Page:Poetical works of William Blake (Sampson, 1913).djvu/182

Poems from the Rossetti MS.

I heard a Devil curse
Over the heath and the furze: 10
'Mercy could be no more
If there was nobody poor,

'And Pity no more could be,
If all were as happy as we.'
At his curse the sun went down, 15
And the heavens gave a frown.⁠

[Down pour'd the heavy rain
Over the new reap'd grain;
And Misery's increase
Is Mercy, Pity, Peace.] 20

15 At his curse] Thus he sang and MS. 1st rdg. del. ⁠16 Here, as the MS. indicates, the poem originally ended, Blake afterwards adding a fifth stanza:

Down [at first And down] pour'd the heavy rain
Over the new-reap'd grain,
And Mercy and Pity and Peace descended;
The Farmers were ruined and harvest was ended—

and again marking the completion of the piece by a fresh terminal line. This entire stanza was afterwards deleted, and is followed by several attempts at a new couplet, rehandling in the original metre the theme of Mercy, Pity, Peace, all of which were cancelled with the exception of the final reading:

And Misery's increase
Is Mercy, Pity, Peace.

These lines seem intended to form the final couplet of v, and Swinburne doubtless interprets rightly the author's intention in appending them to the first deleted couplet:

Down pour'd the heavy rain
Over the new-reap'd grain,

and printing this additional stanza in the form in which it appears, in square brackets, in my text.

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