And that I sing of neither mine nor me, Though every scribe, in some slight turn of diction, Will hint allusions never meant. Ne'er doubt This-when I speak, I don't hint, but speak out. 89 Whether he married with the third or fourth Offspring of some sage husband-hunting Or whether with some virgin of more He took to regularly peopling Earth, Or whether he was taken in for damages, 90 Is yet within the unread events of time. Thus far, go forth, thou lay, which I will back Against the same given quantity of rhyme, By those who love to say that white is So much the better!-I may stand alone, a throne. For Orford and for Waldegrave 5 Because if a live dog, 'tis said, 10 Verse hath a better sale than prose,- But now this sheet is nearly cramm'd, 15 And if you won't,-you may be damn'd, So, if you will, I shan't be shamm'd, My Murray. Splitting some planet with its playful tail, 7 Let's skip a few short years of hollow As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale. peace, Which peopled earth no better, hell as It seem'd the mockery of hell to fold 11 So mix his body with the dust! It might Return to what it must far sooner, were The natural compound left alone to fight Its way back into earth, and fire, and air; But the unnatural balsams merely blight What nature made him at his birth, as bare As the mere million's base unmummied clay Yet all his spices but prolong decay. 12 He's dead-and upper earth with him has done; He's buried; save the undertaker's bill, Or lapidary scrawl,1 the world is gone For him, unless he left a German will:2 But where's the proctor who will ask his son ?3 In whom his qualities are reigning still, Except that household virtue, most uncommon, Of constancy to a bad, ugly woman. 15 God help us all! God help me too! I am, God knows, as helpless as the devil can wish, 16 13 "God save the king!" It is a large 17 economy In God to save the like; but if he will Be saving, all the better; for not one am I Of those who think damnation better still: I hardly know too if not quite alone am I The eternity of hell's hot jurisdiction. 14 I know this is unpopular; I know 'Tis blasphemous; I know one may be danın'd For hoping no one else may e'er be so; I know my catechism; I know we're cramm'd With the best doctrine till we quite o'erflow; I know that all save England's church have shamm'd, And that the other twice two hundred churches And synagogues have made a damn'd bad purchase. 1 inscription on a tombstone The Georges belonged to the German house of A thrust at George IV, who was thought And not a whit more difficult to damn, Than is to bring to land a late-hook'd fish, Or to the butcher to purvey the lamb; Not that I'm fit for such a noble dish, As one day will be that immortal fry Of almost everybody born to die. 19 "He was, if I remember, king of France;1 That head of his, which could not keep a crown On earth, yet ventured in my face to ad vance A claim to those of martyrs-like my 24 own: If I had had my sword, as I had once When I cut ears off, I had cut him down; But having but my keys, and not my brand, I only knock'd his head from out his hand. 20 "And then he set up such a headless howl, That all the saints came out and took him in; And there he sits by St. Paul, cheek by jowl; That fellow Paul-the parvenù!2 The Of St. Bartholomew, which makes his cowl 25 So as to make a martyr, never sped 21 "But had it come up here upon its shoul- There would have been a different tale to The fellow-feeling in the saint's beholders Back on its trunk: it may be very well, 22 The angel answer'd, "Peter! do not pout: And never knew much what it was about; 26 He did as doth the puppet-by its wire, And will be judged like all the rest, no 27 doubt: My business and your own is not to inquire Into such matters, but to mind our cueWhich is to act as we are bid to do.” 23 While thus they spake, the angelic caravan, Arriving like a rush of mighty wind, Cleaving the fields of space, as doth the Swan Some silver stream (say Ganges, Nile, or Inde, Or Thames, or Tweed), and 'midst them 28 an old man 1 Louis XVI, who was guillotined in January, 1793. * upstart With an old soul, and both extremely blind, Halted before the gate, and in his shroud But bringing up the rear of this bright host Whose barren beach with frequent wrecks is paved; His brow was like the deep when tempesttoss'd; Fierce and unfathomable thoughts engraved Eternal wrath on his immortal face, space. As he drew near, he gazed upon the gate Ne'er to be enter'd more by him or sin, With such a glance of supernatural hate, As made Saint Peter wish himself with in; He patter'd with his keys at a great rate, And sweated through his apostolic skin: Of course his perspiration was but ichor,1 Or some such other spiritual liquor. The very cherubs huddled all together, Like birds when soars the falcon; and they felt A tingling to the tip of every feather, And form'd a circle like Orion's belt Around their poor old charge; who scarce knew whither His guards had led him, though they gently dealt With royal manes (for by many stories, And true, we learn the angels are all Tories). As things were in this posture, the gate flew Asunder, and the flashing of its hinges Flung over space an universal hue Of many-color'd flame, until its tinges Reach'd even our speck of earth, and made There also are some altar-pieces, though I really can't say that they much evince 34 And this is not a theologic tract, One's inner notions of immortal spirits; merits. 31 The cherubs and the saints bow'd down before That arch-angelic hierarch, the first The aspect of a god; but this ne'er Pride in his heavenly bosom, in whose core Intrude, however glorified and high; 32 He and the sombre, silent Spirit met They knew each other both for good and ill; Such was their power, that neither could forget His former friend and future foe; but still 1 She believed that she was to give birth to a new Messiah. See Byron's Don Juan, III, 95, 4, and n. 2 (p. 599). 35 To prove with Hebrew and with Arabic, If Job be allegory or a fact, But a true narrative; and thus I pick From out the whole but such and such an act As sets aside the slightest thought of trick. 'Tis every tittle true, beyond suspicion, And accurate as any other vision. |