Each with never-ceasing labour, Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour And all these meet at levees; 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; At conversazioni-balls Conventicles and drawing-rooms- And this is Hell-and in this smother 'Tis a lie to say, "God damns!" * *This libel on our national oath, and this accusation of all our countrymen of being in the daily practice of solemnly Where was Heaven's Attorney-General They are mines of poisonous mineral. Statesmen damn themselves to be Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls Churchmen damn themselves to see 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 : 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: And some few, like we know who, In which faith they live and die. asseverating the most enormous falsehood, I fear deserves the notice of a more active Attorney-General than that here alluded to. Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken, Each man be he sound or no Must indifferently sicken ; As when day begins to thicken, 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; All are damned-they breathe the air, PART THE FOURTH. SIN. 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. But Peter, though now damned, was not Men oftentimes prepare a lot Which ere it finds them, is not what All things that Peter saw and felt And so the outward world uniting To those, who meditation slighting, And he scorned them, and they scorned him; Did all that men of their own trim Such were his fellow-servants; thus To bully out another's guilt. 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. He had as much imagination From which to dart his contemplation, Yet his was individual mind, Thus though unimaginative— But from the first 'twas Peter's drift The closest, all-concealing tunic. |