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Home  »  The Book of Georgian Verse  »  William Blake (1757–1827)

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.

Mock on, Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau

William Blake (1757–1827)

MOCK on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;

Mock on, mock on; ’tis all in vain!

You throw the sand against the wind,

And the wind blows it back again.

And every sand becomes a gem

Reflected in the beams divine;

Blown back they blind the mocking eye,

But still in Israel’s paths they shine.

The atoms of Democritus

And Newton’s particles of light

Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,

Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright.