The Works of Thomas Love Peacock

He saw the dawn of a coming day,
Dim-glimmering through the gloom:
He saw the coronet pass away
From the ancient halls where it then held sway,
And the mitre its place resume.

He saw, the while, through the holy pile
The incense vapour spread;
He saw the poor, at the Abbey door,
Receiving their daily bread.

He saw on the wall the shadows cast
Of sacred sisters three:
He blessed them not, as they flitted past:
But above them all he hated the last,
For that was Charitie.

Now down from its shelf a book he bore,
And characters he drew,
And a spell he muttered o'er and o'er,

255

Till before him cleft was the marble floor,
And a murky fiend came through.

“Now take thee a torch in thy red right hand,”
Little John to the fiend he saith:
“And let it serve as a signal brand,
To raise the rabble, throughout the land,
Against the Catholic Faith.”

Straight through the porch, with brandished torch,
The fiend went joyously out:
And a posse of parsons, established by law,
Sprang up, when the lurid flame they saw,
To head the rabble rout.

And braw Scots Presbyters nimbly sped
In the train of the muckle black de'il;
And, as the wild infection spread,
The Protestant Hydra's every head
Sent forth a yell of zeal.

And pell-mell went all forms of dissent,
Each beating its scriptural drum;
Wesleyans and Whitfieldites followed as friends,
And whatever in 'onian and 'arian ends,
Et omne quod exit in hum.

And in bonfires burned ten thousand Guys,
With caricatures of the pious and wise,
Mid shouts of goblin glee,
And such a clamour rent the skies,
That all buried lunatics seemed to rise,
And hold a Jubilee.

256

Fytte the Second

The devil gave the rabble scope
And they left him not in the lurch:
But they went beyond the summoner's hope;
For they quickly got tired of bawling “No Pope!”
And bellowed, “No State Church!”

“Ho!” quoth Little John, “this must not be:
The devil leads all amiss:
He works for himself, and not for me:
And straightway back I'll bid him flee
To the bottomless abyss.”

Again he took down his book from the wall,
And pondered words of might:
He muttered a speech, and he scribbled a scrawl:
But the only answer to his call
Was a glimpse, at the uttermost end of the hall,
Of the devil taking a sight.

And louder and louder grew the clang
As the rabble raged without:
The door was beaten with many a bang;
And the vaulted roof re-echoing rang
To the tumult and the shout.

The fiendish shade, on the wall portrayed,
Threw somersaults fast and free,
And flourished his tail like a brandished flail,
As busy as if it were blowing a gale,
And his task were on the sea.

257

And up he toss't his huge pitchfork,
As visioned shrines uprose;
And right and left he went to work,
Till full over Durham, and Oxford, and York,
He stood with a menacing pose.

The rabble roar was hushed awhile,
As the hurricane rests in its sweep;
And all throughout the ample pile
Reigned silence dread and deep.

Then a thrilling voice cried: “Little John,
A little spell will do,
When there is mischief to be done,
To raise me up and set me on;
For I, of my own free will, am won
To carry such spiritings through.

“But when I am riding the tempest's wing,
And towers and spires have blazed,
'Tis no small conjuror's art to sing,
Or say, a spell to check the swing
Of the demons he has raised.”

University of Virginia Library

A GOODLYE BALLADE OF LITTLE JOHN

SHEWINGE HOW HE RAYSED A DYVELL, AND HOW HE COULDE NOTTE LAYE HYMME

Fytte the First

Fytte the Second