Page:The dream, or, The true history of Deacon Giles's distillery, and Deacon Jones's brewery.djvu/19

not but remind me of Shakspeare's witches, on the blasted heath at midnight, when the charm was brewing for Duncan's murder. Indeed, the song they sang, as they leaped about the cauldron, and threw in their infernal mixtures, was so similar to that of those "secret, black, and midnight hags," when they were going to "do the deed without a name," that I think the chorus in which they all joined, must have been gathered from some copy of the bedlam's accursed incantations. They repeated something very like the following stanzas, only more horrible:

1st Demon.
Round about the cauldron go.
In the poisoned entrails, throw
Drugs that in the coldest veins,
Shoot incessant fiery pains,
Herbs, that brought from hell's black door,
Do its business slow and sure.

All in Chorus.
Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Several Demons successively, 1st, 2d, 3d, &c.
This shall scorch and sear the brain,
This shall mad the heart with pain,
This shall bloat the flesh with fire,
This eternal thirst inspire,
This shall savage lust inflame,
This shall steel the soul to shame,
This make all mankind contend
'Tis their generous social friend.

All in Chorus.
Double, double, toil and trouble',
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

2d Demon.
This shall brutalize the mind,
And to the corporal frame shall bind
Fell disease of every kind,
Dropsies, agues, fierce catarrhs,
Pestilential inward wars,
Fevers, gouts, convulsive starts,
Racking spasms in vital parts.
And men shall call the liquor good.
The more with death it thicks the blood.

All in Chorus.
Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

All the Demons in Full Chorus.
Mortals! yours the damning sin;
Drink the maddening mixtue in.
It shall beat with fierce control,