Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan,
Arm in arm seven days

They traced the desert ways.

Seven nights they sleep

Among shadows deep,

And dream they see their child Starved in desert wild.

Pale, through pathless ways
The fancied image strays,
Famish'd, weeping, weak,
With hollow piteous shriek.

Rising from unrest

The trembling woman press'd

With feet of weary woe:

She could no further go.

In his arms he bore

Her, arm'd with sorrow sore; Till before their way

A couching lion lay.

Turning back was vain :
Soon his heavy mane

Bore them to the ground;

Then he stalk'd around,

LONDON.

I

WANDER thro' each charter'd street

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,

In every voice, in every ban,

The mind-forged manacles I hear.

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals;
And the hapless soldier's sigh

Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse

Blasts the new-born infant's tear,

And blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

W

TO TIRZAH.

HATE'ER is born of mortal birth

Must be consumed with the earth,

To rise from generation free:

Then what have I to do with thee?

The sexes sprung from shame and pride
Blow'd in the morn; in evening died.
But mercy changed death into sleep :
The sexes rose to work and weep.

Thou mother of my mortal part
With cruelty didst mould my heart,
And with false, self-deceiving tears
Didst bind my nostrils, eyes and ears;

Didst close my tongue in senseless clay
And me to mortal life betray:

The death of Jesus set me free:
Then what have I to do with thee?

IT IS RAISED A SPIRITUAL BODY.

THE HUMAN ABSTRACT.

ITY would be no more

PITY

If we did not make somebody poor;

And mercy no more could be

If all were as happy as we.

And mutual fear brings peace,
Till the selfish loves increase;
Then cruelty knits a snare
And spreads his baits with care.