In times of yore to this modern day
Men of all ages have in their way
Sought to do right, but excelled in wrong
My youthful friends, give ear to my song.

Saint William Blake, Muses’ poet-child,
Shelley Bysshe, Muses’ poet-wild -
Keats and others many more like them
Left for heaven when by earth condemn’d.
They in lifetime were out-casts part time;
Their works, since their deaths, were thought sublime.
Had but Shelley’s muse foreseen that morn,
He would have laughed and held earth in scorn!
Did earth find itself a pure lily,
Scornful of them in their poverty,
To see their faults and not their merits?
Faults they had but from earth inherit’d!

All meet on earth, good men and evil –
Here doth meet two, Christ and the Devil!
Here are many men true and divine
But more wicked men, with them combined
To fill this earth, on this earth aspread!
Here doth meet the evil and god-head!
Heaven and hell thus on earth doth mix –
Until God doth put a deep betwixt.