Peter Bell the Third | Page 4

and they
Did all that men of their own trim
Are wont to do
to please their whim,
Drinking, lying, swearing, play.
6.
Such were his fellow-servants; thus
His virtue, like our own, was
built
Too much on that indignant fuss
Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us

To bully one another's guilt.
7.
He had a mind which was somehow
At once circumference and
centre
Of all he might or feel or know;
Nothing went ever out,
although
Something did ever enter.
8.
He had as much imagination
As a pint-pot;--he never could

Fancy another situation,
From which to dart his contemplation,

Than that wherein he stood.
9.
Yet his was individual mind,
And new created all he saw
In a
new manner, and refined
Those new creations, and combined
Them,
by a master-spirit's law.
10.
Thus--though unimaginative--
An apprehension clear, intense,

Of his mind's work, had made alive
The things it wrought on; I
believe
Wakening a sort of thought in sense.
11.
But from the first 'twas Peter's drift
To be a kind of moral
eunuch,
He touched the hem of Nature's shift,
Felt faint--and never
dared uplift
The closest, all-concealing tunic.
12.
She laughed the while, with an arch smile,
And kissed him with
a sister's kiss,
And said--My best Diogenes,
I love you well--but, if
you please,
Tempt not again my deepest bliss.
13.
''Tis you are cold--for I, not coy,
Yield love for love, frank,

warm, and true;
And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy--
His errors
prove it--knew my joy
More, learned friend, than you.
14.
'Boeca bacciata non perde ventura,
Anzi rinnuova come fa la
luna:--
So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a a
Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a
Low-tide in soul,
like a stagnant laguna.
15.
Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe.
And smoothed his spacious
forehead down
With his broad palm;--'twixt love and fear,
He
looked, as he no doubt felt, queer,
And in his dream sate down.
16.
The Devil was no uncommon creature;
A leaden-witted
thief--just huddled
Out of the dross and scum of nature;
A toad-like
lump of limb and feature,
With mind, and heart, and fancy muddled.
17.
He was that heavy, dull, cold thing,
The spirit of evil well may
be:
A drone too base to have a sting;
Who gluts, and grimes his lazy
wing,
And calls lust, luxury.
18.
Now he was quite the kind of wight
Round whom collect, at a
fixed aera,
Venison, turtle, hock, and claret,--
Good cheer--and
those who come to share it--
And best East Indian madeira!
19.
It was his fancy to invite
Men of science, wit, and learning,

Who came to lend each other light;
He proudly thought that his gold's
might
Had set those spirits burning.
20.
And men of learning, science, wit,
Considered him as you and I

Think of some rotten tree, and sit
Lounging and dining under it,

Exposed to the wide sky.
21.
And all the while with loose fat smile,
The willing wretch sat
winking there,

Believing 'twas his power that made
That jovial
scene--and that all paid
Homage to his unnoticed chair.

22.
Though to be sure this place was Hell;
He was the Devil--and
all they--
What though the claret circled well,
And wit, like ocean,
rose and fell?--
Were damned eternally.
PART 5.
GRACE.
1.
Among the guests who often stayed
Till the Devil's
petits-soupers,
A man there came, fair as a maid,
And Peter noted
what he said,
Standing behind his master's chair.
2.
He was a mighty poet--and
A subtle-souled psychologist;
All
things he seemed to understand,
Of old or new--of sea or land--
But
his own mind--which was a mist.
3.
This was a man who might have turned
Hell into Heaven--and so
in gladness
A Heaven unto himself have earned;
But he in shadows
undiscerned
Trusted.--and damned himself to madness.
4.
He spoke of poetry, and how
'Divine it was--a light--a love--
A
spirit which like wind doth blow
As it listeth, to and fro;
A dew
rained down from God above;
5.
'A power which comes and goes like dream,
And which none can
ever trace--
Heaven's light on earth--Truth's brightest beam.'
And
when he ceased there lay the gleam
Of those words upon his face.
6.
Now Peter, when he heard such talk,
Would, heedless of a
broken pate,
Stand like a man asleep, or balk
Some wishing guest
of knife or fork,
Or drop and break his master's plate.
7.
At night he oft would start and wake
Like a lover, and began

In
a wild measure songs to make
On moor, and glen, and rocky lake,

And on the heart of man--

8.
And on the universal sky--
And the wide earth's bosom green,--

And the sweet, strange mystery
Of what beyond these things may
lie,
And yet remain unseen.
9.
For in his thought he visited
The spots in which, ere dead and
damned,
He his wayward life had led;
Yet knew not whence the
thoughts were fed
Which thus his fancy crammed.
10.
And these obscure remembrances
Stirred such harmony in Peter,

That, whensoever he should please,
He could speak of rocks and
trees
In poetic metre.
11.
For though it was without a sense
Of memory, yet he
remembered well
Many a ditch and quick-set fence;
Of lakes he had
intelligence,
He knew something of heath and fell.
12.
He had also dim recollections
Of pedlars tramping on their
rounds;
Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections
Of saws, and
proverbs; and reflections
Old parsons make in burying-grounds.
13.
But Peter's verse was clear, and came
Announcing from the
frozen hearth
Of a cold age,