A square, squat room (a cellar on promotion),

   
Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight;

   
Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tinware;

   
Scissors and lint and apothecary's jars.

Here, on a bench a skeleton would writhe from,

   
Angry and sore, I wait to be admitted:

   
Wait till my heart is lead upon my stomach,

   
While at their ease two dressers do their chores.

One has a probe—it feels to me a crowbar.

   
A small boy sniffs and shudders after bluestone.

   
A poor old tramp explains his poor ulcers.

   
Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame.

William Earnest Henley,
London Voluntaries, 1898.