America: A Prophecy

The Terror answerd: I am Orc, wreath’d round the accursed tree:
The times are ended; shadows pass, the morning gins to break;
the fiery joy, that Urizen perverted to ten commands,
What night he led the starry hosts thro’ the wide wilderness,
That stony law I stamp to dust; and scatter religion abroad
To the four winds as a torn book, and none shall gather the leaves;
But they shall rot on desert sands, and consume in bottomless deeps,
To make the deserts blossom, and the deeps shrink to their fountains,
And to renew the fiery joy, and burst the stony roof;
That pale religious lechery, seeking Virginity,
May find it in a harlot, and in coarse-clad honesty
The undefil’d, tho’ ravish’d in her cradle night and morn;
For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life;
Because the soul of sweet delight can never be defil’d.
Fires enwrap the earthly globe, yet Man is not consum’d;
Amidst the lustful fires he walks; his feet become like brass,
His knees and thighs like silver, and his breast and head like gold.