THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS

by Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

FROM his brimstone bed at break of day

A walking the DEVIL is gone,

To visit his little snug little farm of the earth,

And see how his stock went on.

Over the hill and over the dale,

And he went over the plain,

And backward and forward he swish'd his long tail

As a gentleman swishes his cane.

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 .

He saw a LAWYER killing a Viper

On a dung-heap beside his stable,

And the Devil smiled, for it put him to mind

Of Cain and his brother, Abel.

A POTHECARY on a white horse

Rode by on his vocations;

And the Devil thought of his old Friend

DEATH in the Revelations.

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.

He went into a rich booksller's shop,

Quoth he! we are both of one college;

For I myself sate like a cormorant once

Fast by the tree of knowledge.

Down the river there plied with wind and 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."

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.

* * * * * * *

General ___ burning face

He saw with consternation,

And back to hell his way did he take,

For the Devil thought by a slight mistake

It was general conflagration.

[1]And all amid them stood the TREE OF LIFE

High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit

Of vegetable gold (query paper money:) and next to Life