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Of heavenly song sound in the wilds once forbidden, to teach the laborious ploughman

And shepherd, delivered from clouds of war, from pestilence, from night-fear, from murder,

From falling, from stifling, from hunger, from cold, from slander, discontent, and sloth,

That walk in beasts and birds of night, driven back by the sandy desert,

Like pestilent fogs round cities of men; and the happy earth sing in its course,

The mild peaceable nations be opened to heaven, and men walk with their fathers in bliss.".

Then hear the first voice of the morning: "Depart, O clouds of night, and no more

Return; be withdrawn cloudy war, troops of warriors depart, nor around our peaceable city

Breathe fires; but ten miles from Paris let all be peace, nor a soldier be seen!"'

FROM A SONG OF LIBERTY

The Eternal Female groaned! It was heard over all the earth.

Albion's coast is sick, silent. The American meadows faint!

Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers, and mutter across the ocean. France, rend down thy dungeon!

Look up! look up! O citizen of London, enlarge thy countenance! O Jew, leave counting gold! return to thy oil and wine. O African! black African! Go, wingèd thought, widen his forehead!

With thunder and fire, leading his starry hosts through the waste wilderness, he promulgates his ten commands, glancing his beamy eyelids over the deep in dark dismay.

Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the morning plumes her golden breast,

Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying: Empire is no more! and now the lion and wolf shall cease.

CHORUS

Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn no longer, in deadly black, with hoarse note curse the sons of joy! Nor his accepted brethren-whom, tyrant, he calls free-lay the bound or build the roof! Nor pale Religion's lechery call that virginity that wishes but acts not!

For everything that lives is holy!

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Am not I

A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

For I dance,

And drink, and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength and breath,
And the want

Of thought is death;

Then am I

A happy fly,

If I live
Or if I die.

THE TIGER

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

HOLY THURSDAY

Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery,

Fed with cold and usurous hand?

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!

And their sun does never shine,
And their fields are bleak and bare,
And their ways are filled with thorns:
It is eternal winter there.

For where'er the sun
does shine,
And where'er the rain does fall,
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appal.

THE GARDEN OF LOVE

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this chapel were shut,
And Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tombstones where flowers should be; And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars my joys and desires.

A LITTLE BOY LOST

'Nought loves another as itself,
Nor venerates another so,
Nor is it possible to Thought
A greater than itself to know:

'And, Father, how can I love you
Or any of my brothers more?
I love you like the little bird

That picks up crumbs around the door.'

The Priest sat by and heard the child,
In trembling zeal he seized his hair:
He led him by his little coat,
And all admired the priestly care.

And standing on the altar high,
'Lo! what a fiend is here!' said he,
'One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy Mystery.'

The weeping child could not be heard,
The weeping parents wept in vain;
They stripped him to his little shirt,
And bound him in an iron chain;

And burned him in a holy place,
Where many had been burned before:
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such things done on Albion's shore?

THE SCHOOLBOY

I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me.

O! what sweet company.

But to go to school in a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;

Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.

Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour,
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,

Worn through with the dreary shower.

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