12. Look up! look up! O citizen of London, enlarge thy countenance! O
Jew, leave counting gold; return to thy oil and wine! O African, black
African! (Go, winged thought, widen his forehead.)
13. The fiery limbs, the flaming hair shot like the sinking sun into
the Western sea.
14. Wak'd from his eternal sleep, the hoary element roaring fled away.
15. Down rush'd, beating his wings in vain, the jealous king, his
grey-brow'd councillors, thunderous warriors, curl'd veterans, among
helms and shields, and chariots, horses, elephants, banners, castles,
slings, and rocks.
16. Falling, rushing, ruining; buried in the ruins, on Urthona's dens.
17. All night beneath the ruins; then their sullen flames, faded,
emerge round the gloomy king.
18. With thunder and fire, leading his starry hosts through the waste
wilderness, he promulgates his ten commandments, glancing his beamy
eyelids over the deep in dark dismay.
19. Where the Son of Fire in his Eastern cloud, while the Morning
plumes her golden breast,
20. Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law
to dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying:
"Empire is no more! and now the lion and wolf shall cease."
CHORUS
Let the Priests of the Raven of Dawn, no longer in deadly black, with
hoarse note curse the Sons of Joy. Nor his accepted brethren whom,
tyrant, he calls free, lay the bound or build the roof. Nor pale
religious lechery call that virginity that wishes, but acts not!
For everything that lives is holy.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, by William Blake
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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