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(Milton, f. 42, l. 34–f. 43, l. 28.)
THE NEGATION is the Spectre, the Reasoning Power in Man: | |
| This is a false Body, an Incrustation over my Immortal | |
| Spirit, a Selfhood which must be put off and annihilated alway. | |
| To cleanse the Face of my Spirit by self-examination, | |
| To bathe in the waters of Life, to wash off the Not Human, | 5 |
| I come in Self-annihilation and the grandeur of Inspiration; | |
| To cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith in the Saviour, | |
| To cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration, | |
| To cast off Bacon, Locke, and Newton from Albion’s covering, | |
| To take off his filthy garments and clothe him with Imagination; | 10 |
| To cast aside from Poetry all that is not Inspiration, | |
| That it no longer shall dare to mock with the aspersion of Madness | |
| Cast on the Inspirèd by the tame high finisher of paltry Blots | |
| Indefinite or paltry Rhymes, or paltry Harmonies, | |
| Who creeps into State Government like a caterpillar to destroy; | 15 |
| To cast off the idiot Questioner, who is always questioning, | |
| But never capable of answering; who sits with a sly grin | |
| Silent plotting when to question, like a thief in a cave; | |
| Who publishes Doubt and calls it Knowledge; whose Science is Despair, | |
| Whose pretence to knowledge is Envy, whose whole Science is | 20 |
| To destroy the wisdom of ages, to gratify ravenous Envy | |
| That rages round him like a Wolf, day and night, without rest. | |
| He smiles with condescension; he talks of Benevolence and Virtue, | |
| And those who act with Benevolence and Virtue they murder time on time. | |
| These are the destroyers of Jerusalem! these are the murderers | 25 |
| Of Jesus! who deny the Faith and mock at Eternal Life, | |
| Who pretend to Poetry that they may destroy Imagination | |
| By imitation of Nature’s Images drawn from Remembrance. | |
| These are the Sexual Garments, the Abomination of Desolation, | |
| Hiding the Human Lineaments, as with an Ark and Curtains | 30 |
| Which Jesus rent, and now shall wholly purge away with Fire, | |
| Till Generation is swallow’d up in Regeneration. | |
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