Highgates heights & Hampsteads, to Poplar Hackney & Bow

To Islington & Paddington & the Brook of Albions River

We builded Jerusalem as a City & a Temple: from Lambeth

We began our Foundations; lovely Lambeth! O lovely Hills

Of Camberwell, we shall behold you no more in glory & pride

For Jerusalem lies in ruins & the Furnaces of Los are builded there

You are now shrunk up to a narrow Rock in the midst of the Sea

But here we build Babylon on Euphrates. compelld to build

And to inhabit. our Little-ones to clothe in armour of the gold

Of Jerusalems Cherubims & to forge them swords of her Altars

I see London blind & age-bent begging thro the Streets

Of Babylon, led by a child. his tears run down his beard

The voice of Wandering Reuben ecchoes from street to street

In all the Cities of the Nations Paris Madrid Amsterdam

The Corner of Broad Street weeps; Poland Street languishes

To Great Queen Street & Lincolns Inn all is distress & woe.

-- William Blake, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion, copy E, c. 1821, #84