I went searching for any mention of Satan in the Marxist archive and this was one of two across all of his works. I had no idea Marx wrote poetry. Someone who likes poetry would be a better judge of it since I'm too hostile to anything with a simple rhyme scheme:

"Till heart's bewitched, till senses reel:

With Satan I have struck my deal.

He chalks the signs, beats time for me,

I play the death march fast and free.

edit: Actually the other mention was from Engels. : https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/religion/book-revelations.htm "Devil" has a few mentions throughout their correspondence but it doesn't seem to be in a religious sense so much as a 19th century "scoundrel" sense.

[–] TreadOnMe@hexbear.net 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Marx's favorite fiction author (in English at least) was Shakespeare. Man was all about poetry.

Also the poem is pretty good. Just a simple iambic tetrameter.

[–] ComradeRat@hexbear.net 5 points 1 week ago

Yeah marx wrote entire volumes of poems for his wife, back when he was a youth. The first Marx biography said they are of biographical rather than literary interest, which is a nice way of saying they arent very good lol

Apparently some of the lines in Heine's poems are from Marx though

On subject of devil, he also made up stories to his daughters about a toymaker who was in debt to the devil