With all his gorgeous company of clouds Ecstatic gazed! then homeward as they strayed Cast the sad eye to earth, and inly mused Why there was misery in a world so fair. Ah! far removed from all that glads the sense, 260 From all that softens or ennobles Man, The wretched Many! Bent beneath their loads They gape at pageant Power, nor recognise Their cots' transmuted plunder! From the tree Of Knowledge, ere the vernal sap had risen 265 Rudely disbranchéd! Blessed Society! Fitliest depictured by some sun-scorched waste, Where oft majestic through the tainted noon The Simoom sails, before whose purple pomp[119:1] Who falls not prostrate dies! And where by night, 270 Fast by each precious fountain on green herbs The lion couches: or hyaena dips Deep in the lucid stream his bloody jaws; Or serpent plants his vast moon-glittering bulk, Caught in whose monstrous twine Behemoth[119:2] yells, 275 His bones loud-crashing! O ye numberless, Whom foul Oppression's ruffian gluttony Drives from Life's plenteous feast! O thou poor Wretch Who nursed in darkness and made wild by want, Roamest for prey, yea thy unnatural hand 280 Dost lift to deeds of blood! O pale-eyed form, The victim of seduction, doomed to know Polluted nights and days of blasphemy; Who in loathed orgies with lewd wassailers Must gaily laugh, while thy remembered Home 285 Gnaws like a viper at thy secret heart! O agéd Women! ye who weekly catch The morsel tossed by law-forced charity, And die so slowly, that none call it murder! O loathly suppliants! ye, that unreceived 290 Totter heart-broken from the closing gates Of the full Lazar-house; or, gazing, stand, Sick with despair! O ye to Glory's field Forced or ensnared, who, as ye gasp in death, Bleed with new wounds beneath the vulture's beak! 295 O thou poor widow, who in dreams dost view Thy husband's mangled corse, and from short doze Start'st with a shriek; or in thy half-thatched cot Waked by the wintry night-storm, wet and cold Cow'rst o'er thy screaming baby! Rest awhile 300 Children of Wretchedness! More groans must rise, More blood must stream, or ere your wrongs be full. Yet is the day of Retribution nigh: The Lamb of God hath opened the fifth seal:[120:1] And upward rush on swiftest wing of fire 305 The innumerable multitude of wrongs By man on man inflicted! Rest awhile, Children of Wretchedness! The hour is nigh And lo! the Great, the Rich, the Mighty Men, The Kings and the Chief Captains of the World, 310 With all that fixed on high like stars of Heaven Shot baleful influence, shall be cast to earth, Vile and down-trodden, as the untimely fruit