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(Jerusalem, f. 68, ll. 11–23, 53–70.)
LOOK! the beautiful Daughter of Albion sits naked upon the Stone, | |
| Her panting Victim beside her; her heart is drunk with blood, | |
| Tho’ her brain is not drunk with wine; she goes forth from Albion | |
| In pride of beauty, in cruelty of holiness, in the brightness | |
| Of her tabernacle, and her ark and secret place. The beautiful Daughter | 5 |
| Of Albion delights the eyes of the Kings; their hearts and the | |
| Hearts of their Warriors glow hot before Thor and Friga. O Moloch! | |
| O Chemosh! O Bacchus! O Venus! O Double God of Generation! | |
| The Heavens are cut like a mantle around from the Cliffs of Albion, | |
| Across Europe, across Africa, in howlings and deadly War. | 10 |
| A sheet and veil and curtain of blood is let down from Heaven | |
| Across the hills of Ephraim, and down Mount Olivet to | |
| The Valley of the Jebusite … | |
| O beautiful Daughter of Albion, cruelty is thy delight! | |
| O Virgin of terrible eyes, who dwellest by Valleys of springs | 15 |
| Beneath the Mountains of Lebanon, in the City of Rehob in Hamath, | |
| Taught to touch the harp, to dance in the circle of Warriors | |
| Before the Kings of Canaan, to cut the flesh from the Victim, | |
| To roast the flesh in fire, to examine the Infant’s limbs | |
| In cruelties of holiness, to refuse the joys of love, to bring | 20 |
| The Spies from Egypt to raise jealousy in the bosoms of the twelve | |
| Kings of Canaan; then to let the Spies depart to Meribah Kadesh, | |
| To the place of the Amalekite. I am drunk with unsatiated love; | |
| I must rush again to War, for the Virgin has frown’d and refus’d. | |
| Sometimes I curse, and sometimes bless thy fascinating beauty. | 25 |
| Once Man was occupièd in intellectual pleasures and energies; | |
| But now my Soul is harrow’d with grief and fear, and love and desire, | |
| And now I hate, and now I love, and Intellect is no more: | |
| There is no time for anything but the torments of love and desire: | |
| The Feminine and Masculine Shadows, soft, mild, and ever varying | 30 |
| In beauty, are Shadows now no more, but Rocks in Horeb. | |
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