Poetry Explorer


Classic and Contemporary Poetry


WRITTEN UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF DELIRIUM by WILLIAM COWPER

Poet Analysis

First Line: HATRED AND VENGEANCE, MY ETERNAL PORTION
Last Line: BURIED ABOVE GROUND.
Subject(s): INSANITY; MADNESS; MENTAL ILLNESS;

HATRED and vengeance,--my eternal portion
Scarce can endure delay of execution,--
Wait with impatient readiness to seize my
Soul in a moment.

Damned below Judas; more abhorred than he was,
Who for a few pence sold his holy Master!
Twice-betrayed Jesus me, the last delinquent,
Deems the profanest.

Man disavows, and Deity disowns me,
Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;
Therefore, Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all
Bolted against me.

Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers;
Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors,
I'm called, if vanquished! to receive a sentence
Worse than Abiram's.

Him the vindictive rod of angry Justice
Sent quick and howling to the centre headlong;
I, fed with judgment, in a fleshly tomb, am
Buried above ground.



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