At conversazioni-balls
Conventicles-and drawing-rooms-
Courts of law-committees-calls
Of a morning-clubs-book-stalls-
Churches-masquerades-and tombs.
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.
'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.
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.
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.
Sometimes the poor are damned indeed
To take,-not means for being blest,-
But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed
From which the worms that it doth feed
Squeeze less than they before possessed.
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.
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,
This libel on our national oath, and this accusation of all our countrymen of being in the daily practice of solemnly asseverating the most enormous falschood, I fear deserves the notice of a more active Attorney General than that here alluded to.
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;
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And he scorned them, and they scorned him And he scorned all they did; and they
Did all that men of their own trim
Are wont to do to please their whim,
Drinking, lying, swearing, play.
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 out another's guilt.
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.
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.
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.
Thus though unimaginative
An apprehension clear, intense,
Of his mind's work, had made alive
The things it wrought ou; I believe
Wakening a sort of thought in sense.
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.
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.
""Tis you are cold-for I, not coy,
Yield love for love, frank, warm and true; And Burns, a Scottish peasant boyHis errors prove it-knew my joy
More, learned friend, than you.
"Bocca bacciata non perde ventura
Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna :—
So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna."
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.
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.
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.
Now he was quite the kind of wight
Round whom collect, at a fixed æra,
Venison, turtle, hock, and claret,—
Good cheer-and those who come to share it-
And best East Indian madeira!
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.
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.
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.
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.
AMONG the guests who often staid
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Now Peter, when he heard such talk,
Would, heedless of a broken pate,
Stand like a man asleep, or baulk
Some wishing guest of knife or fork,
Or drop and break his master's plate.
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