Daybreak
To find the western path,
Right through the gates of wrath
I urge my way;
Sweet morning leads me on;
With soft repentant moan
I see the break of day.
The war of swords and spears,
Melted by dewy tears,
Exhales on high;
The sun is freed from fears,
And with soft grateful tears
Ascends the sky.
The Wild Flower’s Song
As I wandered in the forest
The green leaves among,
I heard a wild flower
Singing a song.
“I slept in the earth
In the silent night;
I murmured my thoughts,
And I felt delight.
“In the morning I went,
As rosy as morn,
To seek for new joy,
But I met with scorn.”
The Birds
HE
Where thou dwellest, in what grove,
Tell me, fair one, tell me, love;
Where thou thy charming nest dost build,
O thou pride of every field!
SHE
Yonder stands a lonely tree:
There I live and mourn for thee.
Morning drinks my silent tear,
And evening winds my sorrow bear.
HE
O thou summer’s harmony,
I have lived and mourned for thee;
Each day I moan along the wood,
And night hath heard my sorrows loud.
SHE
Dost thou truly long for me?
And am I thus sweet to thee?
Sorrow now is at an end,
O my lover and my friend!
HE
Come! on wings of joy we’ll fly
To where my bower is hung on high;
Come, and make thy calm retreat
Among green leaves and blossoms sweet.
The Land of Dreams
Awake, awake, my little boy!
Thou wast thy mother’s only joy.
Why dost thou weep in thy gentle sleep?
Awake! thy father doth thee keep.
“O, what land is the land of dreams?
What are its mountains and what are its streams?
O father! I saw my mother there,
Among the lilies by waters fair.
“Among the lambs clothed in white,
She walked with her Thomas in sweet delight.
I wept for joy, like a dove I mourn—
O, when shall I again return?”
Dear child! I also by pleasant streams
Have wandered all night in the land of dreams;
But, though calm and warm the waters wide,
I could not get to the other side.
“Father, O father! what do we here,
In this land of unbelief and fear?
The land of dreams is better far,
Above the light of the morning star.”
To Mr. Butts
To my friend Butts I write
My first vision of light,
On the yellow sands sitting.
The sun was emitting
His glorious beams
From heaven’s high streams.
Over sea, over land,
My eyes did expand
Into regions of air,
Away from all care;
Into regions of fire,
Remote from desire;
The light of the morning
Heaven’s mountains adorning.
In particles bright,
The jewels of light
Distinct shone and clear.
Amazed and in fear
I each particle gazed,
Astonished, amazed;
For each was a man
Human-formed. Swift I ran,
For they beckoned to me,
Remote by the sea,
Saying: “Each grain of sand,
Every stone on the land,
Each rock and each hill,
Each fountain and rill,
Each herb and each tree,
Mountain, hill, earth, and sea,
Cloud, meteor, and star,
Are men seen afar.”
I stood in the streams
Of heaven’s bright beams,
And saw Felpham sweet
Beneath my bright feet,
In soft female charms;
And in her fair arms
My shadow I knew,
And my wife’s shadow too,
And my sister and friend.
We like infants descend
In our shadows on earth,
Like a weak mortal birth.
My eyes more and more,
Like a sea without shore,
Continue expanding,
The heavens commanding,
Till the jewels of light,
Heavenly men beaming bright,
Appeared as one man,
Who complacent began
My limbs to infold
In his beams of bright gold;
Like dross purged away
All my mire and my clay.
Soft consumed in delight,
In his bosom sun-bright
I remained. Soft he smiled,
And I heard his voice mild,
Saying: “This is my fold,
O thou ram horned with gold,
Who awakest from sleep
On the sides of the deep.
On the mountains around
The roarings resound
Of the lion and wolf,
The loud sea and deep gulph.
These are guards of my fold,
O thou ram horned with gold!”
And the voice faded mild,—
I remained as a child;
All I ever had known
Before me bright shone:
I saw you and your wife
By the fountains of life.
Such the vision to me
Appeared on the sea.
To Mrs. Butts
Wife of the friend of those I most revere,
Receive this tribute from a heart sincere;
Go on in virtuous seed-sowing on mould
Of human vegetation, and behold
Your harvest springing to eternal life,
Parent of youthful minds, and happy wife.
To My Dear Friend, Mrs.
Anna Flaxman
This song to the flower of Flaxman’s joy;
To the blossom of hope, for a sweet decoy;
Do all that you can, or all that you may,
To entice him to Felpham and far away.
Away to sweet Felpham, for heaven is there,
The ladder of angels descends through the air;
On the turret its spiral does softly descend,
Through the village then winds, at my cot it does end.
You stand in the village and look up to heaven;
The precious stones glitter on flight seventy-seven;
And my brother is there; and my friend and thine
Descend and ascend with the bread and the wine.
The bread of sweet thought and the wine of delight
Feed the village of Felpham by day and by night;
And at his own door the bless’d hermit does stand,
Dispensing, unceasing, to all the wide land.
The Keys of the Gates of Paradise
The caterpillar on the leaf
Reminds thee of thy mother’s grief.
My Eternal Man set in repose,
The Female from his darkness rose;
And she found me beneath a tree,
A mandrake, and in her veil hid me.
Serpent reasonings us entice
Of good and evil, virtue, vice.
Doubt self-jealous, watery folly,
Struggling through Earth’s melancholy.
Naked in air, in shame and fear,
Blind in fire, with shield and spear,
Two horrid reasoning cloven fictions,
In doubt which is self-contradiction,
A dark hermaphrodite I stood,—
Rational truth, root of evil and good.
Round me, flew the flaming sword;
Round her, snowy whirlwinds roared,
Freezing her veil, the mundane shell.
I rent the veil where the dead dwell:
When weary man enters his cave,
He meets his Saviour in the grave.
Some find a female garment there,
And some a male, woven with care,
Lest the sexual garments sweet
Should grow a devouring winding-sheet.
One dies! alas! the living and dead!
One is slain, and one is fled!
In vain-glory hatched and nursed,
By double spectres, self-accursed.
My son! my son! thou treatest me
But as I have instructed thee.
On the shadows of the moon,
Climbing through night’s highest noon:
In Time’s ocean falling, drowned:
In aged ignorance profound,
Holy and cold, I clipped the wings
Of all sublunary things:
And in depths of icy dungeons
Closed the father and the sons;
But, when once I did descry
The Immortal Man that cannot die,
Through evening shades I haste away
To close the labours of the day.
The door of death I open found,
And the worm weaving in the ground:
Thou’rt my mother, from the womb,
Wife, sister, daughter, to the tomb;
Weaving to dreams the sexual strife,
And weeping over the web of life.
Night and Day
Silent, silent Night,
Quench the holy light
Of thy torches bright;
For, possessed of Day,
Thousand spirits stray
That sweet joys betray.
Why should joys be sweet
Used with deceit,
Nor with sorrows meet?
But an honest joy
Doth itself destroy
For a harlot coy.
Auguries of Innocence
To see the world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
A Robin Redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage;
A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions.
A dog starved at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state;
A game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Doth the rising sun affright;
A horse misused upon the road
Calls to Heaven for human blood.
Every wolf’s and lion’s howl
Raises from hell a human soul;
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain doth tear;
A skylark wounded on the wing
Doth make a cherub cease to sing.
He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men;
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved;
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the Polar Bar.
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider’s enmity;
He who torments the chafer’s sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf
Repeats to thee thy mother’s grief;
The wild deer wandering here and there
Keep the human soul from care;
The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher’s knife.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgment draweth nigh;
The beggar’s dog and widow’s cat,
Feed them and thou shalt grow fat.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;
The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar,
Are waves that beat on heaven’s shore.
The bat that flits at close of eve
Has left the brain that won’t believe;
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever’s fright.
The gnat that sings his summer’s song
Poison gets from Slander’s tongue;
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of Envy’s foot;
The poison of the honey-bee
Is the artist’s jealousy;
The strongest poison ever known
Came from Cæsar’s laurel-crown.
Nought can deform the human race
Like to the armourer’s iron brace;
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer’s sun.
When gold and gems adorn the plough,
To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.
The beggar’s rags fluttering in air
Do to rags the heavens tear;
The prince’s robes and beggar’s rags
Are toadstools on the miser’s bags.
One mite wrung from the labourer’s hands
Shall buy and sell the miser’s lands,
Or, if protected from on high,
Shall that whole nation sell and buy;
The poor man’s farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric’s shore.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation’s fate;
The harlot’s cry from street to street
Shall weave Old England’s winding sheet;
The winner’s shout, the loser’s curse,
Shall dance before dead England’s hearse.
He who mocks the infant’s faith
Shall be mocked in age and death;
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne’er get out;
He who respects the infant’s faith
Triumphs over hell and death.
The babe that weeps the rod beneath
Writes revenge in realms of death.
The babe is more than swaddling-bands
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made, and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
The questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to reply;
He who replies to words of doubt
Doth put the light of knowledge out;
A riddle, or the cricket’s cry,
Is to doubt a fit reply.
The child’s toys and the old man’s reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons.
The emmet’s inch and eagle’s mile
Make lame philosophy to smile.
A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne’er believe, do what you please;
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They’d immediately go out.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born;
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight;
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine;
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And, when this we rightly know,
Safely through the world we go.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see _with_ not _through_ the eye,
Which was born in a night to perish in a night
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But doth a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.
The Two Songs
I heard an angel singing
When the day was springing:
“Mercy, pity, and peace,
Are the world’s release”.
Thus he sang all day
Over the new-mown hay,
Till the sun went down,
And haycocks looked brown.
I heard a devil curse
Over the heath and the furze:
“Mercy could be no more
If there were nobody poor,
And pity no more could be
If all were happy as ye:
And mutual fear brings peace
Misery’s increase
Are mercy, pity, peace.”
At his curse the sun went down,
And the heavens gave a frown.
The Throne of Mammon
I rose up at the dawn of day.
“Get thee away! get thee away!
Pray’st thou for riches? Away! away!
This is the throne of Mammon grey.”
I said, “This sure is very odd,
I took it to be the throne of God.
Everything else besides I have,
It’s only riches I can crave.
“I have mental joys and mental health,
Mental friends and mental wealth.
I’ve a wife that I love and that loves me,
I’ve all but riches bodily.
“I am in God’s presence night and day,
He never turns His face away.
The Accuser of Sins by my side does stand,
And he holds my money-bags in his hand.
“For my worldly things God makes him pay,
And he’d pay for more if to him I would pray.
And you may do the worst you can do;
Be assured, Mr. Devil, I won’t pray to you.
“Then if for riches I must not pray,
God knows, I little of prayers need say.
So, as a church is known by its steeple,
If I pray, it must be for other people.
“He says, if I don’t worship him for a god,
I shall eat coarser food and go worse shod;
But as I don’t value such things as these,
You must do, Mr. Devil, just as God please.”
The World
Since all the riches of all this world
May be gifts from the devil and earthly kings,
I should suspect that I worshipped the devil
If I thanked God for worldly things.
The countless gold of a merry heart,
The rubies and pearls of a loving eye,
The idle man never can bring to the mart,
Nor the cunning hoard up in his treasury.
Smile and Frown
There is a smile of Love,
And there is a smile of Deceit,
And there is a smile of smiles
In which these two smiles meet.
And there is a frown of Hate,
And there is a frown of Disdain,
And there is a frown of frowns
Which you strive to forget in vain;
For it sticks in the heart’s deep core,
And it sticks in the deep backbone.
And no smile ever was smiled
But only one smile alone,—
And betwixt the cradle and grave
It only once smiled can be;
And when it once is smiled,
There’s an end to all misery.
My Spectre
My Spectre before me night and day
Like a wild beast guards my way.
My Emanation far within
Weeps incessantly for my sin.
A fathomless and boundless deep;
There we wonder, there we weep.
On the hungry craving wind
My Spectre follows thee behind.
He scents thy footsteps in the snow,
Wheresoever thou dost go,
Through the wintry hail and rain.
When wilt thou return again?
Dost thou not in pride and scorn
Fill with tempests all my morn,
And with jealousies and fears,
Fill my pleasant nights with tears?
Seven of my sweet loves thy knife
Has bereaved of their life.
Their marble tombs I build with fears,
And with cold and shadowy tears.
Seven more loves weep night and day
Round the tombs where my loves lay,
And seven more loves attend at night
Around my couch with torches bright.
And seven more loves in my bed
Crown with vine my mournful head,
Pitying and forgiving all
My transgressions, great and small.
When wilt thou return and view
My loves, and them to life renew?
When wilt thou return and live?
When wilt thou pity as I forgive?
“Never, never I return.
Still for victory I burn.
Living, thee alone I’ll have,
And when dead I’ll be thy grave.
“Through the Heaven and Earth and Hell—
Thou shalt never, never quell,—
I will fly and thou pursue,
Night and morn the flight renew.”
Till I turn from female love
And root up the infernal grove
I shall never worthy be
To step into Eternity.
And I to end thy cruel mocks
Annihilate thee on the rocks,
And another form create
To be subservient to my fate.
Let us agree to give up love
And root up the infernal grove,
Then shall we return and see
The worlds of happy Eternity.
And throughout all Eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.
As our dear Redeemer said:
This the wine and this the bread.
The Defiled Sanctuary
I saw a chapel all of gold
That none did dare to enter in,
And many weeping stood without,
Weeping, mourning, worshipping.
I saw a serpent rise between
The white pillars of the door,
And he forced and forced and forced
Till he the golden hinges tore:
And along the pavement sweet,
Set with pearls and rubies bright,
All his shining length he drew,—
Till upon the altar white
He vomited his poison out
On the bread and on the wine.
So I turned into a sty,
And laid me down among the swine.
Barren Blossom
I feared the fury of my wind
Would blight all blossoms fair and true,
And my sun it shined and shined,
And my wind it never blew.
But a blossom fair or true
Was not found on any tree;
For all blossoms grew and grew
Fruitless, false, though fair to see.
Opportunity
He who bends to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.
If you trap the moment before it’s ripe,
The tears of repentance you’ll certainly wipe;
But, if once you let the ripe moment go,
You can never wipe off the tears of woe.
Love’s Secret
Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told shall be;
For the gentle wind does move
Silently, invisibly.
I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.
Ah! she did depart!
Soon after she has gone from me,
A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh.
Fragment for “Jerusalem”
“I see, I see”, the Mother said,
“My children shall die for lack of bread!
What more has the merciless tyrant said?”
The Monk sat down on her stony bed.
His eye was dry, no tears could flow,
A hollow groan bespoke his woe.
· · · · ·
“When God commanded this hand to write
In the shadowy hours of deep midnight,
He told me that all I wrote should prove
The bane of all that on earth I love.
“My brother starved between two walls;
Thy children’s cry my soul appals.
I mock at the rack and the grinding chain;
My bent body mocks at their torturing pain.
“Thy father drew his sword in the North,
With his thousands strong he is marched forth.
Thy brother has armed himself in steel,
To avenge the wrongs thy children feel.
“But vain the sword and vain the bow,
They never can work war’s overthrow.
The hermit’s prayer and the widow’s tear
Alone can free the world from fear.”
The hand of vengeance sought the bed
To which the purple tyrant fled;
The iron hand crushed the tyrant’s head,
And became a tyrant in his stead.
Until the tyrant himself relent,
The tyrant who the first black bow bent,
Slaughter shall heap the bloody plain;
Resistance and war is the tyrant’s gain.
But the tear of love and forgiveness sweet,
And submission to death beneath his feet;
The tear shall melt the sword of steel,
And every wound it has made shall heal.
For the tear is an intellectual thing,
And a sigh is the sword of an Angel King;
And the bitter groan of a martyr’s woe
Is an arrow from the Almighty’s bow.
Cupid
Why was Cupid a boy,
And why a boy was he?
He should have been a girl,
For aught that I can see.
For he shoots with his bow,
And the girl shoots with her eye;
And they both are merry and glad,
And laugh when we do cry.
Then to make Cupid a boy
Was surely a woman’s plan,
For a boy never learns so much
Till he has become a man:
And then he’s so pierced with cares,
And wounded with arrowy smarts,
That the whole business of his life
Is to pick out the heads of the darts.
’Twas the Greeks’ love of war
Turned Cupid into a boy,
And woman into a statue of stone:
Away flew every joy.
The Golden Net
Beneath the white-thorn’s lovely may,
Three virgins at the break of day.—
“Whither, young man, whither away?
Alas for woe! alas for woe!”
They cry, and tears for ever flow.
The one was clothed in flames of fire,
The other clothed in iron wire;
The other clothed in tears and sighs.
Dazzling bright before my eyes,
They bore a net of golden twine
To hang upon the branches fine.
Pitying, I wept to see the woe
That love and beauty undergo—
To be consumed in flames of fire
And in unsatisfied desire,
And in tears clothed night and day
It melted all my soul away.
When they saw my tears, a smile
That did heaven itself beguile
Bore the golden net aloft,
As by downy pinions soft,
Over the morning of my day.
Underneath the net I stray,
Now entreating Flaming-fire,
Now entreating Iron Wire,
Now entreating Tears and Sighs.—
O, when will the morning rise?
The Cabinet
The maiden caught me in the wild,
Where I was dancing merrily;
She put me into her cabinet,
And locked me up with a golden key.
This cabinet is formed of gold,
And pearl and crystal shining bright,
And within it opens into a world
And a little lovely moony night.
Another England there I saw,
Another London with its Tower,
Another Thames and other hills,
And another pleasant Surrey bower.
Another maiden like herself,
Translucent, lovely, shining clear,
Threefold, each in the other closed—
O, what a pleasant trembling fear!
O, what a smile! A threefold smile
Filled me that like a flame I burned;
I bent to kiss the lovely maid,
And found a threefold kiss returned.
I strove to seize the inmost form
With ardour fierce and hands of flame,
But burst the crystal cabinet,
And like a weeping babe became:
A weeping babe upon the wild,
And weeping woman pale reclined,
And in the outward air again,
I filled with woes the passing wind.
William Bond
I wonder whether the girls are mad,
And I wonder whether they mean to kill,
And I wonder if William Bond will die,
For assuredly he is very ill.
He went to church on a May morning,
Attended by fairies one, two, and three,
But the angels of Providence drove them away,
And he returned home in misery.
He went not out to the field nor fold,
He went not out to the village nor town,
But he came home in a black, black cloud,
And took to his bed, and there lay down.
And an angel of Providence at his feet,
And an angel of Providence at his head,
And in the midst a black, black cloud,
And in the midst the sick man on his bed.
And on his right hand was Mary Green,
And on his left hand was his sister Jane,
And their tears fell through the black, black cloud
To drive away the sick man’s pain.
“O William, if thou dost another love,
Dost another love better than poor Mary,
Go and take that other to be thy wife,
And Mary Green shall her servant be.”
“Yes, Mary, I do another love,
Another I love far better than thee,
And another I will have for my wife:
Then what have I to do with thee?
“For thou art melancholy pale,
And on thy head is the cold moon’s shine,
But she is ruddy and bright as day,
And the sunbeams dazzle from her eyne.”
Mary trembled, and Mary chilled,
And Mary fell down on the right-hand floor,
That William Bond and his sister Jane
Scarce could recover Mary more.
When Mary woke and found her laid
On the right hand of her William dear,
On the right hand of his loved bed,
And saw her William Bond so near;
The fairies that fled from William Bond
Danced around her shining head;
They danced over the pillow white,
And the angels of Providence left the bed.
“I thought Love lived in the hot sunshine,
But O, he lives in the moony light!
I thought to find Love in the heat of day,
But sweet Love is the comforter of night.
“Seek Love in the pity of others’ woe,
In the gentle relief of another’s care,
In the darkness of night and the winter’s snow,
With the naked and outcast,—seek Love there.”
Los
VERSES FROM A LETTER TO MR. BUTTS, 1802
With happiness stretched across the hills
In a cloud that dewy sweetness distils,
With a blue sky spread over with wings,
And a mild sun that mounts and sings;
With trees and fields full of fairy elves,
And little devils who fight for themselves,
Remembering the verses that Hayley sung
When my heart knocked against the root of my tongue,
With angels planted in hawthorn bowers,
And God himself in the passing Hours;
With silver angels across my way,
And golden demons that none can stay;
With my father hovering upon the wind,
And my brother Robert just behind,
And my brother John, the evil one,
In a black cloud making his moan;
(Though dead, they appear upon my path,
Notwithstanding my terrible wrath;
They beg, they entreat, they drop their tears,
Filled full of hopes, filled full of fears;)
With a thousand angels upon the wind,
Pouring disconsolate from behind
To drive them off,—and before my way
A frowning Thistle implores my stay.
What to others a trifle appears,
Fills me full of smiles or tears;
For double the vision my eyes do see,
And a double vision is always with me.
With my inward eye, ’tis an old man grey;
With my outward, a thistle across my way.
“If thou goest back,” the Thistle said,
“Thou art to endless woe betrayed;
For here does Theotormon lour,
And here is Enitharmon’s bower,
And Los the terrible thus hath sworn,
Because thou backward dost return,
Poverty, envy, old age, and fear,
Shall bring thy wife upon a bier;
And Butts shall give what Fuseli gave,
A dark black rock and a gloomy cave.”
I struck the thistle with my foot,
And broke him up from his delving root.
“Must the duties of life each other cross?
Must every joy be dung and dross?
Must my dear Butts feel cold neglect
Because I give Hayley his due respect?
Must Flaxman look upon me as wild,
And all my friends be with doubts beguiled?
Must my wife live in my sister’s bane,
Or my sister survive on my Love’s pain?
The curses of Los, the terrible shade,
And his dismal terrors, make me afraid.”
So I spoke, and struck in my wrath
The old man weltering upon my path.
Then Los appeared in all his power:
In the sun he appeared, descending before
My face in fierce flames; in my double sight,
’Twas outward a sun,—inward, Los in his might.
“My hands are laboured day and night,
And ease comes never in my sight.
My wife has no indulgence given,
Except what comes to her from heaven.
We eat little, we drink less;
This earth breeds not our happiness.
Another sun feeds our life’s streams;
We are not warmed with thy beams.
Thou measurest not the time to me,
Nor yet the space that I do see:
My mind is not with thy light arrayed;
Thy terrors shall not make me afraid.”
When I had my defiance given,
The sun stood trembling in heaven;
The moon, that glowed remote below,
Became leprous and white as snow;
And every soul of man on the earth
Felt affliction and sorrow and sickness and dearth.
Los flamed in my path, and the sun was hot
With the bows of my mind and the arrows of thought:
My bowstring fierce with ardour breathes,
My arrows glow in their golden sheaves.
My brother and father march before;
The heavens drop with human gore.
Now I a fourfold vision see,
And a fourfold vision is given to me.
’Tis fourfold in my supreme delight,
And threefold in soft Beulah’s night,
And twofold always. May God us keep
From single vision, and Newton’s sleep!
Dedication of the Designs to Blair’s “Grave”
TO QUEEN CHARLOTTE
The door of Death is made of gold,
That mortal eyes cannot behold:
But, when the mortal eyes are closed,
And cold and pale the limbs reposed,
The soul awakes, and, wondering, sees
In her mild hand the golden keys.
The grave is heaven’s golden gate,
And rich and poor around it wait:
O Shepherdess of England’s fold,
Behold this gate of pearl and gold!
To dedicate to England’s Queen
The visions that my soul has seen,
And by her kind permission bring
What I have borne on solemn wing
From the vast regions of the grave;
Before her throne my wings I wave,
Bowing before my sovereign’s feet.
The Grave produced these blossoms sweet,
In mild repose from earthly strife;
The blossoms of eternal life.
For a Picture of the Last
Judgment
DEDICATION
The caverns of the Grave I’ve seen,
And these I showed to England’s Queen,
But now the caves of Hell I view,—
Whom shall I dare to show them to?
What mighty soul in beauty’s form
Shall dauntless view the infernal storm?
Egremont’s Countess can control
The flames of hell that round me roll.
If she refuse, I still go on,
Till the heavens and earth are gone;
Still admired by noble minds,
Followed by Envy on the winds.
Re-engraved time after time,
Ever in their youthful prime,
My designs unchanged remain;
Time may rage, but rage in vain;
For above Time’s troubled fountains,
On the great Atlantic mountains,
In my golden house on high,
There they hide eternally.
Scoffers
Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau,
Mock on, mock on; ’tis all in vain;
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a gem,
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back, they blind the mocking eye,
But still in Israel’s paths they shine.
The atoms of Democritus
And Newton’s particles of light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore
Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.
Fragments and Epigrams
The Sword sang on the barren heath,
The Sickle in the fruitful field:
The Sword he sang a song of death,
But could not make the Sickle yield.
Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
These are not done by jostling in the street.
The errors of a wise man make your rule,
Rather than the perfections of a fool.
Some people admire the work of a fool,
For it’s sure to keep your judgment cool:
It does not reproach you with want of wit;
It is not like a lawyer serving a writ.
He’s a blockhead who wants a proof of what he can’t perceive,
And he’s a fool who tries to make such a blockhead believe.
The Angel that presided at my birth
Said: “Little creature, formed of joy and mirth,
Go, live without the help of any thing on earth.”
At a friend’s errors anger show,
Mirth at the errors of a foe.
Anger and wrath my bosom rends:
I thought them the errors of friends.
But all my limbs with warmth glow,
I find them the errors of the foe.