hatred of gold and the things that perish, rendered him indeed well able to have exclaimed:
"In innocency I have washed my hands."
His poetry (and he has written a great deal) was mostly unintelligible, but not so much so as the works written in the manner of the present one. Generally speaking, he seems to have published those most mysterious. That which could be discerned was filled [with] imagery and fine epithet. What but admiration can be expressed of such poetry as this:
"I wander thro' each chartered street,
Near where the winding Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice of every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear.
How the chimney sweepers cry,
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace walls.
But most through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage hearse."
- ↑ From Songs of Experience. 1794
