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year of freedom's second dawn Died George the Third; although no tyrant, one Who shielded tyrants, till each sense withdrawn Left him nor mental nor external sun: A better farmer ne'er brush'd dew from lawn, A worse king never left a realm undone!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 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.