William Blake anti-war poem

This video is called William Blake Documentary.

From Richard Rozoff’s blog, about late eighteenth century British poet William Blake:

William Blake: O go not forth in Martyrdoms & Wars

November 24, 2012

Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

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William Blake: O for a voice like thunder, and a tongue to drown the throat of war!

William Blake: To peaceful arts shall envy bow

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William Blake
From Milton

Rouze up O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court, & the University: who would if they could for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War.

And Milton said: I go to Eternal Death! The Nations still
Follow after the detestable Gods of Priam: in pomp
Of warlike selfhood contradicting and blaspheming.

…

Lo Orc arises on the Atlantic. Lo his blood and fire
Glow on Americas shore: Albion turns upon his Couch:
He listens to the sounds of War, astonished and confounded:
He weeps into the Atlantic deep…

…

This Wine-press is call’d War on Earth, it is the Printing-Press
Of Los; and here he lays his words in order above the mortal brain
As cogs are formd in a wheel to turn the cogs of the adverse wheel.

…

O when shall we tread our Wine-presses in heaven, and Reap
Our wheat with shoutings of joy, and leave the Earth in peace
Remember how Calvin and Luther in fury premature
Sow’d War and stern division between Papists & Protestants
Let it not be so now! O go not forth in Martyrdoms & Wars
We were plac’d here by the Universal Brotherhood & Mercy,
With powers fitted to circumscribe this dark Satanic death,
And that the Seven Eyes of God may have space for Redemption.

…

These are the Gods of the Kingdoms of the Earth: in contrarious
And cruel opposition: Element against Element, opposed in War
Not Mental, as the Wars of Eternity, but a Corporeal Strife…

…

Because we were combind in Freedom & holy Brotherhood:
While those combined by Satans Tyranny, first in the blood of War
And Sacrifice, & next, in Chains of imprisonment, are Shapeless Rocks
Retaining only Satans Mathematic Holiness, Length, Bredth & Highth.

…

Distinguish therefore States from Individuals in those States.
States Change: but Individual Identities never change nor cease.
You cannot go to Eternal Death in that which can never Die.

…

In Tyre & Sidon I saw Baal & Ashtaroth. In Moab Chemosh
In Ammon Molech: loud his Furnaces rage among the Wheels
Of Og, & pealing loud the cries of the Victims of Fire:
And pale his Priestesses infolded in Veils of Pestilence, border’d
With War…

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