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Home  »  The Book of Georgian Verse  »  William Cowper (1731–1800)

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.

Written under the Influence of Delirium

William Cowper (1731–1800)

HATRED and vengeance,—my eternal portion

Scarce can endure delay of execution,—

Wait with impatient readiness to seize my

Soul in a moment.

Damned below Judas; more abhorred than he was,

Who for a few pence sold his holy Master!

Twice-betrayed Jesus me, the last delinquent,

Deems the profanest.

Man disavows, and Deity disowns me,

Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;

Therefore, Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all

Bolted against me.

Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers;

Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors,

I’m called, if vanquished! to receive a sentence

Worse than Abiram’s.

Him the vindictive rod of angry Justice

Sent quick and howling to the centre headlong;

I, fed with judgment, in a fleshly tomb, am

Buried above ground.