He withered up sweet Zion's hill He withered up the human form But O, translucent all within! Still was the human form divine; Weeping, in weak and mortal clay, O Jesus! still the form was thine! And thine the human face; and thine The human hands, and feet, and breath Entering through the gates of birth, And passing through the gates of death. And O thou Lamb of God! whom I Slew in my dark self-righteous pride, Come to my arms, and never more Subdue my spectre to thy fear.. Spectre of Albion ! warlike fiend! In clouds of blood and ruin rolled, I here reclaim thee as my own, My selfhood; Satan armed in gold. Is this thy soft family love? Destroying all the world beside? A man's worst enemies are those IV. TO THE CHRISTIAN. I give you the end of a golden string: It will lead you in at Heaven's gate, Built in Jerusalem's wall. We are told to abstain from fleshly desires that we may lose no time from the work of the Lord. Every moment lost is a moment that cannot be redeemed. Every pleasure that intermingles with the duty of our station is a folly unredeemable, and is planted like the seed of a wild flower among our wheat. All the tortures of repentance are tortures of self-reproach on account of our leaving the divine harvest to the enemy;-the struggles of inminglement with incoherent roots. I know of no other Christianity and of no other gospel than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the divine arts of imagination,imagination, the real and eternal world of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow, and in which we shall live in our eternal or imaginative bodies when these vegetable, mortal bodies are no more. The Apostles knew of no other Gospel. What were all their spiritual gifts? What is the Divine Spirit? Is the Holy Ghost any other than an intellectual fountain? What is the harvest of the Gospel, and its labours? What is that talent which it is a curse to hide? What are the treasures of Heaven which we are to lay up for ourselves? Are they any other than mental studies and performances? What are all the gifts of the Gospel? Are they not all mental gifts? Is God a spirit who must be worshipped in spirit and in truth? And are not the gifts of the Spirit everything to man? O ye religious, discountenance every one among you who shall pretend to despise art and science. I call upon you in the name of Jesus! What is the life of man but art and science? Is it meat and drink? Is not the body more than raiment? What is mortality but the things relating to the body which dies? What is immortality but the things relating to the spirit which lives eternally? What is the joy of Heaven but improvement in the things of the spirit? What are the pains of Hell but ignorance, idleness, bodily lust, and the devastation of the things of the spirit? Answer this for yourselves, and expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of art and science which alone are the labours of the Gospel. Is not this plain and manifest to the thought? Can you think at all and not pronounce heartily that to labour in knowledge is to build up Jerusalem, and to despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem and her builders? And remember, he who despises and mocks a mental gift in another, calling it pride, and selfishness, and sin, mocks Jesus, the giver of every mental gift, which always appear to the ignoranceloving hypocrite as sins. But that which is a sin in the sight of cruel man is not so in the sight our kind God. Let every Christian as much as in him lies engage himself openly and publicly before all the world in some mental pursuit for the building of Jerusalem. I stood among my valleys of the South, By it the moon faded into a globe Travelling through the night: for, from its dire And restless fury Man himself shrunk up Into a little root a fathom long, And I asked a watcher and holy-one Its name. He answered: 'It is the wheel of religion. I wept and said: 'Is this the law of Jesus, This terrible devouring sword turning every way?' He answered: 'Jesus died because He strove Of sin, of sorrow, and of punishment; Heal thou the sick of spiritual disease, Go forth out of thy mouth to blight their peace: England! awake! awake! awake! Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death, Tby hills and valleys felt her feet And now the time returns again : Our souls exult: and London's towers In England's green and pleasant bowers. FROM THE POEM ITSELF. BROTHERHOOD and RestricTION. I Great Eternity every particular form gives forth or emanates Its own peculiar light, and the form is the Divine Vision, And the light is His garment. This is Jerusalem in every man, A tent and tabernacle of mutual forgiveness, male and female clothings, And Jerusalem is called Liberty among the children of Albion. |