Suppers of epic poets;-teas,
Where small talk dies in agonies;-
Breakfasts professional and critical;

XIII.

Lunches and snacks so aldermanic

That one would furnish forth ten dinners,
Where reigns a Cretan-tongued panic,

Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic

Should make some losers, and some winners;-1

XIV.

At conversazioni-balls

Conventicles and drawing-rooms-
Courts of law-committees calls
Of a morning-clubs-book-stalls-
Churches-masquerades-and tombs.

XV.

And this is Hell-and in this smother
All are damnable and damned;
Each one damning, damns the other;
They are damned by one another,

By none other are they damned.

XVI.

'Tis a lie to say, "God damns !"2

Where was Heaven's Attorney General
When they first gave out such flams?
Let there be an end of shams,

They are mines of poisonous mineral.

1 There is no stop here in Mrs. Shelley's editions.

2 This libel on our national oath, and this accusation of all our countrymen of being in the daily practice of solemnly asseverating the most enormous falsehood, I fear deserves the notice of a more active Attorney General than that here alluded to. [SHELLEY'S NOTE.]

XVII.

Statesmen damn themselves to be

Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls.

To the auction of a fee;

Churchmen damn themselves to see

God's sweet love in burning coals.

XVIII.

The rich are damned, beyond all cure, To taunt, and starve, and trample on The weak and wretched; and the poor Damn their broken hearts to endure

Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan.

XIX.

Sometimes the poor are damned indeed

To take, not means for being blest,---But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed From which the worms that it doth feed Squeeze less than they before possessed.

XX.

And some few, like we know who, Damned-but God alone knows why

To believe their minds are given

To make this ugly Hell a Heaven;
In which faith they live and die.

XXI.

Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken,

Each man be he sound or no

Must indifferently sicken;

As when day begins to thicken,

None knows a pigeon from a crow,

XXII.

So good and bad, sane and mad,
The oppressor and the oppressed;
Those who weep to see what others
Smile to inflict upon their brothers;
Lovers, haters, worst and best;

XXIII.

All are damned-they breathe an air,
Thick, infected, joy-dispelling:
Each pursues what seems most fair,
Mining like moles, through mind, and there
Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care
In throned state is ever dwelling.

PART THE FOURTH.

SIN.

I.

Lo, Peter in Hell's Grosvenor-square,

A footman in the devil's service! And the misjudging world would swear That every man in service there

To virtue would prefer vice.

II.

But Peter, though now damned, was not

What Peter was before damnation.

Men oftentimes prepare a lot

Which ere it finds them, is not what

Suits with their genuine station.

III.

All things that Peter saw and felt
Had a peculiar aspect to him;
And when they came within the belt
Of his own nature, seemed to melt,
Like cloud to cloud, into him.

IV.

And so the outward world uniting
To that within him, he became

Considerably uninviting

To those, who meditation slighting,

Were moulded in a different frame.

V.

And he scorned them, and they scorned him;
And he scorned all they did; and they
Did all that men of their own trim

Are wont to do to please their whim,
Drinking, lying, swearing, play.

VI.

Such were his fellow-servants; thus
His virtue, like our own, was built
Too much on that indignant fuss
Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us

To bully one1 another's guilt.

VII.

He had a mind which was somehow
At once circumference and centre
Of all he might or feel or know;
Nothing went ever out, although
Something did ever enter.

VIII.

He had as much imagination

As a pint-pot;-he never could

Fancy another situation,

From which to dart his contemplation,

Than that wherein he stood.

IX.

Yet his was individual mind,
And new created all he saw
In a new manner, and refined

In previous editions out stands in place of one. Unquestionably one is right: Mr. Rossetti says he would

have made the emendation had it been suggested to him in time.