Diabolick! Poem by David Lewis Paget

(Byron's governess, May Gray, would come to bed with him at night
and 'play tricks with his person'. According to Byron, this 'caused
the anticipated melancholy of my thoughts—having anticipated life') .

I lay awake, most every night,
Tucked in my bed at Aberdeen,
And waited for that footstep light,
My Governess, my Demon Queen.

I was but nine, or ten at most
When she climbed underneath my sheet,
I heard her breathing in my head
Her hands, ice cold about my feet.

And she would whisper soft to me
Would play strange tricks to rouse me there,
My teeth would chatter in my sleep,
Across my face, her perfumed hair.

Her lips were red, would seek my mouth
And I would gasp to catch each breath,
While she would threaten, 'make no sound,
Or you may seek the shades of death! '

Then she would mount, and raise her gown
And smother me beneath her sex,
While I would, desperate, look around
No Saviour came, no God protects!

My mother's alcoholic breath
Lay snoring in her favourite chair,
She called me lame, a little brat,
I saw no mother's instinct there.

The Governess, May Gray abused,
And beat me almost every day,
What chance had I to live and love
With women, in the normal way?

I lived, anticipated life
Before that I was even ten,
And so I rated womankind,
I loved and cursed them, even then.

So judge me not! My life was filled
With scandals that re-crossed my path,
And Caroline was most unkind
When she composed my epitaph.

She wrote the words you know me by
Once I had sought to let her go,
She sat in silence, scrawled the words,
'Mad, bad, and dangerous to know! '

30 May 2010