This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is No Natural Religion - THE ARGUMENT MAN has no notion of moral fitness but from Education. Naturally, he is only a Natural Organ, subject to Sense. Man cannot naturally perceive but through his Natural or Bodily Organs. Man, by his Reasoning Power, can only compare and judge of what he has already perceiv’d. 3 From a Perception of only three Senses, or three Elements, none could deduce a fourth or fifth. None could have other than Natural or Organic Thoughts if he had none but Organic Perceptions. Man’s Desires are limited by his Perceptions; none can desire what he has not perceiv’d. The Desires and Perceptions of Man, untaught by anything but Organs of Sense, must be limited to Objects of Sense. CONCLUSION If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic Character, the Philosophic and Experimental would soon be at the Ratio of all things; and stand still, unable to do other than repeat the same dull round over again. Man’s Perceptions are not bounded by Organs of Perception; he perceives more than Sense (tho’ ever so acute) can discover. Reason, or the Ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more. The Bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull round, even of a Universe, would soon become a Mill with complicated wheels. If the Many become the same as the Few, when possess’d, ‘More! More!’ is the cry of a mistaken soul: less than All cannot satisfy Man. If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing, Despair must be his Eternal lot. The Desire of Man being Infinite, the possession is Infinite, and himself Infinite. APPLICATION He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio only, sees himself only. THEREFORE God becomes as we are, that we may be as He is.
The Land of Dreams - Awake, awake, my little boy! Thou wast thy mother’s only joy; Why dost thou weep in thy gentle sleep? Awake! thy father does thee keep. ‘O, what land is the Land of Dreams? What are its mountains, and what are its streams? O father! I saw my mother there, Among the lilies by waters fair. ‘Among the lambs, clothèd in white, She walk’d with her Thomas in sweet delight. I wept for joy, like a dove I mourn; O! when shall I again return?’ Dear child, I also by pleasant streams Have wander’d all night in the Land of Dreams; But tho’ calm and warm the waters wide, I could not get to the other side. ‘Father, O father! what do we here In this land of unbelief and fear? The Land of Dreams is better far, Above the light of the morning star.’
Day | Father | Mother | Nothing | Rage | Sorrow | Thought | Time | World | Youth | Youth | Thought |
The Universal Family - Our Wars are wars of life, and wounds of love, With intellectual spears, and long wingèd arrows of thought. Mutual in one another’s love and wrath all renewing, We live as One Man: for, contracting our Infinite senses, We behold multitude; or, expanding, we behold as One, As One Man all the Universal Family; and that One Man We call Jesus the Christ. And He in us, and we in Him, Live in perfect harmony in Eden, the land of Life, Giving, receiving, and forgiving each other’s trespasses. He is the Good Shepherd, He is the Lord and Master; He is the Shepherd of Albion, He is all in all, In Eden, in the garden of God, and in heavenly Jerusalem. If we have offended, forgive us! take not vengeance against us!
Art | Cause | Dawn | Eternal | Happy | Heart | Life | Life | Light | Looks | Man | Nothing | Play | Soul | Spirit | Will | Art | Old |
The Worship of God - It is easier to forgive an Enemy than to forgive a Friend. The man who permits you to injure him deserves your vengeance; He also will receive it. Go, Spectre! obey my most secret desire, Which thou knowest without my speaking. Go to these Friends of Righteousness, Tell them to obey their Humanities, and not pretend Holiness, When they are murderers. As far as my Hammer and Anvil permit, Go tell them that the Worship of God is honouring His gifts In other men, and loving the greatest men best, each according To his Genius, which is the Holy Ghost in Man: there is no other God than that God who is the intellectual fountain of Humanity. He who envies or calumniates, which is murder and cruelty, Murders the Holy One. Go tell them this, and overthrow their cup, Their bread, their altar-table, their incense, and their oath, Their marriage and their baptism, their burial and consecration. I have tried to make friends by corporeal gifts, but have only Made enemies; I never made friends but by spiritual gifts, By severe contentions of friendship, and the burning fire of thought. He who would see the Divinity must see Him in His Children, One first in friendship and love, then a Divine Family, and in the midst Jesus will appear. So he who wishes to see a Vision, a perfect Whole, Must see it in its Minute Particulars, organized; and not as thou, O Fiend of Righteousness, pretendest! thine is a disorganized And snowy cloud, brooder of tempests and destructive War. You smile with pomp and rigour, you talk of benevolence and virtue; I act with benevolence and virtue, and get murder’d time after time; You accumulate Particulars, and murder by analysing, that you May take the aggregate, and you call the aggregate Moral Law; And you call that swell’d and bloated Form a Minute Particular. But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars; and every Particular is a Man.
Church | Dawn | God | Little | Need | Riches | Wife | Worship | Riches | God | Value |
The Mental Traveller - I Travell'd thro’ a land of men, A land of men and women too; And heard and saw such dreadful things As cold earth-wanderers never knew. For there the Babe is born in joy That was begotten in dire woe; Just as we reap in joy the fruit Which we in bitter tears did sow. And if the Babe is born a boy He’s given to a Woman Old, Who nails him down upon a rock, Catches his shrieks in cups of gold. She binds iron thorns around his head, She pierces both his hands and feet, She cuts his heart out at his side, To make it feel both cold and heat. Her fingers number every nerve, Just as a miser counts his gold; She lives upon his shrieks and cries, And she grows young as he grows old. Till he becomes a bleeding Youth, And she becomes a Virgin bright; Then he rends up his manacles, And binds her down for his delight. He plants himself in all her nerves, Just as a husbandman his mould; And she becomes his dwelling-place And garden fruitful seventyfold. And agèd Shadow, soon he fades, Wandering round an earthly cot, Full fillèd all with gems and gold Which he by industry had got. And these 1 are the gems of the human soul, The rubies and pearls of a love-sick eye, The countless gold of the aching heart, The martyr’s groan and the lover’s sigh. They are his meat, they are his drink; He feeds the beggar and the poor And the wayfaring traveller: For ever open is his door. His grief is their eternal joy; They make the roofs and walls to ring; Till from the fire on the hearth A little Female Babe does spring. And she is all of solid fire And gems and gold, that none his hand Dares stretch to touch her baby form, Or wrap her in his swaddling-band. But she comes to the man she loves, If young or old, or rich or poor; They soon drive out the Agèd Host, A beggar at another’s door. He wanders weeping far away, Until some other take him in; Oft blind and age-bent, sore distrest, Until he can a Maiden win. And to allay his freezing age, The poor man takes her in his arms; The cottage fades before his sight, The garden and its lovely charms. The guests are scatter’d thro’ the land, For the eye altering alters all; The senses roll themselves in fear, And the flat earth becomes a ball; The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away, A desert vast without a bound, And nothing left to eat or drink, And a dark desert all around. The honey of her infant lips, The bread and wine of her sweet smile, The wild game of her roving eye, Does him to infancy beguile; For as he eats and drinks he grows Younger and younger every day; And on the desert wild they both Wander in terror and dismay. Like the wild stag she flees away, Her fear plants many a thicket wild; While he pursues her night and day, By various arts of love beguil’d; By various arts of love and hate, Till the wide desert planted o’er With labyrinths of wayward love, Where roam the lion, wolf, and boar. Till he becomes a wayward Babe, And she a weeping Woman Old. Then many a lover wanders here; The sun and stars are nearer roll’d; The trees bring forth sweet ecstasy To all who in the desert roam; Till many a city there is built, And many a pleasant shepherd’s home. But when they find the Frowning Babe, Terror strikes thro’ the region wide: They cry ‘The Babe! the Babe is born!’ And flee away on every side. For who dare touch the Frowning Form, His arm is wither’d to its root; Lions, boars, wolves, all howling flee, And every tree does shed its fruit. And none can touch that Frowning Form, Except it be a Woman Old; She nails him down upon the rock, And all is done as I have told.
Day |
A Divine Image - Cruelty has a human heart, And Jealousy a human face; Terror the human form divine, And Secrecy the human dress. The human dress is forgèd iron, The human form a fiery forge, The human face a furnace seal’d, The human heart its hungry gorge.
Better | Dreams | Father | Land | Light | Little | Mother | Unbelief |
TERRIFIÈD at Non-Existence— For such they deem’d the death of the body—Los his vegetable hands Outstretch’d; his right hand, branching out in fibrous strength, Seiz’d the Sun; his left hand, like dark roots, cover’d the Moon, And tore them down, cracking the heavens across from immense to immense. Then fell the fires of Eternity, with loud and shrill Sound of loud Trumpet, thundering along from heaven to heaven, A mighty sound articulate: ‘Awake! ye Dead, and come To Judgement from the four winds! awake, and come away!’ Folding like scrolls of the enormous volume of Heaven and Earth, With thunderous noise and dreadful shakings, rocking to and fro, The Heavens are shaken, and the Earth removèd from its place; The foundations of the eternal hills discover’d. The thrones of Kings are shaken, they have lost their robes and crowns; The Poor smite their oppressors, they awake up to the harvest; 1 The naked warriors rush together down to the seashore, Trembling before the multitudes of slaves now set at liberty: They are become like wintry flocks, like forests stripp’d of leaves. The Oppressèd pursue like the wind; there is no room for escape.… The Books of Urizen unroll with dreadful noise! The folding Serpent Of Orc began to consume in fierce raving fire; his fierce flames Issu’d on all sides, gathering strength in animating volumes, Roaring abroad on all the winds, raging intense, reddening Into resistless pillars of fire, rolling round and round, gathering Strength from the earths consum’d, and heavens, and all hidden abysses, Where’er the Eagle has explor’d, or Lion or Tiger trod, Or where the comets of the night, or stars of day Have shot their arrows or long-beamèd spears in wrath and fury. And all the while the Trumpet sounds. From the clotted gore, and from the hollow den Start forth the trembling millions into flames of mental fire, Bathing their limbs in the bright visions of Eternity. Then, like the doves from pillars of smoke, the trembling families Of women and children throughout every nation under heaven Cling round the men in bands of twenties and of fifties, pale As snow that falls round a leafless tree upon the green. Their oppressors are fall’n; they have stricken them; they awake to life. Yet, pale, the Just man stands erect, and looking up to Heav’n. Trembling and strucken by the universal stroke, the trees unroot; The rocks groan horrible and run about; the mountains and Their rivers cry with a dismal cry; the cattle gather together, Lowing they kneel before the heavens; the wild beasts of the forests Tremble. The Lion, shuddering, asks the Leopard: ‘Feelest thou The dread I feel, unknown before? My voice refuses to roar, And in weak moans I speak to thee. This night, Before the morning’s dawn, the Eagle call’d the Vulture, The Raven call’d the Hawk. I heard them from my forests, Saying: “Let us go up far, for soon I smell upon the wind A terror coming from the South.” The Eagle and Hawk fled away At dawn, and ere the sun arose, the Raven and Vulture follow’d. Let us flee also to the North.’ They fled. The Sons of Men Saw them depart in dismal droves. The trumpets sounded loud, And all the Sons of Eternity descended into Beulah.
Earth | Happy | Heaven | Life | Life | Pity | Pride | Tears | Will | Forgive |
Edward Dyer, fully Sir Edward Dyer
Love-Contradictions - As rare to heare as seldome to be seene, It cannot be nor never yet hathe bene That fire should burne with perfecte heate and flame Without some matter for to yealde the same. A straunger case yet true by profe I knowe A man in joy that livethe still in woe: A harder happ who hathe his love at lyste Yet lives in love as he all love had miste: Whoe hathe enougehe, yet thinkes he lives wthout, Lackinge no love yet still he standes in doubte. What discontente to live in suche desyre, To have his will yet ever to requyre.
Better | Cause | Comfort | Day | Death | Faith | Famous | Fate | Force | Fortune | Grace | Hate | Hope | Knowledge | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mirth | Nothing | Present | Quiet | Rest | Reward | Safe | Sense | Sound | Thought | Trust | Will | World | Fate | Thought |
Maybe ... I was painting the woman in me. Art isn't a wholly masculine occupation, you know. I'm aware that some critics would take this to be an admission of latent homosexuality ... If I painted beautiful women, would that make me a non-homosexual? I like beautiful women. In the flesh -- even the models in magazines. Women irritate me sometimes. I painted that irritation in the Woman series. That's all.
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.
Every mortal loss is an immortal gain. The ruins of time build mansions in eternity.
And if the babe is born a boy he's given to a woman old, who nails him down upon a rock catches his shrieks in cups of gold.
I looked for my soul but my soul I could not see. I looked for my God but my God eluded me. I looked for a friend and then I found all three.
Artifice | Children | Death | Earth | Experience | God | Light | Love | Man | Men | Patience | Price | Prosperity | Prudence | Prudence | Wife | Wisdom | God |