IDEAS OF GOOD AND EVIL

An incomplete collection not made up into a volume by Blake. The date seems to range from 1794 till nearly 1800. No single piece can be stated with certainty to have been destined for it, and the contrasts were not sorted in pairs. The following were most probably to have been reserved for selection:

DAYBREAK

To find the Western Path
Right through the gates of wrath
I urge my way:

Sweet morning leads me on;
With sweet, 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.

MAMMON (GILCHRIST'S TITLE)

THE TWO THRONES (MR. YEATS'S TITLE)

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 it's little prayers I 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.'

RICHES

SINCE all the riches of this world

May be gifts from the devil and earthly kings,
I should suspect that I worshipped the devil
If I thanked my 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.

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.

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.

THE WILL AND THE WAY

I ASKED a thief to steal me a peach:
He turned up his eyes.

I asked a lithe lady to lie her down:
Holy and meek, she cries.

As soon as I went,

An Angel came.

He winked at the thief,

And smiled at the dame;

And, without one word spoke,
Had a peach from the tree,
And 'twixt earnest and joke
Enjoyed the lady.

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.

CUPID

WHY was Cupid a boy,
And why a boy was he?
He should have been a girl
For all that I can see.

For he shoots with his bow

And a 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 becomes a man.