The Battle-Day and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Then rose the lawyer from his chair;
Ordered his barouche and pair;
Drove down and ransacked every store;
Sealed every chest; locked every door;
Counted all things o'er and o'er:
Acres, forests, manors, all—

From the family-portraits that clung to the wall,
To the old oak-chest in the servants' hall.

Next, since it ever forms his way
The frank and generous role to play,
He takes a condescending tone,
And kindly offers the widow lone
A few small rooms, for a passing day,
In the palace so lately all her own:
But takes very good care that she cannot stay;
And tells the servants, old and grey,
He'll soothe their life's unhoused decay:
But carefully drives them all away,
And bids behind them, evermore,
His own lean spaniels close the door.

Now Devilson reaches his heart's desire,
And takes his place as a country-squire;
But since his origin all can trace,
Affects a pride in his origin base;

And since all in this land you may buy and sell,
Is determined to buy a good name as well:
He buys much, when he offers a five-pound reward
To the slave who'll starve longest and labour most hard;
He buys more, when he bids a whole parish be fed
On an annual banquet at twopence the head;
His character's rising by rapid degrees,
Till he pays a young saint at a chapel of ease,—
When the bargain's completed as soon as began,
And he's stamped a respectable, popular man.

He's soon made Justice, and Sheriff in time;
And high, and still higher, determined to climb,
Looks around for an anchor to steady his life,
And from a poor peer buys a termagant wife.

The Lady Malice is tall and thin;
Her skin is of a dusky tan,
With black hairs dotting her pointed chin;
She's like a long, lean, lanky man.

Her virtue's positively fierce;
Her sharp eyes every weakness pierce,
Sure some inherent vice to find
In every phase of human kind.
The simplest mood, the meekest mien,
She speckles with her venomed spleen,
Construing to some thought obscene;
Shred by shred, and bit by bit,
With lewd delight dissecting it;
Till sin's worst school is found to be
Near her polluting purity.
But oh! beware how you approach her!
No thorn so mangles an encroacher!
She'll lure you on, with easy seeming,
To drop some hint of doubtful meaning,
Then turn as hot as fire, to show
Her virtue's white and cold as snow;
And, dragging you forth in a storm of laughter,
Hurl the full weight of her chastity after.
Such, no line is overdone,
Is Lady Malice Devilson.

Devilson's thick-set, short, and red;
Nine-tenths of the man are his paunch and head;
His hair is tufty, dense, and dark;
His small eyes flash with a cold grey spark,
Whose fitful glimmer will oft reveal
When a flinty thought strikes on his heart of steel.
He's sensual lips and a bold hook-nose;
And he makes himself felt wherever he goes;
He's stern to the rich, and he's hard to the poor;
But he's many a little, low amour;
And their cost is small—for he culls them all
From the Workhouse-yard and the Servants' Hall.
So Devilson lives with his titled bride;
And the saintliest pity him while they chide;—
For they feel the full force of his married bliss!
Oh! the peerage are more than avenged in this;
Since, if he once ruined an absentee race,
She tortures him endlessly, face to face.