How can the bird that is born for joy How can a child, when fears annoy, And forget his youthful spring? O! father and mother, if buds are nipped And if the tender plants are stripped How shall the summer arise in joy, Or the summer fruits appear? Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy, Or bless the mellowing year, When the blasts of winter appear? LONDON I wander through each chartered street, In every cry of every man, How the chimney-sweeper's cry But most through midnight streets I hear Blasts the new-born infant's tear, And blights with plagues the marriage hearse. FROM AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE To see a World in a grain of sand, A robin redbreast in a cage A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons Every wolf's and lion's howl Raises from hell a human soul. The wild deer, wandering here and there, Kill not the moth nor butterfly, The beggar's dog and widow's cat, The babe that weeps the rod beneath The soldier, armed with sword and gun, The poor man's farthing is worth more One mite wrung from the labourer's hands FROM MILTON And did those feet in ancient time On England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the countenance divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? Bring me my bow of burning gold! I will not cease from mental fight, In England's green and pleasant land. [REASON AND IMAGINATION] The negation is the Spectre, the reasoning power in man: This is a false body, an incrustation over my immortal Spirit, a selfhood which must be put off and annihilated alway. To cleanse the face of my spirit by self-examination, tion; To cast off rational demonstration by faith in the Saviour, ering, To take off his filthy garments and clothe him with imagination; To cast aside from poetry all that is not inspiration, of madness Cast on the inspired by the tame high finisher of paltry blots Indefinite or paltry rhymes, or paltry harmonies, Who creeps into state government like a caterpillar to destroy; To cast off the idiot questioner, who is always questioning, But never capable of answering; who sits with a sly grin Silent plotting when to question, like a thief in a cave; Who publishes doubt and calls it knowledge; whose science is despair, Whose pretence to knowledge is envy, whose whole science is To destroy the wisdom of ages, to gratify ravenous envy That rages round him like a wolf, day and night, without rest. He smiles with condescension; he talks of benevolence and virtue, And those who act with benevolence and virtue they murder time on time. These are the destroyers of Jerusalem! these are the murderers Of Jesus! who deny the faith and mock at eternal life, Who pretend to poetry that they may destroy imagination By imitation of nature's images drawn from remembrance. These are the sexual garments, the abomination of desolation, Hiding the human lineaments, as with an ark and curtains Which Jesus rent, and now shall wholly purge away with fire, Till generation is swallowed up in regeneration. FROM JERUSALEM [TO THE DEISTS] I saw a Monk of Charlemaine Arise before my sight: I talked with the Grey Monk as we stood Gibbon arose with a lash of steel, "Thou lazy Monk!' they sound afar, The blood red ran from the Grey Monk's side, When Satan first the black bow bent |