Restless, quivering tongues of flame! 
Heavenward striving still to go,
While others, reversed in the stream, below,
  Seem seeking a place we will not name,
  But well that Traveller knows the same,
      Who stops and stands,
      So rubbing his hands,
      And snuffing the rare
      Perfumes in the air,
For old familiar odors are there,
And then direct by the shortest cut,
Like Alpine Marmot, whom neither rut,
Rivers, rocks, nor thickets rebut,
Makes his way to the blazing Hut!

PART II.

Idly watching the Furnace-flames,
      The men of the stithy
      Are in their smithy,
Brutal monsters, with bulky frames,
Beings Humanity scarcely claims,
But hybrids rather of demon race,
Unbless’d by the holy rite of grace,
Who never had gone by Christian names,
Mark, or Matthew, Peter, or James—­
Naked, foul, unshorn, unkempt,
From touch of natural shame exempt,
Things of which Delirium has dreamt—­
But wherefore dwell on these verbal sketches,
  When traced with frightful truth and vigor,
  Costume, attitude, face, and figure,
Retsch has drawn the very wretches!

    However, there they lounge about,
The grim, gigantic fellows,
    Hardly hearing the storm without,
    That makes so very dreadful a rout,
      For the constant roar
      From the furnace door. 
And the blast of the monstrous bellows!

    Oh, what a scene
    That Forge had been
  For Salvator Rosa’s study! 
With wall, and beam, and post, and pin,
And those ruffianly creatures, like Shapes of Sin,
Hair, and eyes, and rusty skin,
  Illumed by a light so ruddy
The Hut, and whatever there is therein,
  Looks either red-hot or bloody!

And, oh! to hear the frequent burst
  Of strange, extravagant laughter,
      Harsh and hoarse,
      And resounding perforce
  From echoing roof and rafter! 
      Though curses, the worst
      That ever were curst,
And threats that Cain invented the first,
  Come growling the instant after!

But again the livelier peal is rung,
  For the Smith, hight Salamander,
In the jargon of some Titanic tongue,
Elsewhere never said or sung,
With the voice of a Stentor in joke has flung
      Some cumbrous sort
      Of sledge-hammer retort
  At Red Beard, the crew’s commander.

Some frightful jest—­who knows how wild,
Or obscene, from a monster so defiled,
And a horrible mouth, of such extent,
From flapping ear to ear it went,
And show’d such tusks whenever it smiled—­
The very mouth to devour a child!

But fair or foul the jest gives birth
To another bellow of demon mirth,
  That far outroars the weather,
As if all the Hyaenas that prowl the earth
  Had clubb’d their laughs together!