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 melodrame. 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 l