Chapter LVIII: The Vision of Judgment

_The Vision of Judgment_ appeared in 1822, and created a great
sensation owing to its terrible attack on George III., as well as
its ridicule of Southey, of whose long-forgotten _Vision of
Judgment_ this is a parody.

I.

Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate;
His keys were rusty, and the lock was dull,
So little trouble had been given of late:
Not that the place by any means was full,
But since the Gallic era "eighty-eight",
The devils had ta'en a longer, stronger pull,
And "a pull all together", as they say
At sea--which drew most souls another way.

II.

The angels all were singing out of tune,
And hoarse with having little else to do,
Excepting to wind up the sun and moon,
Or curb a runaway young star or two,
Or wild colt of a comet, which too soon
Broke out of bounds o'er the ethereal blue,
Splitting some planet with its playful tail,
As boats are sometimes by a wanton whale.

III.

The guardian seraphs had retired on high,
Finding their charges past all care below;
Terrestrial business fill'd nought in the sky
Save the recording angel's black bureau;
Who found, indeed, the facts to multiply
With such rapidity of vice and woe,
That he had stripp'd off both his wings in quills,
And yet was in arrear of human ills.

IV.

His business so augmented of late years,
That he was forced, against his will no doubt
(Just like those cherubs, earthly ministers),
For some resource to turn himself about,
And claim the help of his celestial peers,
To aid him ere he should be quite worn out
By the increased demand for his remarks:
Six angels and twelve saints were named his clerks.

V.

This was a handsome board--at least for heaven;
And yet they had even then enough to do,
So many conquerors' cars were daily driven,
So many kingdoms fitted up anew;
Each day, too, slew its thousands six or seven,
Till at the crowning carnage, Waterloo,
They threw their pens down in divine disgust,
The page was so besmear'd with blood and dust.

VI.

This by the way; 'tis not mine to record
What angels shrink from: even the very devil
On this occasion his own work abhorr'd,
So surfeited with the infernal revel:
Though he himself had sharpen'd every sword,
It almost quench'd his innate thirst of evil.
(Here Satan's sole good work deserves insertion--
'Tis that he has both generals in reversion.)

VII.

Let's skip a few short years of hollow peace,
Which peopled earth no better, hell as wont,
And heaven none--they form the tyrant's lease,
With nothing but new names subscribed upon't:
'Twill one day finish: meantime they increase,
"With seven heads and ten horns", and all in front,
Like Saint John's foretold beast; but ours are born
Less formidable in the head than horn.

VIII.

In the first year of freedom's second dawn
Died George the Third; although no tyrant, one
Who shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawn
Left him nor mental nor external sun:
A better farmer ne'er brush'd dew from lawn,
A worse king never left a realm undone!
He died--but left his subjects still behind,
One half as mad--and t'other no less blind.

IX.

He died! his death made no great stir on earth:
His burial made some pomp: there was profusion
Of velvet, gilding, brass, and no great dearth
Of aught but tears--save those shed by collusion.
For these things may be bought at their true worth;
Of elegy there was the due infusion--
Bought also; and the torches, cloaks, and banners,
Heralds, and relics of old Gothic manners,

X.

Form'd a sepulchral mélodrame. Of all
The fools who flock'd to swell or see the show,
Who cared about the corpse? The funeral
Made the attraction, and the black the woe,
There throbb'd not there a thought which pierced the pall;
And when the gorgeous coffin was laid low,
It seem'd the mockery of hell to fold
The rottenness of eighty years in gold.

XI.

So mix his body with the dust! It might
Return to what it _must_ far sooner, were
The natural compound left alone to fight
Its way back into earth, and fire, and air,
But the unnatural balsams merely blight
What nature made him at his birth, as bare
As the mere million's base unmummied clay--
Yet all his spices but prolong decay.

XII.

He's dead--and upper earth with him has done;
He's buried; save the undertaker's bill,
Or lapidary's scrawl, the world has gone
For him, unless he left a German will.
But where's the proctor who will ask his son?
In whom his qualities are reigning still,
Except that household virtue, most uncommon,
Of constancy to a bad, ugly woman.

XIII.

"God save the King!" It is a large economy
In God to save the like; but if He will
Be saving, all the better; for not one am I
Of those who think damnation better still;
I hardly know, too, if not quite alone am I
In this small hope of bettering future ill
By circumscribing, with some slight restriction,
The eternity of hell's hot jurisdiction.

XIV.

I know this is unpopular; I know
'Tis blasphemous; I know one may be damn'd
For hoping no one else may e'er be so;
I know my catechism: I know we 're cramm'd
With the best doctrines till we quite o'erflow;
I know that all save England's church have shamm'd;
And that the other twice two hundred churches
And synagogues have made a _damn'd_ bad purchase.

XV.

God help us all! God help me too! I am,
God knows, as helpless as the devil can wish,
And not a whit more difficult to damn,
Than is to bring to land a late-hooked fish,
Or to the butcher to purvey the lamb;
Not that I'm fit for such a noble dish,
As one day will be that immortal fry
Of almost everybody born to die.

XVI.

Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate,
And nodded o'er his keys; when lo! there came
A wondrous noise he had not heard of late--
A rushing sound of wind, and stream, and flame;
In short, a roar of things extremely great,
Which would have made all save a saint exclaim;
But he, with first a start and then a wink,
Said, "There's another star gone out, I think!"

XVII.

But ere he could return to his repose,
A cherub flapp'd his right wing o'er his eyes--
At which Saint Peter yawn'd and rubb'd his nose;
"Saint porter," said the angel, "prithee rise!"
Waving a goodly wing, which glow'd, as glows
An earthly peacock's tail, with heavenly dyes;
To which the Saint replied, "Well, what's the matter?
Is Lucifer come back with all this clatter?"

XVIII.

"No," quoth the cherub; "George the Third is dead."
"And who _is_ George the Third?" replied the apostle;
"_What George? What Third?_" "The King of England," said
The angel. "Well, he won't find kings to jostle
Him on his way; but does he wear his head?
Because the last we saw here had a tussle,
And ne'er would have got into heaven's good graces,
Had he not flung his head in all our faces.

XIX.

"He was, if I remember, King of France,
That head of his, which could not keep a crown
On earth, yet ventured in my face to advance
A claim to those of martyrs--like my own.
If I had had my sword, as I had once
When I cut ears off, I had cut him down;
But having but my _keys_, and not my brand,
I only knock'd his head from out his hand.

XX.

"And then he set up such a headless howl,
That all the saints came out and took him in;
And there he sits by St. Paul, cheek by jowl;
That fellow Paul--the parvenu! The skin
Of Saint Bartholomew, which makes his cowl
In heaven, and upon earth redeem'd his sin
So as to make a martyr, never sped
Better than did that weak and wooden head.

XXI.

"But had it come up here upon its shoulders,
There would have been a different tale to tell;
The fellow-feeling in the saints' beholders
Seems to have acted on them like a spell;
And so this very foolish head heaven solders
Back on its trunk: it may be very well,
And seems the custom here to overthrow
Whatever has been wisely done below."

XXII.

The angel answer'd, "Peter! do not pout:
The king who comes has head and all entire,
And never knew much what it was about--
He did as doth the puppet--by its wire,
And will be judged like all the rest, no doubt:
My business and your own is not to inquire
Into such matters, but to mind our cue--
Which is to act as we are bid to do."

XXIII.

While thus they spake, the angelic caravan,
Arriving like a rush of mighty wind,
Cleaving the fields of space, as doth the swan
Some silver stream (say Ganges, Nile, or Inde,
Or Thames, or Tweed), and 'midst them an old man
With an old soul, and both extremely blind,
Halted before the gate, and in his shroud
Seated their fellow-traveller on a cloud.

XXIV.

But bringing up the rear of this bright host,
A Spirit of a different aspect waved
His wings, like thunder-clouds above some coast
Whose barren beach with frequent wrecks is paved;
His brow was like the deep when tempest-toss'd;
Fierce and unfathomable thoughts engraved
Eternal wrath on his immortal face,
And _where_ he gazed, a gloom pervaded space.

XXV.

As he drew near, he gazed upon the gate
Ne'er to be enter'd more by him or Sin,
With such a glance of supernatural hate,
As made St. Peter wish himself within:
He patter'd with his keys at a great rate,
And sweated through his apostolic skin:
Of course his perspiration was but ichor,
Or some such other spiritual liquor.

XXVI.

The very cherubs huddled all together,
Like birds when soars the falcon; and they felt
A tingling to the tip of every feather,
And form'd a circle like Orion's belt
Around their poor old charge; who scarce knew whither
His guards had led him, though they gently dealt
With royal manes (for by many stories,
And true, we learn the angels all are Tories).

XXVII.

As things were in this posture, the gate flew
Asunder, and the flashing of its hinges
Flung over space an universal hue
Of many-color'd flame, until its tinges
Reach'd even our speck of earth, and made a new
Aurora Borealis spread its fringes
O'er the North Pole, the same seen, when ice-bound,
By Captain Perry's crew, in "Melville's Sound".

XXVIII.

And from the gate thrown open issued beaming
A beautiful and mighty Thing of Light,
Radiant with glory, like a banner streaming
Victorious from some world-o'erthrowing fight:
My poor comparisons must needs be teeming
With earthly likenesses, for here the night
Of clay obscures our best conceptions, saving
Johanna Southcote, or Bob Southey raving.

XXIX.

'Twas the archangel Michael: all men know
The make of angels and archangels, since
There's scarce a scribbler has not one to show,
From the fiends' leader to the angels' prince.
There also are some altar-pieces, though
I really can't say that they much evince
One's inner notions of immortal spirits;
But let the connoisseurs explain _their_ merits.

XXX.

Michael flew forth in glory and in good,
A goodly work of Him from whom all glory
And good arise: the portal pass'd--he stood
Before him the young cherubs and saints hoary--
(I say _young_, begging to be understood
By looks, not years, and should be very sorry
To state, they were not older than St. Peter,
But merely that they seem'd a little sweeter).

XXXI.

The cherubs and the saints bow'd down before
That archangelic hierarch, the first
Of essences angelical, who wore
The aspect of a god; but this ne'er nursed
Pride in his heavenly bosom, in whose core
No thought, save for his Maker's service, durst
Intrude, however glorified and high;
He knew him but the viceroy of the sky.

XXXII.

He and the sombre silent Spirit met--
They knew each other both for good and ill;
Such was their power that neither could forget
His former friend and future foe; but still
There was a high, immortal, proud regret
In either's eye, as if't were less their will
Than destiny to make the eternal years
Their date of war, and their _champ clos_ the spheres.

XXXIII.

But here they were in neutral space: we know
From Job, that Satan hath the power to pay
A heavenly visit thrice a year or so;
And that "the sons of God", like those of clay,
Must keep him company; and we might show
From the same book, in how polite a way
The dialogue is held between the powers
Of Good and Evil--but 'twould take up hours.

XXXIV.

And this is not a theologic tract,
To prove with Hebrew and with Arabic,
If Job be allegory or a fact,
But a true narrative; and thus I pick
From out the whole but such and such an act,
As sets aside the slightest thought of trick.
'Tis every tittle true, beyond suspicion,
And accurate as any other vision.