The Laboratory

The poem was first published in June 1844 in Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany, and later Dramatic Romances and Lyrics in 1845.

This poem, set in seventeenth-century France, is the monologue of a woman speaking to an apothecary as he prepares a poison, which she intends to use to kill her rivals in love.

Better sit thus and observe thy strange things, Than go where men wait me and dance at the King's.

But to light a pastile, and Elise, with her head And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead!

For only last night, as they whispered, I brought My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall, Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!

Let death be felt and the proof remain; Brand, burn up, bite into its grace— He is sure to remember her dying face!