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ULVER
THEMES FROM WILLIAM BLAKE'S 'THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL' |
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A Song Of Liberty
(PLATES 25-27) 1. The eternal female groan'd! It was heard all over 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 falling, even to eternity down
falling, 6. And weep [and bow thy reverend locks.] 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 Atlantic sea, the new born fire stood before the
starry king! 9. Flag'd with grey brow'd snows and thunderous visages, the
jealous wings wav'd over the deep. 10. The speary hand burned aloft, unbuckled
was the shield; forth went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair, and
hurl'd the new born wonder thro' 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 councellors,
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 thro' the waste wilderness,
he promulgates his ten commands, 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 & 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 letchery call the
virginity that wishes but acts not! For every thing that lives is holy.
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