The Rag-Picker

A pond of filth a sewer flows into, Around whose edge the evil ragweeds crowd, Poison in every breath; and, cloud on cloud, Insects that sing and sting, the pool's fierce spew: All hideousness, from every street and stew, And every stench weaves for the place a shroud; And in its midst a figure, bent and bowed, A woman who no girlhood ever knew. Some offal of humanity she seems; One with the rags she picks and scrapes among; More soiled, in soul: the veriest rag Of womankind, whose squalor looks and dreams Of nothing higher than the cart that flung Its last load here from which she crams her bag.