Ulver A Memorable Fancy, Plates 12-13 Lyrics

The prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me,
and I asked them how they dared so roundly to a__ert that God spoke to them;
and whatever they did not think at the time that they would be so misunderstood,
& so be the cause of imposition.

Isaiah answer'd: 'I saw no God, nor heard any,
in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing,
and as I was then persuaded, & remain confirm'd, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God,
I cared not for consequences, but wrote.'

Then I asked: 'Does a firm perswasion that a
thing is so, make it so?'

He replied: 'All poets believe that it does,
& in ages of imagination this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many are not capable of a firm perswasion of any thing.
'Then Ezekiel said: 'The philosophy of the east taught the first principles of human perception:
some nations held one principle for the origin,
& some another;
we Israel taught that the poetic genius (as you now call it) was the first principle and all the others merely derivative,
which was the cause of our despising the priests & philosophers of other countries, and prophecying that all gods would at last be proved to originate in ours
& to be tributaries of the poetic genius; it was this that our great poet king David desired so fervently
& invokes so pathetic'ly, saying this
he conquers enemies & governs kingdoms; and we so loved our God, that we cursed in his name all the deities of surrounding nations and a__erted that they had rebelled; from this opinions the vulgar came to thin that all nations would at last be subjected to the Jews.

'This' he said 'like all firm perswasions,
is come to pass; for all nations belive the Jews'
code and worship the Jews' God, and what the greater subjection can be?
'I heard this with some wonder,& must confess my own convivtion. After dinner I ask'd Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works;
he said none of equal value was lost.
Ezekiel the same of his.
I also asked Isaiah what
made him go naked and bare foot three years?
He answer'd: 'The same that made our friend Diogenes, the Grecian.
'I then asked Ezekiel why he eat dung, & lay so long on his right & left side?
He answer'd 'The desire of raising other men into perception of the infinite:
this the North American tribes practise,
& is he honest who resists his genius or conscience for this sake of present ease or gratification?