84
Performance of a kind prodigious,
No pains, be sure; had been omitted
To decorate it as befitted:—
In fact, both in and out ’twas painted
With the worst fiends saints e’er invented;
Fiends with saw teeth and fish-hook tails,
Huge, gaping jaws and serpent’s scales,
Bat’s wings and claws, eyes goggling red,
Tridents, nets, flames and goblins dread,
Some small and vicious, others bigger,
All compounds of bat, goat and nigger.
In fact, religion here surpassed
Herself; as in a mirror glassed
And emptied out; for naught but hell
Can be religion’s parallel.
To use this aid to pious thought
A heretic must first be caught,
The cell, red-heated by a flue,
And then the saints had naught to do
But drop the heretic inside.
At first, from walls expanded wide,
The painted fiends glower at a distance,
And fan with fiery breath the wretch
Who crouches, powerless of resistance;
Then crank and lever groan and stretch,
And fiends and fiery walls rush nearer:
Just staggering on the brink of death,
With crackling brain and kindling breath,
He ravishes each reverend hearer
Who works, in turn, with pious fingering,
So sensitive that to a pin
It feels how much the wretch within
