III
His giantly chest in earthquakes
heaved,
With groanings corresponding;
And mincing and few were the words he spoke,
While a sigh, like some delicate whirlwind,
broke
From a heart that seem’d desponding.
IV
Now the Devil an Old Wife had
for his Dam,
I think none e’er was older:
Her years—old Parr’s were
nothing to them;
And a chicken to her was Methusalem,
You’d say, could you behold her.
V
She remember’d Chaos
a little child,
Strumming upon hand organs;
At the birth of Old Night a gossip she sat,
The ancientest there, and was godmother at
The christening of the Gorgons.
VI
Her bones peep’d through
a rhinoceros’ skin,
Like a mummy’s through its cerement;
But she had a mother’s heart, and guess’d
What pinch’d her son; whom she thus
address’d
In terms that bespoke endearment.
VII
“What ails my Nicky,
my darling Imp,
My Lucifer bright, my Beelze?
My Pig, my Pug-with-a-curly-tail,
You are not well. Can a mother fail
To see that which all Hell see?”
VIII
“O Mother dear, I am
dying, I fear;
Prepare the yew, and the willow,
And the cypress black: for I get no ease
By day or by night for the cursed fleas,
That skip about my pillow.”
IX
“Your pillow is clean,
and your pillow-beer,
For I wash’d ’em in Styx last
night, son,
And your blankets both, and dried them upon
The brimstony banks of Acheron—
It is not the fleas that bite, son.”
X
“O I perish of cold these
bitter sharp nights,
The damp like an ague ferrets;
The ice and the frost hath shot into the bone;
And I care not greatly to sleep alone
O! nights—for the fear of Spirits.”
XI
“The weather is warm,
my own sweet boy,
And the nights are close and stifling;
And for fearing of Spirits, you cowardly Elf—
Have you quite forgot you’re a Spirit
yourself?
Come, come, I see you are trifling.
XII
“I wish my Nicky is not
in love”—
“O mother, you have nick’t it”—
And he turn’d his head aside with a
blush—
Not red hot pokers, or crimson plush,
Could half so deep have prick’d it.
XIII
“These twenty thousand
good years or more,”
Quoth he, “on this burning shingle
I have led a lonesome Bachelor’s life,
Nor known the comfort of babe or wife—
’Tis a long—time to live
single.”
XIV
Quoth she, “If a wife
is all you want,
I shall quickly dance at your wedding.
I am dry nurse, you know, to the Female Ghosts
“—
And she call’d up her charge, and they
came in hosts
To do the old Beldam’s bidding:
XV
All who in their lives had
been servants of sin—
Adulteress, Wench, Virago—
And Murd’resses old that had pointed
the knife
Against a husband’s or father’s
life,
Each one a She Iago.