Page:Works of William Blake; poetic, symbolic, and critical (1893) Volume 2.djvu/65

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And when He humbled Himself to God, Then descended the cruel rod. If thou humblest thyself thou humblest Me. Thou also dwellest in eternity. Thou art a man. God is no more. Thy own humanity learn to adore ; For that is my spirit of life. Awake, arise to spiritual strife, And thy revenge abroad display, In terrors at the last judgment day. God's mercy and long suffering Are but the sinner to justice to bring. Thou on the cross for them shall pray, And take revenge at the last day. Jesus replied in thunders hurled, " I never will pray for the world ; Once I did so when I prayed in the garden. I wished to take with me a bodily pardon. Can that which was of women born, In the absence of the morn, When the soul fell into sleep, And archangels round it weep, Shooting out against the light, Fibres of a deadly night, Reasoning upon its own dark fiction, In doubt, which is self-contradiction ? Humility is only doubt, And does the sun and moon blot out, Roofing over with thorns and stems The buried soul and all its gems. This life's five windows of the soul Distort the heavens from pole to pole, And leads you to believe a lie, When you see with not through the eye, Which was born in a night to perish in a night, When the soul slept in beams of light."
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He cursed the scribe and Pharisee, Trampling down hypocrisy, Where'er His chariot took its way, The gates of Death let in the day, Broke down from every chain a bar, And Satan in his spiritual war Dragged at His chariot-wheels. Loud howl'd The God of this world. Louder rolled The chariot-wheels, and louder still His voice was heard from Zion's hill, And in His hand the scourge shone bright. He scourged the merchant Canaanite From out the temple of his mind, And in his body tight does bind Satan and all his hellish crew ; And thus with wrath He did subdue The serpent bulk of Nature's dross, Till He had nailed it to the cross. He took on sin in the virgin's womb, And put it off on the cross and tomb, To be worshipped by the Church of Rome.


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There is nothing in this poem on its personal side so difficult to unravel at a first reading as the allusions to Pride and Humility. They seem to overlap and contradict each VOL. II.