ter-- 580
Was born anew within his mind;
He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,
As when he tramped beside the Otter.

26.
In the death hues of agony
Lambently flashing from a fish, 585
Now Peter felt amused to see
Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee,
Mixed with a certain hungry wish.

27.
So in his Country's dying face
He looked--and, lovely as she lay, 590
Seeking in vain his last embrace,
Wailing her own abandoned case,
With hardened sneer he turned away:

28.
And coolly to his own soul said;--
'Do you not think that we might make 595
A poem on her when she's dead:--
Or, no--a thought is in my head--
Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take:

29.
'My wife wants one.--Let who will bury
This mangled corpse! And I and you, 600
My dearest Soul, will then make merry,
As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,--'
'Ay--and at last desert me too.'

30.
And so his Soul would not be gay,
But moaned within him; like a fawn 605
Moaning within a cave, it lay
Wounded and wasting, day by day,
Till all its life of life was gone.

31.
As troubled skies stain waters clear,
The storm in Peter's heart and mind 610
Now made his verses dark and queer:
They were the ghosts of what they were,
Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.

32.
For he now raved enormous folly,
Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves, 615
'Twould make George Colman melancholy
To have heard him, like a male Molly,
Chanting those stupid staves.

33.
Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse
On Peter while he wrote for freedom, 620
So soon as in his song they spy
The folly which soothes tyranny,
Praise him, for those who feed 'em.

34.
'He was a man, too great to scan;--
A planet lost in truth's keen rays:-- 625
His virtue, awful and prodigious;--
He was the most sublime, religious,
Pure-minded Poet of these days.'

35.
As soon as he read that, cried Peter,
'Eureka! I have found the way 630
To make a better thing of metre
Than e'er was made by living creature
Up to this blessed day.'

36.
Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;--
In one of which he meekly said: