III

His giantly chest in earthquakes heaved,
With groanings corresponding;
And mincing and few were the words he spoke,
While a sigh, like some delicate whirlwind, broke
From a heart that seem’d desponding.

IV

Now the Devil an Old Wife had for his Dam,
I think none e’er was older: 
Her years—­old Parr’s were nothing to them;
And a chicken to her was Methusalem,
You’d say, could you behold her.

V

She remember’d Chaos a little child,
Strumming upon hand organs;
At the birth of Old Night a gossip she sat,
The ancientest there, and was godmother at
The christening of the Gorgons.

VI

Her bones peep’d through a rhinoceros’ skin,
Like a mummy’s through its cerement;
But she had a mother’s heart, and guess’d
What pinch’d her son; whom she thus address’d
In terms that bespoke endearment.

VII

“What ails my Nicky, my darling Imp,
My Lucifer bright, my Beelze? 
My Pig, my Pug-with-a-curly-tail,
You are not well.  Can a mother fail
To see that which all Hell see?”

VIII

“O Mother dear, I am dying, I fear;
Prepare the yew, and the willow,
And the cypress black:  for I get no ease
By day or by night for the cursed fleas,
That skip about my pillow.”

IX

“Your pillow is clean, and your pillow-beer,
For I wash’d ’em in Styx last night, son,
And your blankets both, and dried them upon
The brimstony banks of Acheron—­
It is not the fleas that bite, son.”

X

“O I perish of cold these bitter sharp nights,
The damp like an ague ferrets;
The ice and the frost hath shot into the bone;
And I care not greatly to sleep alone
O! nights—­for the fear of Spirits.”

XI

“The weather is warm, my own sweet boy,
And the nights are close and stifling;
And for fearing of Spirits, you cowardly Elf—­
Have you quite forgot you’re a Spirit yourself? 
Come, come, I see you are trifling.

XII

“I wish my Nicky is not in love”—­
“O mother, you have nick’t it”—­
And he turn’d his head aside with a blush—­
Not red hot pokers, or crimson plush,
Could half so deep have prick’d it.

XIII

“These twenty thousand good years or more,”
Quoth he, “on this burning shingle
I have led a lonesome Bachelor’s life,
Nor known the comfort of babe or wife—­
’Tis a long—­time to live single.”

XIV

Quoth she, “If a wife is all you want,
I shall quickly dance at your wedding. 
I am dry nurse, you know, to the Female Ghosts “—­
And she call’d up her charge, and they came in hosts
To do the old Beldam’s bidding: 

XV

All who in their lives had been servants of sin—­
Adulteress, Wench, Virago—­
And Murd’resses old that had pointed the knife
Against a husband’s or father’s life,
Each one a She Iago.