What are his nets and gins and traps; and how does he surround him?
with cold floods of abstraction and with forests of
solitude
to build him castles and high spires.
Where kings and priests may dwell;
till she who burns with youth and no fixet lot
is bound,
in a spell of law to one she loaths?
And must she drag the chain... of life in weary lust?
Must chilling murderous
thoughts obscure the clear heaven of her eternal spring;
To bear to wintry rage of a harsh terror driv'n... to madness,
Bound to
hold a rod over her shrinking shoulders all the day and all the night
to turn the wheel of false desire,
and longings death wake her
womb
To the ahborred birth of cherubs in the human form
that live a pestilence an die a meteor and are no more;
till child dwell
with one he hates, and do the deed he loathes.
And the impure scourge forge his seed into its unripe birth,
ere yet his eyelids can
behold the arrows... of the day?
[Taken from "Visions", William Blake]
