Poetry  |  William Blake  |  Collected Poems  |  The French Revolution

Collected Poems — The French Revolution (Part 9 of 9)

And snake, and damp toad on the kingly foot crawl, or croak on the awful knee,

Shedding their slime; in folds of the robe the crown'd adder builds and hisses

From stony brows: shaken the forests of France, sick the kings of the nations,

And the bottoms of the world were open'd, and the graves of archangels unseal'd:

The enormous dead lift up their pale fires and look over the rocky cliffs.

A faint heat from their fires reviv'd the cold Louvre; the frozen blood reflow'd.

Awful uprose the King; him the Peers follow'd; they saw the courts of the Palace

Forsaken, and Paris without a soldier, silent. For the noise was gone up

And follow'd the army; and the Senate in peace sat beneath morning's beam.