I have seen him
  On the exchange, or in the market-place
  When money was in plenteous circulation,
  Gaze after it with such Satanic looks
  Of eagerness, that I have wonder’d oft
  How he from theft and murder could refrain. 
  ’Twas cowardice alone withheld his hands,
  For they would grasp and grapple at the air,
  When his grey eye had fixed on heaps of gold,
  While his clench’d teeth, and grinning, yearning face,
  Were dreadful to behold.  The merchants oft
  Would mark his eye, then start and look again,
  As at the eye of basilisk or snake. 
  His eye of greyish green ne’er shed one ray
  Of kind benignity or holy light
  On aught beneath the sun.  Childhood, youth, beauty,
  To it had all one hue.  Its rays reverted
  Right inward, back upon the greedy heart
  On which the gnawing worm of avarice
  Preyed without ceasing, straining every sense
  To that excruciable and yearning core. 
    Some thirteen days agone, he comes to me,
  And after many sore and mean remarks
  On men’s rapacity and sordid greed,
  He says, “Gabriel, thou art an honest man,
  As the world goes.  How much, then, will you charge
  And make a grave for me, fifteen feet deep?”—­
    “We’ll talk of that when you require it, sir.” 
    “No, no.  I want it made, and paid for too;
  I’ll have it settled, else I know there will
  Be some unconscionable overcharge
  On my poor friends—­a ruinous overcharge.”—­
    “But, sir, were it made now, it would fill up
  Each winter to the brim, and be to make
  Twenty or thirty times, if you live long.”  “There!
  there it is!  Nothing but imposition! 
  Even Time must rear his stern, unyielding front,
  And holding out his shrivelled skeleton hand,
  Demands my money.  Naught but money! money! 
  Were I coin’d into money I could not
  Half satisfy that craving greed of money. 
  Well, how much do you charge?  I’ll pay you now,
  And take a bond from you that it be made
  When it is needed.  Come, calculate with reason—­
  Work’s very cheap; and two good men will make
  That grave at two days’ work:  and I can have
  Men at a shilling each—­without the meat—­
  That’s a great matter!  Let them but to meat,
  ’Tis utter ruin.  I’ll give none their meat—­
  That I’ll beware of.  Men now-a-days are cheap,
  Cheap, dogcheap, and beggarly fond of work. 
  One shilling each a-day, without the meat. 
  Mind that, and ask in reason; for I wish
  To have that matter settled to my mind.”—­
    “Sir, there’s no man alive will do’t so cheap
  As I shall do it for the ready cash,”
  Says I, to put him from it with a joke. 
  “I’ll charge you, then, one-fourth part of a farthing
  For every cubic foot of work I do,
  Doubling the charge each foot that I descend.” 
    “Doubling as you descend!