Sun, moon, and thou vain world, adieu,
    That kings and priests are plotting in;
  Here doom’d to starve on water-gruel,
  never shall I see the U-
     -niversity of Gottingen!—­
     -niversity of Gottingen!

    [During the last stanza Rogero dashes his head
      repeatedly against the walls of his prison;
      and, finally, so hard as to produce a visible
      contusion.  He then throws himself on the
      floor in an agony.  The curtain drops—­the
      music still continuing to play till it is wholly
      fallen.

COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY.

(1772-1834.) (1774-1843.)

LIV.  THE DEVIL’S WALK.

Originally written in an album belonging to one of the Misses Fricker, the ladies whom the two poets married.  What was the extent of the collaboration of the respective writers in the poem is unknown, but the fact is beyond a doubt that it was written by them in conjunction.

  From his brimstone bed at break of day
  A-walking the Devil is gone,
  To visit his snug little farm upon earth,
  And see how his stock goes on.

  Over the hill and over the dale,
  And he went over the plain,
  And backward and forward he switched his long tail,
  As a gentleman switches his cane.

  And how, then, was the Devil drest? 
  Oh, he was in his Sunday best;
  His jacket was red, and his breeches were blue,
  And there was a hole where his tail came through.

  He saw a lawyer killing a viper
  On a dunghill hard by his own stable;
  And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind
  Of Cain and his brother Abel.

  He saw an apothecary on a white horse
  Ride by on his own vocations;
  And the Devil thought of his old friend
  Death in the Revelations.

  He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,
  A cottage of gentility;
  And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
  Is the pride that apes humility.

  He went into a rich bookseller’s shop,
  Quoth he! we are both of one college,
  For I myself sate like a cormorant once,
  Fast by the tree of knowledge.

  Down the river there plied, with wind and tide,
  A pig, with vast celerity,
  And the Devil looked wise as he saw how the while
  It cut its own throat.  There! quoth he, with a smile,
  Goes “England’s commercial prosperity”.

  As he went through Cold-Bath Fields he saw
  A solitary cell;
  And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint
  For improving his prisons in hell.

  General Gascoigne’s burning face
  He saw with consternation;
  And back to hell his way did take,
  For the Devil thought by a slight mistake
  It was a general conflagration.

SYDNEY SMITH.