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

There's a mansion old 'mid the hills of the west,
So old, that men know not by whom it was built;
But its pinnacles grey thro' the forest hoar
Have glimmered a thousand years and more;
And many a tale of sorrow and guilt
Would blanch the cheek,
If its stones could speak
The secrets locked in its silent breast.
Its lords have been great in the olden day;
But the pride of their strength has been broken away:
They moulder unknown in their native land.
And their home has long past to a stranger-hand.

A cunning lawyer, who could feed
Present want with future need,
Had drawn the youth of their latest heir
In the viewless mesh of his subtle snare.
The careless boy he led astray
With the lure of lust and the thirst of play;
With low companions bade him sit,
Who spoke debauch and called it wit—
His passions fanned—employed his purse,
Took all he had, and gave—their curse.
Then, when he'd run his fortune thro',
He sought in debt a fortune new,
And, gambling high and drinking hard,
Threw down his acres, card by card.
The lawyer watched his victim bleed,
Secure in obit, bond, and deed:
At first with humble means began
The quick, obliging business-man;
But carefully picked up each stray feather
Till he was fledged for winter-weather,
Then massed his sordid gains together

And lent to him from whom, 'tis said,
He once had begged his daily bread:
Steadily opened pore by pore,
With a lulling lure and a winning word
Like the flapping wing of the vampire-bird,
And sucked—and sucked, till he bled no more;
Then changed his tone in a single hour;
He felt, and he let him feel his power,
Nor one poor drop of gold would fetch
To slake the thirst of the perishing wretch;
But when he found he had sucked him dry,
He turned his back and let him die.

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.