This is a preview of my new hit blog ERMAHGERD, MAHNERSCRERPTS! You're gonna lerv it. (Seriously, I think that girl is amazing.)
Anyway, The Dead Mans Song is pretty good. It's a lot like the Inferno -- a man dies and is shown Heaven for a few stanzas and it is super nice! Everything's made of diamonds and pearls and gold and it smells like flowers! "ERMAHGERD, HERVERN! ERTS DA BERST!" we're obviously meant to think.
But then, our narrator sees "a cole-black Den / all tan'd with soot and smoak." Guess what? It's Hell. Then we get a litany of all the sinners who are punished according to their crimes. For example, a man damned for the sin of pride whose "face with knives was slasht / And in a Cauldron of poyson filth / his ugly corps were washt." Other people have vipers tearing out their bowels and molten gold poured in their mouths; Judas makes a cameo, some hell hounds show up...you get the picture. Anyway, hell scares him so much that he comes back to life and promises to be really, really super good. DA ERND.
