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 sweltered 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 hissed,
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.

ALL.

He let us loose, and cried Halloo !

How shall we yield him honour due?

FAMINE.

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

SLAUGHTER.

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?
Ninety months he, by my troth!
Hath richly catered for you both 1;
And in an hour would you repay
An eight years' work?-Away! away!
I alone am faithful! I

Cling to him everlastingly.

1796.

THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS.

I.

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

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 switched his long tail

As a gentleman switches his cane.

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 stable;

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 vocations;

And the Devil thought of his old friend
Death in the Revelations.

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 peeped 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 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.

So clomb this first grand thief

*

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." Though indeed the trade, i. e. the bibliopolic, called kar' ¿óxŋ, may be regarded as Life sensu eminentiori; a sug

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.

gestion, 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, 2d, 3d, 9th, and 16th stanzas were dictated by Mr. Southey. See Apologetic Preface.

- meant, the Author

If any one should ask who General begs leave to inform him, that he did once see a red-faced person in a dream whom by the dress he took for a General; but he might have been mistaken, and most certainly he did not hear any names mentioned. In simple verity, the author never meant any one, or indeed any thing but to put a concluding stanza to his doggerel.