Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
Poems of Tragedy: IV. GermanyGods Judgment on a Wicked Bishop
Robert Southey (17741843)
T
That in winter the corn was growing yet:
’T was a piteous sight to see all around
The grain lie rotting on the ground.
Crowded around Bishop Hatto’s door;
For he had a plentiful last-year’s store,
And all the neighborhood could tell
His granaries were furnished well.
To quiet the poor without delay;
He bade them to his great barn repair,
And they should have food for the winter there.
The poor folks flocked from far and near;
The great barn was full as it could hold
Of women and children, and young and old.
Bishop Hatto he made fast the door;
And whilst for mercy on Christ they call,
He set fire to the barn, and burnt them all.
“And the country is greatly obliged to me
For ridding it, in these times forlorn,
Of rats that only consume the corn.”
And he sate down to supper merrily,
And he slept that night like an innocent man;
But Bishop Hatto never slept again.
Where his picture hung against the wall,
A sweat like death all over him came,
For the rats had eaten it out of the frame.
He had a countenance white with alarm:
“My lord, I opened your granaries this morn,
And the rats had eaten all your corn.”
And he was pale as pale could be.
“Fly! my lord bishop, fly!” quoth he,
“Ten thousand rats are coming this way,—
The Lord forgive you for yesterday!”
“’T is the safest place in Germany,—
The walls are high, and the shores are steep,
And the tide is strong, and the water deep.”
And he crossed the Rhine without delay,
And reached his tower, and barred with care
All the windows, doors, and loop-holes there.
But soon a scream made him arise;
He started, and saw two eyes of flame
On his pillow, from whence the screaming came.
But the bishop he grew more fearful for that,
For she sate screaming, mad with fear,
At the army of rats that were drawing near.
And they have climbed the shores so steep,
And now by thousands up they crawl
To the holes and the windows in the wall.
And faster and faster his beads did he tell,
As louder and louder, drawing near,
The saw of their teeth without he could hear.
And through the walls, by thousands they pour;
And down from the ceiling and up through the floor,
From the right and the left, from behind and before,
From within and without, from above and below,—
And all at once to the bishop they go.
And now they pick the bishop’s bones;
They gnawed the flesh from every limb,
For they were sent to do judgment on him!