A subtle-souled psychologist;
All things he seemed to understand, 380
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; 385
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 390
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.’ 395
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 400
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 405
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 410
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; 415
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, 420
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; 425
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 430
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, that none might tame 435
The soul of that diviner flame
It augured to the Earth:
14.
Like gentle rains, on the dry plains,
Making that green which late was gray,
Or like the sudden moon, that stains 440
Some gloomy chamber’s window-panes
With a broad light like day.
15.
For language was in Peter’s hand
Like clay while he was yet a potter;
And he made songs for all the land, 445
Sweet both to feel and understand,
As pipkins late to mountain Cotter.
16.
And Mr. — , the bookseller,
Gave twenty pounds for some; — then scorning
A footman’s yellow coat to wear, 450
Peter, too proud of heart, I fear,
Instantly gave the Devil warning.
17.
Whereat the Devil took offence,
And swore in his soul a great oath then,
‘That for his damned impertinence 455
He’d bring him to a proper sense
Of what was due to gentlemen!’
PART 6. DAMNATION.
1.
‘O that mine enemy had written
A book!’ — cried Job: — a fearful curse,
If to the Arab, as the Briton, 460
‘Twas galling to be critic-bitten: —
The Devil to Peter wished no worse.
2.
When Peter’s next new book found vent,
The Devil to all the first Reviews
A copy of it slyly sent, 465
With five-pound note as compliment,
And this short notice—’Pray abuse.’
3.
Then seriatim, month and quarter,
Appeared such mad tirades. — One said —
Then drowned the mother in Ullswater,
The last thing as he went to bed.’
4.
Another—’Let him shave his head!
Where’s Dr. Willis? — Or is he joking?
What does the rascal mean or hope, 475
No longer imitating Pope,
In that barbarian Shakespeare poking?’
5.
One more, ‘Is incest not enough?
And must there be adultery too?
Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar! 480
Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! hell-fire
Is twenty times too good for you.
6.
‘By that last book of yours WE think
You’ve double damned yourself to scorn;
We warned you whilst yet on the brink 485
You stood. From your black name will shrink
The babe that is unborn.’
7.
All these Reviews the Devil made
Up in a parcel, which he had
Safely to Peter’s house conveyed. 490
For carriage, tenpence Peter paid —
Untied them — read them — went half mad.
8.
‘What!’ cried he, ‘this is my reward
For nights of thought, and days, of toil?
Do poets, but to be abhorred 495
By men of whom they never heard,
Consume their spirits’ oil?
9.
‘What have I done to them? — and who
IS Mrs. Foy? ‘Tis very cruel
To speak of me and Betty so! 500
Adultery! God defend me! Oh!
I’ve half a mind to fight a duel.
10.
‘Or,’ cried he, a grave look collecting,
‘Is it my genius, like the moon,
Sets those who stand her face inspecting, 505
That face within their brain reflecting,
Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?’
11.
For Peter did not know the town,
But thought, as country readers do,
For half a guinea or a crown, 510
He bought oblivion or renown
From God’s own voice (1) in a review.
12.
All Peter did on this occasion
Was, writing some sad stuff in prose.
It is a dangerous invasion 515
When poets criticize; their station
Is to delight, not pose.
13.
The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair
For Born’s translation of Kant’s book;
A world of words, tail foremost, where 520
Right — wrong — false — true — and foul — and fair
As in a lottery-wheel are shook.
14.
Five thousand crammed octavo pages
Of German psychologics, — he
Who his furor verborum assuages 525
Thereon, deserves just seven months’ wages
More than will e’er be due to me.
15.
I looked on them nin
e several days,
And then I saw that they were bad;
A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise, — 530
He never read them; — with amaze
I found Sir William Drummond had.
16.
When the book came, the Devil sent
It to P. Verbovale (2), Esquire,
With a brief note of compliment, 535
By that night’s Carlisle mail. It went,
And set his soul on fire.
17.
Fire, which ex luce praebens fumum,
Made him beyond the bottom see
Of truth’s clear well — when I and you, Ma’am, 540
Go, as we shall do, subter humum,
We may know more than he.
18.
Now Peter ran to seed in soul
Into a walking paradox;
For he was neither part nor whole, 545
Nor good, nor bad — nor knave nor fool;
— Among the woods and rocks
19.
Furious he rode, where late he ran,
Lashing and spurring his tame hobby;
Turned to a formal puritan, 550
A solemn and unsexual man, —
He half believed “White Obi”.
20.
This steed in vision he would ride,
High trotting over nine-inch bridges,
With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride, 555
Mocking and mowing by his side —
A mad-brained goblin for a guide —
Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges.
21.
After these ghastly rides, he came
Home to his heart, and found from thence 560
His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame
Of their intelligence.
22.
To Peter’s view, all seemed one hue;
He was no Whig, he was no Tory; 565
No Deist and no Christian he; —
He got so subtle, that to be
Nothing, was all his glory.
23.
One single point in his belief
From his organization sprung, 570
The heart-enrooted faith, the chief
Ear in his doctrines’ blighted sheaf,
That ‘Happiness is wrong’;
24.
So thought Calvin and Dominic;
So think their fierce successors, who 575
Even now would neither stint nor stick
Our flesh from off our bones to pick,
If they might ‘do their do.’
25.
His morals thus were undermined: —
The old Peter — the hard, old Potter — 580
Was born anew within his mind;
He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,
As when he tramped beside the Otter. (1)
26.
In the death hues of agony
Lambently flashing from a fish, 585
Now Peter felt amused to see
Shades like a rainbow’s rise and flee,
Mixed with a certain hungry wish(2).
27.
So in his Country’s dying face
He looked — and, lovely as she lay, 590
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 595
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, 600
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 605
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 610
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, 615
‘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, 620
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: — 625
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 630
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: 635
‘May Carnage and Slaughter,
Thy niece and thy daughter,
May Rapine and Famine,
Thy gorge ever cramming,
Glut thee with living and dead! 640
37.
‘May Death and Damnation,
And Consternation,
Flit up from Hell with pure intent!
Slash them at Manchester,
Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester; 645
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 650
Munched children with fury,
It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent. (1)
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, 655
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 660
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, 665
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 670
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, 675
No doctor, — meat and drink enough. —
Yet that same night he died.
6.
The Devil’s corpse was leaded down;
His decent hei
rs enjoyed his pelf,
Mourning-coaches, many a one, 680
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 685
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, — 690
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 695
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, 700
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 — 705
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; 710
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; 715
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, 720
‘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. 725
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; — 730
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 atmosphere, 735
Creeping like cold through all things near;
A power to infect and to infest.
18.
His servant-maids and dogs grew dull;
His kitten, late a sportive elf;
The woods and lakes, so beautiful, 740