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(Four Zoas, Night II, ll. 595–626.)
I AM made to sow the thistle for wheat, the nettle for a nourishing dainty: | |
| I have planted a false oath in the earth; it has brought forth a Poison Tree: | |
| I have chosen the serpent for a counsellor, and the dog | |
| For a schoolmaster to my children: 1 | |
| I have blotted out from light and living the dove and nightingale, | 5 |
| And I have causèd the earthworm to beg from door to door: | |
| I have taught the thief a secret path into the house of the just: | |
| I have taught pale Artifice to spread his nets upon the morning. | |
| My heavens are brass, my earth is iron, my moon a clod of clay, | |
| My sun a pestilence burning at noon, and a vapour of death in night. | 10 |
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| What is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song, | |
| Or Wisdom for a dance in the street? No! it is bought with the price | |
| Of all that a man hath—his house, his wife, his children. | |
| Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy, | |
| And in the wither’d field where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain. | 15 |
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| It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer’s sun, | |
| And in the vintage, and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn: | |
| It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted, | |
| To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer, | |
| To listen to the hungry raven’s cry in wintry season, | 20 |
| When the red blood is fill’d with wine and with the marrow of lambs: | |
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| It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements; | |
| To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughterhouse moan; | |
| To see a God on every wind and a blessing on every blast; | |
| To hear sounds of Love in the thunderstorm that destroys our enemy’s house; | 25 |
| To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, and the sickness that cuts off his children, | |
| While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door, and our children bring fruits and flowers. | |
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| Then the groan and the dolour are quite forgotten, and the slave grinding at the mill, | |
| And the captive in chains, and the poor in the prison, and the soldier in the field | |
| When the shatter’d bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead: | 30 |
| It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity— | |
| Thus would I sing and thus rejoice; but it is not so with me. | |
