William Blake

“ The iron hand crush’d the tyrant’s head,
And became a tyrant in his stead. ”

“ To revenge the wrongs thy children feel.
x
‘But vain the sword and vain the bow,
They never can work War’s overthrow;
The hermit’s prayer and the widow’s tear
40Alone can free the world from fear. ”

“ The first draft of this piece, written without title in the Rossetti MS. not later than April 1803, consisted of fourteen stanzas, which Blake later separated into two poems ‘To the Deists’ in Jerusalem, and ‘The Grey Monk’ of the Pickering MS., indicating the beginning of the latter by a line drawn above stanza v. In the version engraved for Jerusalem, where the length is reduced to seven stanzas, Blake’s first change was to mark xii, xiii, and xiv for insertion after iv. ”