Peter Bell the Third | Page 3

the gainful trade
Of
giving soldiers rations bad--
The world is full of strange delusion--
11.
That he had a mansion planned
In a square like Grosvenor
Square,
That he was aping fashion, and
That he now came to
Westmoreland
To see what was romantic there.
12.
And all this, though quite ideal,--
Ready at a breath to vanish,--

Was a state not more unreal
Than the peace he could not feel,
Or
the care he could not banish.
13.
After a little conversation,
The Devil told Peter, if he chose,

He'd bring him to the world of fashion
By giving him a situation
In
his own service--and new clothes.
14.
And Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud,
And after waiting
some few days
For a new livery--dirty yellow
Turned up with
black--the wretched fellow
Was bowled to Hell in the Devil's chaise.
PART 3.
HELL.
1.
Hell is a city much like London--
A populous and a smoky city;

There are all sorts of people undone,
And there is little or no fun
done;
Small justice shown, and still less pity.
2.
There is a Castles, and a Canning,
A Cobbett, and a Castlereagh;

All sorts of caitiff corpses planning

All sorts of cozening for
trepanning
Corpses less corrupt than they.

3.
There is a ***, who has lost
His wits, or sold them, none knows
which;
He walks about a double ghost,
And though as thin as Fraud
almost--
Ever grows more grim and rich.
4.
There is a Chancery Court; a King;
A manufacturing mob; a set

Of thieves who by themselves are sent
Similar thieves to represent;

An army; and a public debt.
5.
Which last is a scheme of paper money,
And means--being
interpreted--
'Bees, keep your wax--give us the honey,
And we will
plant, while skies are sunny,
Flowers, which in winter serve instead.'
6.
There is a great talk of revolution--
And a great chance of
despotism--
German soldiers--camps--confusion--

Tumults--lotteries--rage--delusion--
Gin--suicide--and methodism;
7.
Taxes too, on wine and bread,
And meat, and beer, and tea, and
cheese,
From which those patriots pure are fed,
Who gorge before
they reel to bed
The tenfold essence of all these.
8.
There are mincing women, mewing,
(Like cats, who amant
misere,)
Of their own virtue, and pursuing
Their gentler sisters to
that ruin,
Without which--what were chastity?
9.
Lawyers--judges--old hobnobbers
Are
there--bailiffs--chancellors--
Bishops--great and little robbers--

Rhymesters--pamphleteers--stock-jobbers--
Men of glory in the
wars,--
10.
Things whose trade is, over ladies
To lean, and flirt, and stare,
and simper,
Till all that is divine in woman
Grows cruel, courteous,
smooth, inhuman,
Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper.
11.
Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling,
Frowning, preaching--such
a riot!
Each with never-ceasing labour,
Whilst he thinks he cheats

his neighbour,
Cheating his own heart of quiet.
12.
And all these meet at levees;--
Dinners convivial and political;--

Suppers of epic poets;--teas,
Where small talk dies in agonies;--

Breakfasts professional and critical;
13.
Lunches and snacks so aldermanic
That one would furnish forth
ten dinners,
Where reigns a Cretan-tongued panic,
Lest news Russ,
Dutch, or Alemannic
Should make some losers, and some winners--
45.
At conversazioni--balls--
Conventicles--and drawing-rooms--

Courts of law--committees--calls
Of a morning--clubs--book-stalls--

Churches--masquerades--and tombs.
15.
And this is Hell--and in this smother
All are damnable and
damned;
Each one damning, damns the other;
They are damned by
one another,
By none other are they damned.
16.
'Tis a lie to say, 'God damns'!
Where was Heaven's Attorney
General
When they first gave out such flams?
Let there be an end of
shams,
They are mines of poisonous mineral.
17.
Statesmen damn themselves to be
Cursed; and lawyers damn
their souls
To the auction of a fee;
Churchmen damn themselves to
see
God's sweet love in burning coals.
18.
The rich are damned, beyond all cure,
To taunt, and starve, and
trample on
The weak and wretched; and the poor
Damn their
broken hearts to endure
Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan.
19.
Sometimes the poor are damned indeed
To take,--not means for
being blessed,--
But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed
From
which the worms that it doth feed

Squeeze less than they before
possessed.

20.
And some few, like we know who,
Damned--but God alone
knows why--
To believe their minds are given
To make this ugly
Hell a Heaven;
In which faith they live and die.
21.
Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken,
Each man be he sound or
no
Must indifferently sicken;
As when day begins to thicken,

None knows a pigeon from a crow,--
22.
So good and bad, sane and mad,
The oppressor and the
oppressed;
Those who weep to see what others
Smile to inflict upon
their brothers;
Lovers, haters, worst and best;
23.
All are damned--they breathe an air,
Thick, infected,
joy-dispelling:
Each pursues what seems most fair,
Mining like
moles, through mind, and there
Scoop palace-caverns vast, where
Care
In throned state is ever dwelling.
PART 4.
SIN.
1.
Lo. Peter in Hell's Grosvenor Square,
A footman in the Devil's
service!
And the misjudging world would swear
That every man in
service there
To virtue would prefer vice.
2.
But Peter, though now damned, was not
What Peter was before
damnation.
Men oftentimes prepare a lot
Which ere it finds them, is
not what
Suits with their genuine station.
3.
All things that Peter saw and felt
Had a peculiar aspect to him;

And when they came within the belt
Of his own nature, seemed to
melt,
Like cloud to cloud, into him.
4.
And so the outward world uniting
To that within him, he became

Considerably uninviting
To those who, meditation slighting,


Were moulded in a different frame.
5.
And he scorned them, and they scorned him;
And he scorned all
they did;