For Solomon, He Lived At Ease, And

What Is Dark Within Me, Illumine.

In Dim Eclipse, Disastrous Twilight Sheds On Half The Nations, And With Fear Of Change Perplexes Monarchs.

How Gladly Would I Meet Mortality, My Sentence, And Be Earth In Sensible! How Glad Would Lay Me Down, As In My Mother's Lap! There I Should Rest, And Sleep Secure.

O Conscience, Into What Abyss Of Fears And Horrors Hast Thou Driven Me, Out Of Which I Find No Way, From Deep To Deeper Plunged.

Into This Wild Abyss/ The Womb Of Nature, And Perhaps Her Grave--/ Of Neither Sea, Nor Shore, Nor Air, Nor Fire,/ But All These In Their Pregnant Causes Mixed/ Confusedly, And Which Thus Must Ever Fight,/ Unless The Almighty Maker Them Ordain/ His Dark Materials To Create More Worlds,--/ Into This Wild Abyss The Wary Fiend/ Stood On The Brink Of Hell And Looked A While,/ Pondering His Voyage; For No Narrow Frith/ He Had To Cross.