I turn my eyes to the schools & universities of Europe And there behold the loom of Locke whose woof rages dire, Washed by the water-wheels of Newton. Black the cloth In heavy wreaths folds over every nation; cruel works Of many wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic Moving by compulsion each other: not as those in Eden, which Wheel within wheel in freedom revolve, in harmony & peace.
How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing? How can a child, when fears annoy, But droop his tender wing, And forget his youthful spring?
To the eyes of a miser a guinea is more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes.
Down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way, till a void boundless as the nether sky appeared beneath us, and we held by the roots of trees and hung over this immensity; but I said: if you please we will commit ourselves to this void and see whether providence is here also.
God keep me from the divinity of Yes and Nothe Yea Nay Creeping Jesus, from supposing Up and Down to be the same thing as allexperimentalists must suppose.
O thou who passest through our valleys in Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat That flames from their large nostrils! Thou, O Summer, Oft pitchest here thy golden tent, and oft Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.
When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep. So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.
Let every Christian, as much as in him lies, engage himself openly and publicly, before all the World, in some mental pursuit for the Building up of Jerusalem.
All pictures that's painted with sense and with thought / Are painted by madmen as sure as a groat; / For the greater the fool in the pencil more blest, / And when they are drunk they always paint best.
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling. And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.
The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.