205‘Asses, swine, have litter spread
And with fitting food are fed;
All things have a home but one—
Thou, Oh, Englishman, hast none!
‘This is slavery—savage men,
210Or wild beasts within a den
Would endure not as ye do—
But such ills they never knew.
‘What art thou Freedom? O! could slaves
Answer from their living graves
215This demand—tyrants would flee
Like a dream’s dim imagery:
‘Thou art not, as impostors say,
A shadow soon to pass away,
A superstition, and a name
220Echoing from the cave of Fame.
‘For the labourer thou art bread
And a comely table spread,
From his daily labour come,
In a neat and happy home.
225‘Thou art clothes, and fire, and food
For the trampled multitude—
No—in countries that are free
Such starvation cannot be
As in England now we see.
230‘To the rich thou art a check;
When his foot is on the neck
Of his victim, thou dost make
That he treads upon a snake.
‘Thou art Justice—ne’er for gold
235May thy righteous laws be sold
As laws are in England—thou
Shield’st alike the high and low.
‘Thou art Wisdom—Freemen never
Dream that God will damn for ever
240All who think those things untrue
Of which Priests make such ado.
‘Thou art Peace—never by thee
Would blood and treasure wasted be
As tyrants wasted them, when all
245Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul.
‘What if English toil and blood
Was poured forth, even as a flood?
It availed, Oh, Liberty!
To dim, but not extinguish thee.
250‘Thou art Love—the rich have kist
Thy feet, and like him following Christ,
Give their substance to the free
And through the rough world follow thee,
‘Or turn their wealth to arms, and make
255War for thy beloved sake
On wealth, and war, and fraud—whence they
Drew the power which is their prey.
‘Science, Poetry and Thought
Are thy lamps; they make the lot
260Of the dwellers in a cot
Such, they curse their Maker not.
‘Spirit, Patience, Gentleness,
All that can adorn and bless
Art thou—let deeds not words express
265Thine exceeding loveliness.
‘Let a great Assembly be
Of the fearless and the free
On some spot of English ground
Where the plains stretch wide around.
270‘Let the blue sky overhead,
The green earth on which ye tread,
All that must eternal be
Witness the solemnity.
‘From the corners uttermost
275Of the bounds of English coast,
From every hut, village and town
Where those who live and suffer, moan
For others’ misery or their own,
‘From the workhouse and the prison
280Where pale as corpses newly risen,
Women, children, young and old
Groan for pain, and weep for cold—
‘From the haunts of daily life
Where is waged the daily strife
285With common wants and common cares
Which sows the human heart with tares—
‘Lastly from the palaces
Where the murmur of distress
Echoes, like the distant sound
290Of a wind alive around
‘Those prison halls of wealth and fashion
Where some few feel such compassion
For those who groan, and toil, and wail
As must make their brethren pale—
295‘Ye who suffer woes untold,
Or to feel, or to behold
Your lost country bought and sold
With a price of blood and gold—
‘Let a vast assembly be,
300And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free—
‘Be your strong and simple words
Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
305And wide as targes let them be,
With their shade to cover ye.
‘Let the tyrants pour around
With a quick and startling sound,
Like the loosening of a sea,
310Troops of armed emblazonry.
‘Let the charged artillery drive
Till the dead air seems alive
With the clash of clanging wheels,
And the tramp of horses’ heels.
315‘Let the fixed bayonet
Gleam with sharp desire to wet
Its bright point in English blood
Looking keen as one for food.
‘Let the horsemen’s scimitars
320Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars
Thirsting to eclipse their burning
In a sea of death and mourning.
‘Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
325With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of an unvanquished war,
‘And let Panic, who outspeeds
The career of armed steeds
Pass, a disregarded shade
330Through your phalanx undismayed.
‘Let the laws of your own land,
Good or ill, between ye stand
Hand to hand, and foot to foot,
Arbiters of the dispute,
335‘The old laws of England—they
Whose reverend heads with age are grey,
Children of a wiser day;
And whose solemn voice must be
Thine own echo—Liberty!
340‘On those who first should violate
Such sacred heralds in their state
Rest the blood that must ensue,
And it will not rest on you.
‘And if then the tyrants dare
345Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew;—
What they like, that let them do.
‘With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise
350Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away.
‘Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
355In hot blushes on their cheek.
‘Every woman in the land
Will point at them as they stand—
They will hardly dare to greet
Their acquaintance in the Street.
360‘And the bold, true warriors
Who have hugged Danger in wars
Will turn to those who would be free
Ashamed of such base company.
‘And that slaughter, to the Nation
365Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.
‘And these words shall then become
Like oppression’s thundered doom
370Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again—again—again—
‘Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number—
Shake your chains to earth like dew
375Which in sleep had fallen on you—
Ye are many—they are few.’
THE END
PETER BELL THE THIRD
by Miching Mallecho, Esqr.
Is it a party in a parlour—
Crammed just as they on earth were crammed—
Some sipping punch—some sipping tea;
But, as you by their faces see,
All silent and all—damned!
Peter Bell, by W. Wordsworth.
Ophelia: What means this, my lord?
Hamlet: Marry, this is miching mallecho;
it means mischief.
CONTENTS
Prologue
Death
The Devil
Hell
Sin
Grace
Damnation
Double Damnation
DEDICATION
To Thomas Brown Esqr., the younger, H. F. &c. &c.
Dear Tom,
Allow me to request you to introduce Mr. Peter Bell to the respectable family of the Fudges; although he may fall short of those very considerable personages in the more active properties which characterize the Rat and the Apostate, I suspect that even you their historian will be forced to confess that he surpasses them in the more peculiarly legitimate qualification of intolerable dullness.
You know Mr. Examiner Hunt. That murderous and smiling villain at the mere sound of whose voice our susceptible friend the Quarterly fell into a paroxysm of eleutherophobia and foamed so much acrid gall that it burned the carpet in Mr. Murray’s upper room, and eating a hole in the floor fell like rain upon our poor friend’s head, who was scampering from room to room like a bear with a swarm of bees on his nose:—it caused an incurable ulcer and our poor friend has worn a wig ever since. Well, this monkey suckled with tiger’s milk, this odious thief, liar, scoundrel, coxcomb and monster presented me to two of the Mr. Bells. Seeing me in his presence they of course uttered very few words and those with much caution. I scarcely need observe that they only kept company with him—at least I can certainly answer for one of them—in order to observe whether they could not borrow colours from any particulars of his private life for the denunciation they mean to make of him, as the member of an ‘infamous and black conspiracy for diminishing the authority of that venerable canon, which forbids any man to marry his grandmother’; the effect of which on this our moral and religious nation is likely to answer the purpose of the contrivers. My intimacy with the younger Mr. Bell naturally sprung from this introduction to his brothers. And in presenting him to you, I have the satisfaction of being able to assure you that he is considerably the dullest of the three.
There is this particular advantage in an acquaintance with any one of the Peter Bells; that if you know one Peter Bell, you know three Peter Bells; they are not one but three; not three but one. An awful mystery, after having caused torrents of blood, and having been hymned by groans enough to deafen the music of the spheres, is at length illustrated to the satisfaction of all parties in the theological world, by the nature of Mr. Peter Bell.
Peter is a polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then droll; then prosy and dull; and now dull—o so dull!—it is an ultra-legitimate dullness.
You will perceive that it is not necessary to consider Hell and the Devil as supernatural machinery. The whole scene of my epic is in ‘this world which is’—(so Peter informed us before his conversion to White Obi)—
—the world of all of us, and where
We find our happiness, or not at all.
Let me observe that I have spent six or seven days in composing this sublime piece;—the orb of my moonlike genius has made the fourth part of its revolution round the dull earth which you inhabit, driving you mad whilst it has retained its calmness and its splendour, and I have been fitting this its last phase to ‘occupy a permanent station in the literature of my country’.
Your works indeed, dear Tom, Sell better; but mine are far superior; the public is no judge: posterity sets all to rights.
Allow me to observe that so much has been written of Peter Bell that the present history can be considered only, like the Iliad, as a continuation of that series of cyclic poems which have already been candidates for bestowing immortality upon, at the same time that they receive it from, his character and adventures. In this point of view, I have violated no rule of syntax in beginning my composition with a conjunction; the full stop which closes the poem continued by me, being, like the full stops at the end of the Iliad and the Odyssey, a full stop of a very qualified import.
Hoping that the immortality which you have given to the Fudges, you will receive from them; and in the firm expectation that when London shall be the habitation of bitterns, when St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey shall stand, shapeless and nameless ruins, in the midst of an unpeopled marsh; when the piers of Waterloo bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream,—some transatlantic commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism, the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and of their historians,
I remain, Dear Tom
Yours sincerely
Miching Mallecho
December 1, 1819
P. S. Pray excuse the date of place; so soon as the profits of this publication come in, I mean to hire lodgings in a more respectable street.
Prologue
Peter Bells, one, two and three,
O’er the wide world wandering be:—
First, the antenatal Peter,
Wrapt in weeds of the same metre,
5The so long predestined raiment
Clothed in which to walk his way meant
The second Peter; whose ambition
Is to link the proposition
As the mean of two extremes—
10(This was learnt from Aldric’s themes)
Shielding from the guilt of schism
The orthodoxal syllogism:
The first Peter—he who was
Like the shadow in the glass
15Of the second, yet unripe,
His substantial antitype:—
Then came Peter Bell the Second,
Who henceforward must be reckoned
The body of a double soul—
20And that portion of the whole
Without which the rest would seem
And the third is he who has
O’er the grave been forced to pass
25To the other side, which is,—
Go and try else,— just like this.
Peter Bell the First was Peter
Smugger, milder, softer, neater,
Like the soul before it is
30Born from that world into this.
The next Peter Bell was he
Predevote like you and me
To good or evil as may come;
His was the severer doom,—
35For he was an evil Cotter
And a polygamic Potter.*
And the last is Peter Bell
Damned since our first Parents fell,
Damned eternally to Hell—
40Surely he deserves it well!
Part First
Death
And Peter Bell, when he had been
With fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed,
Grew serious—from his dress and mien
’Twas very plainly to be seen
5 Peter was quite reformed.
His eyes turned up, his mouth turned down;
His accent caught a nasal twang;
He oiled his hair;† there might be heard
The grace of God in every word
10 Which Peter said or sang.
But Peter now grew old, and had
An ill no doctor could unravel;
His torments almost drove him mad;—
Some said it was a fever bad—
15 Some swore it was the gravel.
His holy
friends then came about
And with long preaching and persuasion,
Convinced the patient, that without
The smallest shadow of a doubt
20 He was predestined to damnation.
They said:—‘Thy name is Peter Bell;
Thy skin is of a brimstone hue;
Alive or dead—aye, sick or well—
The one God made to rhyme with hell;
25 The other, I think, rhymes with you.’
Then Peter set up such a yell!—
The nurse, who with some water gruel
Was climbing up the stairs as well
As her old legs could climb them—fell,
30 And broke them both—the fall was cruel.
The Parson from the casement leapt
Into the lake of Windermere—
And many an eel—though no adept
In God’s right reason for it—kept
35 Gnawing his kidneys half a year.
And all the rest rushed through the door
And tumbled over one another,
And broke their skulls.—Upon the floor
Meanwhile sate Peter Bell, and swore,
40 And cursed his father and his Mother,
And raved of God, and sin, and death,
Blaspheming like an infidel;
And said, that with his clenched teeth,
He’d seize the Earth from underneath,
45 And drag it with him down to Hell.
As he was speaking came a spasm,
And wrenched his gnashing teeth asunder,
—Like one who sees a strange phantasm
He lay,—there was a silent chasm
50 Between his upper jaw and under.
And yellow death lay on his face;
And a fixed smile that was not human
Told, as I understand the case,
That he was gone to the wrong place:—