Selected Poems and Prose
Page 44
In poetic metre.
For though it was without a sense
Of memory, yet he remembered well
425Many a ditch and quickset fence;
Of lakes he had intelligence,
He knew something of heath and fell.
He had also dim recollections
Of pedlars tramping on their rounds,
430Milk pans and pails, and odd collections
Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections
Old parsons make in burying-grounds.
But Peter’s verse was clear, and came
Announcing from the frozen hearth
435Of a cold age, that none might tame
The soul of that diviner flame
It augured to the Earth:
Like gentle rains, on the dry plains,
Making that green which late was grey,
440Or like the sudden moon, that stains
Some gloomy chamber’s windowpanes
With a broad light like day.
For language was in Peter’s hand
Like clay while he was yet a potter;
445And he made songs for all the land
Sweet both to feel and understand
As pipkins late to mountain Cotter.
And Mr. ——, the Bookseller,
Gave twenty pounds for some:—then scorning
450A footman’s yellow coat to wear,
Peter, too proud of heart I fear,
Instantly gave the Devil warning.
Whereat the Devil took offence,
And swore in his soul a great oath then,
455‘That for his damned impertinence,
He’d bring him to a proper sense
Of what was due to gentlemen!’—
Part Sixth
Damnation
‘O, that mine enemy had written
A book!’—cried Job:—A fearful curse!
460If to the Arab, as the Briton,
’Twas galling to be critic-bitten:—
The Devil to Peter wished no worse.
When Peter’s next new book found vent,
The Devil to all the first Reviews
465A copy of it slyly sent
With five-pound note as compliment,
And this short notice—‘Pray abuse.’
Then seriatim, month and quarter,
Appeared such mad tirades—One said—
470‘Peter seduced Mrs. Foy’s daughter,
Then drowned the Mother in Ullswater,
The last thing as he went to bed.’
Another—‘Let him shave his head!
Where’s Dr. Willis?—Or is he joking?
475What does the rascal mean or hope,
No longer imitating Pope,
In that barbarian Shakespeare poking?’
One more,—‘Is incest not enough,
And must there be adultery too?
480Grace after meat? Miscreant and liar!
Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! Hell-fire
Is twenty times too good for you.
‘By that last book of yours WE think
You’ve double damned yourself to scorn:
485We warned you whilst yet on the brink
You stood. From your black name will shrink
The babe that is unborn.’
All these Reviews the Devil made
Up in a parcel, which he had
490Safely to Peter’s house conveyed.
For carriage ten-pence Peter paid—
Untied them—read them—went half mad.
‘What!’—Cried he,—‘this is my reward
For nights of thought, and days of toil?
495Do poets, but to be abhorred
By men of whom they never heard,
Consume their spirits’ oil?
‘What have I done to them?—and Who
Is Mrs. Foy?—’Tis very cruel
500To speak of me and Betty so!
Adultery! God defend me! Oh!
I’ve half a mind to fight a duel.
‘Or,’ cried he, a grave look collecting,
‘Is it my genius, like the moon,
505Sets those who stand her face inspecting,
(That face within their brain reflecting)
Like a crazed bell chime, out of tune?’
For Peter did not know the town,
But thought, as country readers do,
510For half a guinea or a crown,
He bought oblivion or renown
From God’s own voice* in a review.
All Peter did on this occasion
Was, writing some sad stuff in prose.
515It is a dangerous invasion
When Poets criticise: their station
Is to delight, not pose.
The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair,
For Born’s translation of Kant’s book;
520A world of words, tail-foremost, where
Right—wrong—false—true—and foul and fair
As in a lottery wheel are shook.
Five thousand crammed octavo pages
Of German psychologics,—he
525Who his furor verborum assuages
Thereon, deserves just seven months’ wages
More than will e’er be due to me.
I looked on them nine several days,
And then I saw that they were bad;
530A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise,—
He never read them;—with amaze
I found Sir William Drummond had.
When the book came, the Devil sent
It to ‘P. Verbovale Esquire’,*
535With a brief note of compliment,
By that night’s Carlisle mail. It went
And set his soul on fire.
Fire, which ex luce praebens fumum,
Made him beyond the bottom see
540Of truth’s clear well—when I and you, Ma’am,
Go, as we shall do, subter humum,
We may know more than he.
Now Peter ran to seed in soul,
Into a walking paradox;—
545For he was neither part nor whole,
Nor good, nor bad—nor knave, nor fool,
—Among the woods and rocks
Furious he rode, where late he ran,
Lashing and spurring his lame hobby;
550Turned to a formal Puritan,
A solemn and unsexual man,—
He half believed White Obi!
This steed in vision he would ride,
High trotting over nine-inch bridges,
555With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride,
Mocking and mowing by his side—
A mad-brained goblin for a guide—
Over cornfields, gates and hedges.
After these ghastly rides, he came
560 Home to his heart, and found from thence
Much stolen of its accustomed flame;
His thoughts grew weak, drowsy and lame
Of their intelligence.
To Peter’s view, all seemed one hue;
565 He was no Whig, he was no Tory:
No Deist and no Christian he,—
He got so subtle, that to be
Nothing, was all his glory.
One single point in his belief
570 From his organization sprung,
The heart-enrooted faith, the chief
Ear in his doctrines’ blighted sheaf,
That ‘happiness is wrong’.
So thought Calvin and Dominic;
575 So think their fierce successors, who
Even now would neither stint nor stick
Our flesh from off our bones to pick,
If they might ‘do their do’.
His morals thus were undermined:—
580 The old Peter—the hard, old Potter—
Was born anew within his mind:
He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,
As when he tramped beside the Otter.*
In the death hues of
agony
585 Lambently flashing from a fish,
Now Peter felt amused to see
Shades, like a rainbow’s, rise and flee,
Mixed with a certain hungry wish.†
So in his Country’s dying face
590 He looked—and lovely as she lay,
Seeking in vain his last embrace,
Wailing her own abandoned case,
With hardened sneer he turned away:
And coolly to his own Soul said:—
595 ‘Do you not think that we might make
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—
‘My wife wants one.—Let who will, bury
600 This mangled corpse!—And I and you,
My dearest Soul, will then make merry,
As the Prince Regent did with Sherry’—
‘Aye—and at last desert me too.’
And so his Soul would not be gay,
605 But moaned within him; like a fawn,
Moaning within a cave, it lay
Wounded and wasting, day by day,
Till all its life of life was gone.
As troubled skies stain waters clear,
610 The storm in Peter’s heart and mind,
Now made his verses dark and queer;
They were the ghosts of what they were,
Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.
For he now raved enormous folly
615 Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools and Graves;
’Twould make George Colman melancholy
To have heard him, like a male Molly,
Chaunting those stupid staves.
Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse
620 On Peter, while he wrote for freedom,
So soon as in his song they spy
The folly which soothes Tyranny,
Praise him, for those who feed ’em.
‘He was a man, too great to scan;—
625 A planet lost in truth’s keen rays:—
His virtue, awful and prodigious;—
He was the most sublime, religious,
Pure-minded Poet of these days.’
As soon as he read that—cried Peter;—
630 ‘Eureka! I have found the way
To make a better thing of metre
Than e’er was made by living creature
Up to this blessed day.’
Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;—
635 In one of which he meekly said:—
‘May Carnage and Slaughter,
Thy niece and thy daughter,
May Rapine and Famine,
Thy gorge ever cramming,
640 Glut thee with living and dead!
‘May Death and Damnation,
And Consternation,
Flit up from Hell, with pure intent!
Slash them at Manchester,
645 Glasgow, Leeds and Chester;
Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent!
‘Let thy body-guard yeomen
Hew down babes and women,
And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent!
650 When Moloch in Jewry,
Munched children with fury
It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent!’*
Part Seventh
Double Damnation
The Devil now knew, his proper cue—
Soon as he read the ode, he drove
655To his friend Lord McMurderchouse’s,
A man of interest in both houses,
And said:—‘For money or for love
‘Pray find some cure or sinecure,
To feed from the superfluous taxes
660A friend of ours—a Poet—fewer
Have fluttered tamer to the lure
Than he.’—His Lordship stands and racks his
Stupid brains, while one might count
As many beads as he had boroughs,—
665At length replies;—from his mean front,
Like one who rubs out an account,
Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows:—
‘It happens fortunately, dear Sir,
I can. I hope I need require
670No pledge from you, that he will stir
In our affairs;—like Oliver,
That he’ll be worthy of his hire.’
These words exchanged, the news sent off
To Peter:—home the Devil hied;
675Took to his bed; he had no cough,
No doctor,—meat and drink enough,—
Yet that same night he died.
The Devil’s corpse was leaded down.—
His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf:
680Mourning coaches, many a one,
Followed his hearse along the town:—
Where was the Devil himself?
When Peter heard of his promotion
His eyes grew like two stars for bliss:
685There was a bow of sleek devotion
Engendering in his back; each motion
Seemed a Lord’s shoe to kiss.
He hired a house, bought plate, and made
A genteel drive up to his door,
690With sifted gravel neatly laid,—
As if defying all who said
Peter was ever poor.
But a disease soon struck into
The very life and soul of Peter—
695He walked about—slept—had the hue
Of health upon his cheeks—and few
Dug better—none a heartier eater.
And yet—a strange and horrid curse
Clung upon Peter, night and day—
700Month after month the thing grew worse,
And deadlier than in this my verse
I can find strength to say.
Peter was dull—he was at first
Dull—O, so dull—so very dull!
705Whether he talked—wrote—or rehearsed—
Still with this dullness was he cursed—
Dull—beyond all conception—dull.—
No one could read his books—no mortal,
But a few natural friends, would hear him:—
710The parson came not near his portal;—
His state was like that of the immortal
Described by Swift—no man could bear him.
His sister, wife and children yawned,
With a long, slow and drear ennui,
715All human patience far beyond;
Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned
Anywhere else to be.
But in his verse, and in his prose,
The essence of his dullness was
720Concentred and compressed so close,—
’Twould have made Guatimozin doze
On his red gridiron of brass.
A printer’s boy, folding those pages,
Fell slumberously upon one side:
725Like those famed seven who slept three ages.
To wakeful frenzy’s vigil rages
As opiates were the same applied.
Even the Reviewers who were hired
To do the work of his reviewing,
730With adamantine nerves, grew tired;—
Gaping and torpid they retired,
To dream of what they should be doing.
And worse and worse, the drowsy curse
Yawned in him—till it grew a pest—
735A wide contagious atmosphere,
Creeping like cold through all things near;
A power to infect, and to infest.
His servant maids and dogs grew dull;
His kitten, late a sportive elf;
740The woods and lakes, so beautiful,
Of dim stupidity were full;
All grew dull as Peter’s self.
The earth under his feet—the springs,
Which lived within it a quick life—
745The Air—the Winds of many wings—
That fan it with
new murmurings,
Were dead to their harmonious strife.
The birds and beasts within the wood;
The insects—and each creeping thing,
750Were now a silent multitude;
Love’s work was left unwrought:—no brood
Near Peter’s house took wing.
And every neighbouring Cottager
Stupidly yawned upon the other;
755No jackass brayed;—no little cur
Cocked up his ears;—no man would stir
To save a dying mother.
Yet all from that charmed district went,
But some, half idiot and half knave,
760Who, rather than pay any rent,
Would live, with marvellous content,
Over his father’s grave.
No bailiff dared within that space,
For fear of the dull charm, to enter:
765A man would bear upon his face,
For fifteen months, in any case,
The yawn of such a venture.
Seven miles above—below—around—
This pest of dullness holds its sway:
770A ghastly life without a sound;
To Peter’s soul the spell is bound—
How should it ever pass away?
Finis.
Ode to the West Wind*
I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
5Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
10Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)