Peter Bell the Third | Page 6

a rainbow's rise and flee,

Mixed with a certain hungry wish.
27.
So in his Country's dying face
He looked--and, lovely as she lay,

Seeking in vain his last embrace,
Wailing her own abandoned case,

With hardened sneer he turned away:
28.
And coolly to his own soul said;--
'Do you not think that we
might make
A poem on her when she's dead:--
Or, no--a thought is
in my head--
Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take:
29.
'My wife wants one.--Let who will bury
This mangled corpse!
And I and you,
My dearest Soul, will then make merry,
As the
Prince Regent did with Sherry,--'
'Ay--and at last desert me too.'
30.
And so his Soul would not be gay,
But moaned within him; like
a fawn
Moaning within a cave, it lay
Wounded and wasting, day by
day,
Till all its life of life was gone.
31.
As troubled skies stain waters clear,
The storm in Peter's heart
and mind
Now made his verses dark and queer:
They were the
ghosts of what they were,
Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.
32.
For he now raved enormous folly,
Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools,
and Graves,
'Twould make George Colman melancholy
To have
heard him, like a male Molly,
Chanting those stupid staves.
33.

Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse
On Peter while he wrote
for freedom,
So soon as in his song they spy
The folly which
soothes tyranny,
Praise him, for those who feed 'em.

34.
'He was a man, too great to scan;--
A planet lost in truth's keen
rays:--
His virtue, awful and prodigious;--
He was the most sublime,
religious,
Pure-minded Poet of these days.'
35.
As soon as he read that, cried Peter,
'Eureka! I have found the
way
To make a better thing of metre
Than e'er was made by living
creature
Up to this blessed day.'
36.
Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;--
In one of which he
meekly said:
'May Carnage and Slaughter,
Thy niece and thy
daughter,
May Rapine and Famine,
Thy gorge ever cramming,

Glut thee with living and dead!
37.
'May Death and Damnation,
And Consternation,
Flit up from
Hell with pure intent!
Slash them at Manchester,
Glasgow, Leeds,
and Chester;
Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent.
38.
'Let thy body-guard yeomen
Hew down babes and women,

And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent!
When Moloch in
Jewry
Munched children with fury,
It was thou, Devil, dining with
pure intent.
PART 7.
DOUBLE DAMNATION.
1.
The Devil now knew his proper cue.--
Soon as he read the ode,
he drove
To his friend Lord MacMurderchouse's,
A man of interest
in both houses,
And said:--'For money or for love,
2.
'Pray find some cure or sinecure;
To feed from the superfluous
taxes
A friend of ours--a poet--fewer
Have fluttered tamer to the
lure

Than he.' His lordship stands and racks his
3.
Stupid brains, while one might count
As many beads as he had

boroughs,--
At length replies; from his mean front,
Like one who
rubs out an account,
Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows:
4.
'It happens fortunately, dear Sir,
I can. I hope I need require
No
pledge from you, that he will stir
In our affairs;--like Oliver.
That
he'll be worthy of his hire.'
5.
These words exchanged, the news sent off
To Peter, home the
Devil hied,--
Took to his bed; he had no cough,
No doctor,--meat
and drink enough.--
Yet that same night he died.
6.
The Devil's corpse was leaded down;
His decent heirs enjoyed
his pelf,
Mourning-coaches, many a one,
Followed his hearse along
the town:--
Where was the Devil himself?
7.
When Peter heard of his promotion,
His eyes grew like two stars
for bliss:
There was a bow of sleek devotion
Engendering in his
back; each motion
Seemed a Lord's shoe to kiss.
8.
He hired a house, bought plate, and made
A genteel drive up to
his door,
With sifted gravel neatly laid,--
As if defying all who said,

Peter was ever poor.
9.
But a disease soon struck into
The very life and soul of Peter--

He walked about--slept--had the hue
Of health upon his cheeks--and
few
Dug better--none a heartier eater.
10.
And yet a strange and horrid curse
Clung upon Peter, night and
day;
Month after month the thing grew worse,
And deadlier than in
this my verse
I can find strength to say.
11.
Peter was dull--he was at first

Dull--oh, so dull--so very dull!

Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed--
Still with this dulness was
he cursed--
Dull--beyond all conception--dull.

12.
No one could read his books--no mortal,
But a few natural
friends, would hear him;
The parson came not near his portal;
His
state was like that of the immortal
Described by Swift--no man could
bear him.
13.
His sister, wife, and children yawned,
With a long, slow, and
drear ennui,
All human patience far beyond;
Their hopes of Heaven
each would have pawned,
Anywhere else to be.
14.
But in his verse, and in his prose,
The essence of his dulness
was
Concentred and compressed so close,
'Twould have made
Guatimozin doze
On his red gridiron of brass.
15.
A printer's boy, folding those pages,
Fell slumbrously upon one
side;
Like those famed Seven who slept three ages.
To wakeful
frenzy's vigil--rages,
As opiates, were the same applied.
16.
Even the Reviewers who were hired
To do the work of his
reviewing,
With adamantine nerves, grew tired;--
Gaping and torpid
they retired,
To dream of what they should be doing.
17.
And worse and worse, the drowsy curse
Yawned in him, till it
grew a pest--
A wide contagious