A Song of Liberty (William Blake)

by William Blake

1. The Eternal Female groan’d; it was heard over all the earth:
   
2. Albion’s coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint.
   
3. Shadows of prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers, and mutter across the ocean. France, rend down thy dungeon!
   
4. Golden Spain, burst the barriers of old Rome!
   
5. Cast thy keys, O Rome, into the deep—down falling, even to eternity down falling;
   
6. And weep!
   
7. In her trembling hands she took the new-born terror, howling.
   
8. On those infinite mountains of light now barr’d out by the Atlanticsea, the new-born fire stood before the starry king.
   
9. Flagg’d with grey-brow’d snows and thunderous visages, the jealous wings wav’d over the deep.
   
10. The speary hand burn’d aloft; unbuckled was the shield; forth went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair, and hurl’d the new-born wonder through the starry night.
    
11. The fire, the fire is falling!
    
12. Look up! look up! O citizen of London, enlarge thy countenance! O Jew, leave counting gold; return to thy oil and wine! O African, black African! (Go, winged thought, widen his forehead.)
    
13. The fiery limbs, the flaming hair shot like the sinking sun into the Western sea.
    
14. Wak’d from his eternal sleep, the hoary element roaring fled away.
    
15. Down rush’d, beating his wings in vain, the jealous king, his grey-brow’d councillors, thunderous warriors, curl’d veterans, among helms and shields, and chariots, horses, elephants, banners, castles, slings, and rocks.
    
16. Falling, rushing, ruining; buried in the ruins, on Urthona’s dens.
    
17. All night beneath the ruins; then their sullen flames, faded, emerge round the gloomy king.
    
18. With thunder and fire, leading his starry hosts through the waste wilderness, he promulgates his ten commandments, glancing his beamy eyelids over the deep in dark dismay.
    
19. Where the Son of Fire in his Eastern cloud, while the Morning plumes her golden breast,
    
20. Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying: “Empire is no more! and now the lion and wolf shall cease.”
    

CHORUS

Let the Priests of the Raven of Dawn, no longer in deadly black, with hoarse note curse the Sons of Joy. Nor his accepted brethren whom, tyrant, he calls free, lay the bound or build the roof. Nor pale religious lechery call that virginity that wishes, but acts not!
For everything that lives is holy.