Poem 12

undeservedly enthral His outward freedom: tyranny must be, Though to the tyrant thereby no excuse. Yet sometimes nations will decline so low From virtue, which is reason, that no wrong, But justice, and some fatal curse annexed, Deprives them of their outward liberty, Their inward lost: witness the irreverent son Of him who built the ark, who, for the shame Done to his father, heard this heavy curse, Servant of servants on his vicious race. Thus will this latter, as the former world, Still tend from bad to worse, till God at last, Wearied with their iniquities, withdraw His presence from among them, and avert His holy eyes; resolving from thenceforth To leave them to their own polluted ways, And one peculiar nation to select From all the rest, of whom to be invoked⁠— A nation from one faithful man to spring. Him on this side Euphrates yet residing, Bred up in idol-worship⁠—Oh, that men (Canst thou believe?) should be so stupid grown, While yet the patriarch lived who scaped the Flood, As to forsake the living God, and fall To worship their own work in wood and stone For gods!⁠—yet him God the Most High vouchsafes To call by vision from his father’s house, His kindred, and false gods, into a land Which he will show him, and from him will raise A mighty nation, and upon him shower His benediction so, that in his seed All nations shall be blest. He straight obeys; Not knowing to what land, yet firm believes. I see him, but thou canst not, with what faith He leaves his gods, his friends, and native soil, Ur of Chaldaea, passing now the ford To Haran; after him a cumbrous train Of herds and flocks, and numerous servitude, Not wandering poor, but trusting all his wealth With God, who called him, in a land unknown. Canaan he now attains; I see his tents Pitched about Sechem, and the neighbouring plain Of Moreh; there, by promise, he receives Gift to his progeny of all that land, From Hamath northward to the Desert south (Things by their names I call, though yet unnamed), From Hermon east to the great western sea; Mount Hermon, yonder sea, each place behold In prospect, as I point them: on the shore, Mount Carmel; here, the double-founted stream, Jordan, true limit eastward; but his sons Shall dwell to Senir, that long ridge of hills. This ponder,