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Fam. A baby beat its dying mother:

I had starved the one and was starving the other!

Both. Who bade you

Fam.

do't?

The same! the same!

Letters four do form his name.

He let me loose, and cried, Halloo !
To him alone the praise is due.

Fire. Sisters! I from Ireland came!
Hedge and corn-fields all on flame,
I triumph'd o'er the setting sun!
And all the while the work was done,
On as I strode with my huge strides,*
I flung back my head and I held my sides,
It was so rare a piece of fun

To see the swelter'd cattle run
With uncouth gallop through the night,†
Scared by the red and noisy light!

By the light of his own blazing cot
Was many a naked rebel shot:

The house-stream met the flame ‡ and hiss'd,
While crash! fell in the roof, I wist,

On some of those old bed-rid nurses,

That deal in discontent and curses.
Both. Who bade you do't?

Fire.

The same the same!

!

Letters four do form his name.

He let me loose, and cried Halloo !

To him alone the praise is due.

* As on I strode with monstrous strides-1798.

All the night-il.

The fire-il.

All. He let us loose, and cried Halloo ! How shall we yield him honour due?

Fam. Wisdom comes with lack of food. I'll gnaw, I'll gnaw the multitude,

Till the cup of rage o'erbrim :

They shall seize him and his brood

Slau. They shall tear him limb from limb! Fire. O thankless beldames and untrue! And is this all that you can do

For him, who did so much for you?

[To Slaughter. For you he turn'd the dust to mud With his fellow-creatures' blood!

To Famine. And hunger scorch'd as many more To make your cup of joy run o'er.

To Both.] Ninety months he, by my troth! Hath richly cater'd for you both;

And in an hour would you repay

An eight years' work ?*-Away! away!
I alone am faithful! I

Cling to him everlastingly.

THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS.†

I.

FROM his brimstone bed at break of day
A-walking the Devil is gone,

* An eight years' debt?-1798.

+ Printed in The Morning Post, Sept. 6, 1799 (with the stanzas in a somewhat different order).

To visit his snug little farm the Earth,
And see how his stock goes on.*

II.

Over the hill and over the dale,

And he went over the plain,

And backward and forward he switch'd † his long

As a gentleman switches ‡ his cane.

[tail

III.

And how then was the Devil drest?

Oh! he was in his Sunday's best :

His jacket was red and his breeches were blue, And there was a hole where the tail came through.

IV.

He saw a Lawyer killing a viper

On a dunghill hard by his own stablė ; And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind Of Cain and his brother Abel. §

V.

He saw an Apothecary on a white horse ||Ride by on his vocation ;

*To look at his little snug farm of the earth, And see how his stock went on.-1799.

+ Swish'd-Ib.

Swishes-Ib.

§ On the dunghill beside his stable;

'Oh oh,' quoth he, for it put him in mind

Of the story of Cain and Abel.—Ib.

An Apothecary on a white horse

Rode by, &c.—Ib,

And the Devil thought of his old friend
Death in the Revelation.*

VI.

He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility;

And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin †
Is pride that apes humility.

VII.

He peep'd into a rich bookseller's shop,
Quoth he, "We are both of one college!
For I sate myself, like a cormorant, once
Hard by the tree ‡ of knowledge." §

* And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death.-Revel. vi. 8.

And he grinn'd at the sight, for his favourite vice-1799.
Upon the tree—Ib.

§ This anecdote is related by that most interesting of the Devil's biographers, Mr. John Milton, in his Paradise Lost, and we have here the Devil's own testimony to the truth and accuracy of it.

"And all amid them stood the tree of life

High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit

Of vegetable gold [query paper money:] and next to Life Our Death, the tree of knowledge, grew fast by.—

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Thence up he flew, and on the tree of life

Sat like a cormorant."-Par. Lost. iv.

*

The allegory here is so apt, that in a catalogue of various readings obtained from collating the MSS. one might expect to find it noted, that for "life" Cod. quid. habent "trade."

VIII.

Down the river did glide, with wind and with tide, A pig with vast celerity;

And the Devil look'd wise as he saw how the while, It cut its own throat. "There," quoth he with a

smile,

"Goes England's commercial prosperity.”*

IX.

As he went through Cold-Bath Fields he saw
A solitary cell;

And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint
For improving his prisons in Hell.

Though indeed the trade, i.e. the bibliopolic, so called KaT' ἐξόχην, ', may be regarded as Life sensu eminentiori; a suggestion which I owe to a young retailer in the hosiery line, who on hearing a description of the net profits, dinner-parties, country-houses, &c. of the trade, exclaimed, "Ay! that's what I call Life now!"-This "Life, our Death," is thus happily contrasted with the fruits of authorship-Sic nos non nobis mellificamus apes.

Of this poem, which with the "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter," first appeared in the Morning Post, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 9th, and 16th stanzas were dictated by Mr. Southey. See Apologetic Preface.

*He saw a pig right rapidly

Adown the river float,

The pig swam well, but every stroke
Was cutting his own throat.

Old Nicholas grinn'd, and swish'd his tail

For joy and admiration

And he thought of his daughter Victory
And her darling babe Taxation.-1799.

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