-bones, mutton-bones, beef bones, any bones
Saving your trom-bones wrenched with many groans
     Bring ‘em out, Bridget!” and one discerns,
     In this valley of vision, how each bone yearns
To its fellow bone, and how he has got,
Without picking at all, a most picked lot.

In new red buttons, that gladden to stupor
     The newly-breached boy, or cute late combs
To harry his head like a death-dealing trooper,
Or changed to a “phosphate” the learned call “super,”
     They come once more, to our hearths and homes,
     Rising, to bring us new worth, from their tombs,
And we say, as the misty load goes by,
“What’s bread in the bone will out bye and bye.”

And now, last car of the scavenger-train
     What sombre hearse, or tumbril dire,
Comes clattering on, with rattling chain
And padlocked door? Ha, look again!
Remainder of stanza too indistinct – will be repaired

Next stanza needs work, too – will be repaired

From ward to ward, from door to door, 
     Where the scum of society’s seething dregs, 
Skimmed off by night, the wardens pour 
Into watch-house and lock-up, with spatter and roar, 
     Our dusky Dame comes after, and drags 
     The refuse out, neck, body, and legs, 
Dirty and ragged, for worse or better, 
Mated and married, with hand-cuff and fetter.

No fields are greener, no fair abode
     Where honest labor works on and smiles,
Is made more rich by her reeling load,
That reeks where she dumps it, one stage on the road 
     To Perdition, — whereon they encounter at whiles,
     These milestones, not "golden," that number the miles
Decanter and wine-cup, and “lager” keg thus,
Then rum-jug, jail, gallows, grave; ultra ne plus!

The waste of table, of stable, and fire,
     Give life to labor and beauty to earth;
From barren desert and recking mire
From all vile carts save Black Maria
     Great Nature and Art can wring some worth
     To adorn her sons or her fields of dearth,—
But to the piled dregs in that calaboose wagon,
The omnivorous muck-men would not hutch a nag on!