But I, neither belonging to the kings
Nor to the people, only I may know
The golden fortune of light anointing kings.
Come with me now, and take my vision awhile.
The people of this world are misery.
What doth Man here? How thinketh God on him?
Surely he was sent here as if thereby
God might forget him. Like infamous desire
A wise heart puts aside, which yet remains
A secret hated memory, man was
In God, and is vainly discarded here.
I see him coming here; I see man's life
Falling into this base and desert ground,
This world that seems an evil riddance thrown
Down by the winds of God's swift purposes;
Some shame of grossness, that would cling upon
The errand of their holy speed, and here
Heapt up and strewn into the place wherein
The mind and being of man wander darkly.
Behold him coming here!--Against my sight,
Warning aback the gleam of sacred heaven,
Is vast forbiddance raised; creatures like hills,
Or darkness surging at the coasts of light,
Stand, a great barricade behind our lives,
Rankt as Eternity had put on stature.
The sharp sides of the peaks are finger'd white
With flame, lit by the fires of God beyond;
The rest is night; the whole people of dark hills
A front of high impenetrable doom.
But lo!
Black in the blackness, is a yawn in the doom,
And out of it flows the kind of man.
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