THE DEVIL'S DRIVE; AN UNFINISHED RHAPSODY. (1) THE Devil return'd to hell by two, When he dined on some homicides done in ragoût, And I'll see how my favourites thrive. “And what shall I ride in?" quoth Lucifer then- I should mount in a waggon of wounded men, But these will be furnished again and again, And at present my purpose is speed; To see my manor as much as I may, "I have a state-coach at Carlton House, A chariot in Seymour Place; (1) ["I have lately written a wild, rambling, unfinished rhapsody, called 'The Devil's Drive,' the notion of which I took from Porson's Devil's Walk.'" B. Diary, 1813.—" Of this strange, wild poem," says Moore, "the only copy that Lord Byron, I believe, ever wrote, he presented to Lord Holland. Though with a good deal of vigour and imagination, it is, for the most part, rather clumsily executed, wanting the point and con. densation of those clever verses of Mr. Coleridge, which Lord Byron, auopting a notion long prevalent, has attributed to Professor Porson."-E] But they're lent to two friends, who make me amends And they handle their reins with such a grace, "So now for the earth to take my chance." And making a jump from Moscow to France, And rested his hoof on a turnpike road, But first as he flew, I forgot to say, And so sweet to his eye was its sulphury glare, That he perch'd on a mountain of slain; And he gazed with delight from its growing height, Nor often on earth had he seen such a sight, Nor his work done half as well: For the field ran so red with the blood of the dead, That it blush'd like the waves of hell! Then loudly, and wildly, and long laugh'd he : "Methinks they have here little need of me !” * But the softest note that soothed his ear As round her fell her long fair hair; And she look'd to heaven with that frenzied air, Which seem'd to ask if a God were there! And, stretch'd by the wall of a ruin'd hut, And the carnage begun, when resistance is done But the Devil has reach'd our cliffs so white, If his eyes were good, he but saw by night But he made a tour, and kept a journal Of all the wondrous sights nocturnal, And he sold it in shares to the Men of the Row, Who bid pretty well-but they cheated him, though' The Devil first saw, as he thought, the Mail, Its coachman and his coat; So instead of a pistol he cock'd his tail, And seized him by the throat : "Aha!" quoth he, "what have we here? So he sat him on his box again, And bade him have no fear, But be true to his club, and stanch to his rein, "Next to seeing a lord at the council board, |