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Better songs would they have to sing, for me to believe in their Saviour: more like saved ones would his disciples have to appear unto me!
And thus I clothe my naked villany With odd old ends stol’n forth of Holy Writ, And seem a saint when most I play the devil.
Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it: Think’st thou that I, who saw the face of God, And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells, In being depriv’d of everlasting bliss?
O, I’ll leap up to my God!—Who pulls me down?— See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ!
Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat
And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England’s mountains green, And was the holy Lamb of God On England’s pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills?
They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.
There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free
The sea of faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world.
The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded That all the Apostles would have done as they did.
And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills?
He was, and is yet most likely, the wearisomest self-righteous Pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself and fling the curses to his neighbours.
Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
