a flourishing, fine, clever woman was she,
With an eye as wicked as wicked can be,
I should take her for my Aunt, thought he,
If my dam had had a sister.

He met a lord of high degree,
No matter what was his name;
Whose face with his own when he came to compare
The expression, the look, and the air,
And the character, too, as it seem'd to a hair--
Such a twin-likeness there was in the pair
That it made the Devil start and stare
For he thought there was surely a looking-glass there,
But he could not see the frame.

He saw a Lawyer killing a viper,
On a dung-hill beside his stable;
Ha! quoth he, thou put'st me in mind
Of the story of Cain and Abel.

An Apothecary on a white horse
Rode by on his vocation;
And the Devil thought of his old friend
Death in the Revelation.

He pass'd a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility,
And he own'd with a grin
That his favorite sin,
Is pride that apes humility.

He saw a pig rapidly
Down a river float;
The pig swam well, but every stroke
Was cutting his own throat;
And Satan gave thereat his tail
A twirl of admiration;
For he thought of his daughter War,
And her suckling babe Taxation.

Well enough, in sooth, he liked that truth
And nothing the worse for the jest;
But this was only a first thought
And in this he did not rest:
Another came presently into his head,
And here it proved, as has often been said
That second thoughts are best.

For as Piggy plied with wind and tide,
His way with such celerity,
And at every stroke the water dyed
With his own red blood, the Devil cried,
Behold a swinish nation's pride
In cotton-spun prosperity.

He walk'd into London leisurely,
The streets were dirty and dim:
But there he saw Brothers the Prophet,
And Brothers the Prophet saw him.

He entered a thriving bookseller's shop;
Quoth he, we are both of one college,
For I myself sate like a Cormorant once
Upon the Tree of Knowledge.

As he passed through Cold-Bath Fields he look'd
At a solitary cell;
And he was well-pleased, for it gave him a hint
For improving the prisons of Hell.

He saw a turnkey tie a thief's hands
With a cordial tug and jerk;
Nimbly, quoth he, a man's fingers move
When his heart is in his work.
He saw the same turnkey unfettering a man
With little expedition;
And he chuckled to think of his dear slave-trade,
And the long debates and delays that were made