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(Jerusalem, f. 24, ll. 12–35.)
O WHAT is Life and what is Man? O what is Death? Wherefore | |
| Are you, my Children, natives in the Grave to where I go? | |
| Or are you born to feed the hungry ravenings of Destruction, | |
| To be the sport of Accident. to waste in Wrath and Love a weary | |
| Life, in brooding cares and anxious labours, that prove but chaff? | 5 |
| O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! I have forsaken thy courts, | |
| Thy pillars of ivory and gold, thy curtains of silk and fine | |
| Linen, thy pavements of precious stones, thy walls of pearl | |
| And gold, thy gates of Thanksgiving, thy windows of Praise, | |
| Thy clouds of Blessing, thy Cherubims of Tender Mercy, | 10 |
| Stretching their Wings sublime over the Little Ones of Albion. | |
| O Human Imagination! O Divine Body, I have crucifièd! | |
| I have turnèd my back upon thee into the Wastes of Moral Law: | |
| There Babylon is builded in the Waste, founded in Human desolation. | |
| O Babylon! thy Watchman stands over thee in the night; | 15 |
| Thy severe Judge all the day long proves thee, O Babylon, | |
| With provings of Destruction, with giving thee thy heart’s desire. | |
| But Albion is cast forth to the Potter, his Children to the Builders | |
| To build Babylon, because they have forsaken Jerusalem. | |
| The walls of Babylon are Souls of Men; her gates the Groans | 20 |
| Of Nations; her towers are the Miseries of once happy Families; | |
| Her streets are pavèd with Destruction; her houses built with Death; | |
| Her Palaces with Hell and the Grave; her Synagogues with Torments | |
| Of ever-hardening Despair, squar’d and polish’d with cruel skill. | |
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