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.

O, 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, be 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.