Right glad was the Raven, and off he went fleet,
And Death riding home on a cloud he did meet,
And he thanked him again and again for this treat:
They had taken his all, and REVENGE IT WAS SWEET!
S. T. Coleridge
"Seventeen or eighteen years ago," wrote Coleridge in 1817, "an artist of some celebrity was so pleased with this doggerel that he amused himself with the thought of making a Child's Picture Book of it; but he could not hit on a picture for the four lines beginning, 'Many Autumns, many Springs.' I suggested a Round-about with four seats, and the four seasons, as children, with Time for the shew-man."
[335]. "A thousand darling Imps." (stanza 19)
"Aeriel spirits," says Robert Burton, "are such as keep quarter most part in the air, cause many tempests, thunder, and lightnings, tear oaks, fire steeples, houses, strike men and beasts, make it rain stones, ... wool, frogs, etc., counterfeit armies in the air, strange noises, swords, etc."
Nothing vexed Linnet Sara more than to be asked if there were any such darling imps or spectres or ghosts or blackamoors in Thrae. All such to her were nothing but idle fiddle-faddle. But Reginald Scot, who wrote The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), had another kind of kitchen company when he was young.