With faces of scorn and with eyes of disdain, Like foul fiends inhabiting Mary's mild brain; She remembers no face like the human divine; All faces have envy, sweet Mary, but thine.
And thine is a face of sweet love in despair, And thine is a face of mild sorrow and care, And thine is a face of wild terror and fear That shall never be quiet till laid on its bier.
OLD ENGLISH HOSPITALITY.
THIS City and this country have brought forth many Mayors
To sit in state and give forth laws out of their old oak chairs,
With face as brown as any nut with drinking of strong
Old English hospitality, O then it did not fail.
With scarlet gowns and broad gold lace, would make a yeoman sweat;
With stockings rolled above their knees, and shoes as black as jet ;
With eating beef and drinking beer, O they were
Old English hospitality, O then it did not fail.
Thus sitting at the table wide the Mayor and Aldermen
Were fit to give laws to the city: each eat as much as
The hungry poor entered the hall to eat good beef and ale
Good English hospitality, O then it did not fail.
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 warmèd 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.
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