Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/94

 Performance of a kind prodigious,

No pains, be sure; had been omitted

To decorate it as befitted:—

In fact, both in and out ’twas painted

With the worst fiends saints e’er invented;

Fiends with saw teeth and fish-hook tails,

Huge, gaping jaws and serpent’s scales,

Bat’s wings and claws, eyes goggling red,

Tridents, nets, flames and goblins dread,

Some small and vicious, others bigger,

All compounds of bat, goat and nigger.

In fact, religion here surpassed

Herself; as in a mirror glassed

And emptied out; for naught but hell

Can be religion’s parallel.

To use this aid to pious thought

A heretic must first be caught,

The cell, red-heated by a flue,

And then the saints had naught to do

But drop the heretic inside.

At first, from walls expanded wide,

The painted fiends glower at a distance,

And fan with fiery breath the wretch

Who crouches, powerless of resistance;

Then crank and lever groan and stretch,

And fiends and fiery walls rush nearer:

Just staggering on the brink of death,

With crackling brain and kindling breath,

He ravishes each reverend hearer

Who works, in turn, with pious fingering,

So sensitive that to a pin

It feels how much the wretch within