| |
| WITH 1 Happiness stretch’d 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, | 5 |
| And little devils who fight for themselves— | |
| Rememb’ring the verses that Hayley sung | |
| When my heart knock’d against the root of my tongue— | |
| With angels planted in hawthorn bowers, | |
| And God Himself in the passing hours; | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| In a black cloud making his moan,— | |
| Tho’ dead, they appear upon my path, | |
| Notwithstanding my terrible wrath; | |
| They beg, they entreat, they drop their tears, | |
| Fill’d full of hopes, fill’d full of fears— | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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. | 30 |
| ‘If thou goest back.’ the Thistle said, | |
| ‘Thou art to endless woe betray’d; | |
| For here does Theotormon lour, | |
| And here is Enitharmon’s bower; | |
| And Los the Terrible thus hath sworn, | 35 |
| 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.’ | 40 |
| |
| 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 | 45 |
| Because I give Hayley his due respect? | |
| Must Flaxman look upon me as wild, | |
| And all my friends be with doubts beguil’d? | |
| Must my wife live in my sister’s bane, | |
| Or my sister survive on my love’s pain? | 50 |
| 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 appear’d in all his power: | 55 |
| In the sun he appear’d, descending before | |
| My face in fierce flames; in my double sight | |
| ’Twas outward a sun, inward Los in his might. | |
| ‘My hands are labour’d day and night, | |
| And ease comes never in my sight. | 60 |
| 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, | 65 |
| 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 array’d, | |
| Thy terrors shall not make me afraid.’ | 70 |
| |
| When I had my defiance given, | |
| The sun stood trembling in heaven; | |
| The moon, that glow’d remote below, | |
| Became leprous and white as snow; | |
| And every soul of men on the earth | 75 |
| Felt affliction, and sorrow, and sickness, and dearth. | |
| Los flam’d 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; | 80 |
| My brothers 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, | 85 |
| And threefold in soft Beulah’s night, | |
| And twofold always.—May God us keep | |
| From single vision, and Newton’s sleep! | |
