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Title: The Rash Conjurer
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge [
More Titles by Coleridge]
Strong spirit-bidding sounds!
With deep and hollow voice,
'Twixt Hope and Dread,
Seven Times I said
Iohva Mitzoveh
Vohoeen!
And up came an imp in the shape of a
Pea-hen!
I saw, I doubted,
And seven times spouted
Johva Mitzoveh
Yahóevohaen!
When Anti-Christ starting up, butting
and baing,
In the shape of a mischievous curly
black Lamb--
With a vast flock of Devils behind
and beside,
And before 'em their Shepherdess
Lucifer's Dam,
Riding astride
On an old black Ram,
With Tartary stirrups, knees up to her chin.
And a sleek chrysom imp to her Dugs muzzled in,--
'Gee-up, my old Belzy! (she cried,
As she sung to her suckling cub)
Trit-a-trot, trot! we'll go far and wide
Trot, Ram-Devil! Trot! Belzebub!'
Her petticoat fine was of scarlet Brocade,
And soft in her lap her Baby she lay'd
With his pretty Nubs of Horns a-
sprouting,
And his pretty little Tail all curly-twirly--
St. Dunstan! and this comes of spouting--
Of Devils what a Hurly-Burly!
'Behold we are up! what want'st thou then?'
'Sirs! only that'--'Say when and what'--
You'd be so good'--'Say what and when'
'This moment to get down again!'
'We do it! we do it! we all get down!
But we take you with us to swim
or drown!
Down a down to the grim Engulpher!'
'O me! I am floundering in Fire and Sulphur!
That the Dragon had scrounched you, squeal
and squall--
Cabbalists! Conjurers! great and small,
Johva Mitzoveh Evoh[=a]en and all!
Had _I_ never uttered your jaw-breaking words,
I might now have been sloshing down Junket and Curds,
Like a Devonshire Christian:
But now a Philistine! Ye Earthmen! be warned by a judgement so tragic,
And wipe yourselves cleanly with all books of magic--
Hark! hark! it is Dives! 'Hold your Bother, you Booby!
I am burnt ashy white, and you yet are but ruby.'
Epilogue.
We ask and urge (here ends the story)
All Christian Papishes to pray
That this unhappy Conjurer may
Instead of Hell, be but in Purgatory--
For then there's Hope,--
Long live the Pope!
Catholicus.
[The end]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem: Rash Conjurer
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