AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE.

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

A ROBIN redbreast in a cage

Puts all Heaven in a rage;

A dove-house filled with doves and pigeons
Shudders hell through all its regions;

A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the State;

A game-cock clipped and armed for fight
Doth the rising sun affright;

A horse misused upon the road
Calls to Heaven for human blood;
Every wolf's and lion's howl
Raises from Hell a human soul;
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain doth tear;
A skylark wounded on the wing
Doth make a cherub cease to sing.

He who shall hurt the little wren
Shall never be beloved by men;
He who the ox to wrath has moved
Shall never be by woman loved;
He who shall train the horse to war
Shall never pass the Polar Bar;
The wanton boy that kills the fly
Shall feel the spider's enmity;
He who torments the chafer's sprite
Weaves a bower in endless night.
The caterpillar on the leaf

Repeats to thee thy mother's grief:

The wild deer wandering here and there
Keep the human soul from care:
The lamb misused breeds public strife,
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.
Kill not the moth nor butterfly,
For the last judgment draweth nigh;
The beggar's dog, and widow's cat,
Feed them, and thou shalt grow fat.
Every tear from every eye

Becomes a babe in Eternity;

The bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar, Are waves, that beat on Heaven's shore.

The bat that flits at close of eve

Has left the brain that won't believe;
The owl that calls upon the night
Speaks the unbeliever's fright;

The gnat that sings his summer's song
Poison gets from slander's tongue;
The poison of the snake and newt
Is the sweat of envy's foot;
The poison of the honey bee
Is the artist's jealousy;

The strongest poison ever known
Came from Cæsar's laurel-crown.

Naught can deform the human race
Like to the armourer's iron brace;
The soldier armed with sword and gun
Palsied strikes the summer's sun;
When gold and gems adorn the plough,
To peaceful arts shall envy bow;
The beggar's rags fluttering in air
Do to rags the heavens tear;
The prince's robes and beggar's rags
Are toadstools on the miser's bags;
One mite wrung from the labourer's hands
Shall buy and sell the miser's lands,
Or, if protected from on high,

Shall that whole nation sell and buy;

The poor man's farthing is worth more
Than all the gold on Afric's shore.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate;
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding-sheet;
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Shall dance before dead England's hearse.

He who mocks the infant's faith
Shall be mocked in age and death;
He who shall teach the child to doubt
The rotting grave shall ne'er get out;
He who respects the infant's faith
Triumphs over hell and death;

The babe is more than swaddling bands
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.

The questioner who sits so sly

Shall never know how to reply;

He who replies to words of doubt.

Doth put the light of knowledge out;
A puddle, or the cricket's cry,

Is to doubt a fit reply;

The child's toys and the old man's reasons
Are the fruits of the two seasons;

The emmet's inch and eagle's mile
Make lame philosophy to smile;
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please;
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.

Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born;
Every morn and every night

Some are born to sweet delight;

Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine;
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
It is right it should be so;
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Safely through the world we go.

We are led to believe a lie

When we 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.

God appears and God is light

To those poor souls who dwell in night;
But doth a human form display

To those who dwell in realms of day.

THE MENTAL TRAVELLER.

The 'Mental Traveller' indicates an explorer of mental phænomena. The mental phænomenon here symbolized seems to be the career of any great Idea or intellectual movement-as, for instance, Christianity, chivalry, art, &c.-represented as going through the stages of-1. birth, 2. adversity and persecution, 3. triumph and maturity, 4. decadence through over-ripeness, 5. gradual transformation, under new conditions, into another renovated Idea, which again has to pass through all the same stages. In other words, the poem represents the action and re-action of Ideas upon society, and of society upon Ideas.

Argument of the stanzas: 2. The Idea, conceived with pain, is born amid enthusiasm. 3. If of masculine, enduring nature, it falls under the control and ban of the already existing state of society (the woman old). 5. As the Idea developes, the old society becomes moulded into a new society (the old woman grows young). 6. The Idea, now free and dominant, is united to society, as it were in wedlock. 8. It gradually grows old and effete, living now only upon the spiritual treasures laid up in the days of its early energy. 10. These still subserve many purposes of practical good, and outwardly the Idea is in its most flourishing estate, even when sapped at its roots. 11. The halo of authority and tradition, or prestige, gathering round the Idea, is symbolized in the resplendent babe born on his hearth. 13. This prestige deserts the Idea itself, and attaches to some individual, who usurps the honour due only to the Idea (as we may see in the case of papacy, royalty, &c.); and the Idea is eclipsed by its own very prestige, and assumed living representative. 14. The Idea wanders homeless till it can find a new community to mould ('until he can a maiden win'). 15 to 17. Finding whom, the Idea finds itself also living under strangely different conditions. 18. The Idea is now "beguiled to infancy"—becomes a new Idea, in working upon a fresh community, and under altered conditions. 20. Nor are they yet thoroughly at one; she flees away while he pursues. 22. Here we return to the first state of the case. The Idea starts upon a new course is a babe; the society it works upon has become an old society-no longer a fair virgin, but an aged woman. 24. The Idea seems so new and unwonted that, the nearer it is seen, the more consternation it excites. 26. None can deal with the Idea so as to develope it to the full, except the old society with which it comes into contact; and this can deal with it only by misusing it at first, whereby (as in the previous stage, at the opening of the poem) it is to be again disciplined into ultimate triumph.

1.

I TRAVELLED through a land of men,
A land of men and women too;
And heard and saw such dreadful things
As cold earth-wanderers never knew.