The Portable Blake
Page 26
Struck horror into his soul.
6.Los wept obscur’d with mourning,
His bosom earthquak’d with sighs;
He saw Urizen deadly black
In his chains bound, & Pity began,
7.In anguish dividing & dividing,
For pity divides the soul
In pangs, eternity on eternity,
Life in cataracts pour’d down his cliffs.
The void shrunk the lymph into Nerves
Wand‘ring wide on the bosom of night
And left a round globe of blood
Trembling upon the void.
Thus the Eternal Prophet was divided
Before the death image of Urizen;
For in changeable clouds and darkness.
In a winterly night beneath,
The Abyss of Los stretch’d immense;
And now seen, now obscur’d, to the eyes
Of Eternals the visions remote
Of the dark seperation appear’d:
As glasses discover Worlds
In the endless Abyss of space,
So the expanding eyes of Immortals
Beheld the dark visions of Los
And the globe of life blood trembling.
8.The globe of life blood trembled
Branching out into roots,
Fibrous, writhing upon the winds,
Fibres of blood, milk and tears,
In pangs, eternity on eternity.
At length in tears & cries imbodied,
A female form, trembling and pale,
Waves before his deathy face.
9.All Eternity shudder’d at sight
Of the first female now separate,
Pale as a cloud of snow
Waving before the face of Los.
10.Wonder, awe, fear, astonishment
Petrify the eternal myriads
At the first female form now separate.
They call’d her Pity, and fled.
11.“Spread a Tent with strong curtains around
them.
Let cords & stakes bind in the Void,
That Eternals may no more behold them.”
12.They began to weave curtains of darkness,
They erected large pillars round the Void,
With golden hooks fasten’d in the pillars;
With infinite labour the Eternals
A woof wove, and called it Science.
VI
1.But Los saw the Female & pitied;
He embrac’d her; she wept, she refus’d;
In perverse and cruel delight
She fled from his arms, yet he follow’d.
2.Eternity shudder’d when they saw
Man begetting his likeness
On his own divided image.
3.A time passed over: the Eternals
Began to erect the tent,
When Enitharmon, sick,
Felt a Worm within her Womb.
4.Yet helpless it lay like a Worm
In the trembling womb
To be moulded into existence.
5.All day the worm lay on her bosom;
All night within her womb
The worm lay till it grew to a serpent,
With dolorous hissings & poisons
Round Enitharmon’s loins folding.
6.Coil’d within Enitharmon’s womb
The serpent grew, casting its scales;
With sharp pangs the hissings began
To change to a grating cry:
Many sorrows and dismal throes,
Many forms of fish, bird & beast
Brought forth an Infant form
Where was a worm before.
7.The Eternals their tent finished
Alarm’d with these gloomy visions,
When Enitharmon groaning
Produc’d a man Child to the light.
8.A shriek ran thro’ Eternity,
And a paralytic stroke,
At the birth of the Human shadow.
9.Delving earth in his resistless way,
Howling, the Child with fierce flames
Issu’d from Enitharmon.
10.The Eternals closed the tent;
They beat down the stakes, the cords
Stretch’d for a work of eternity.
No more Los beheld Eternity.
11.In his hands he siez’d the infant,
He bathed him in springs of sorrow,
He gave him to Enitharmon.
VII
1.They named the child Orc; he grew,
Fed with milk of Enitharmon.
2.Los awoke her. 0 sorrow & pain!
A tight’ning girdle grew
Around his bosom. In sobbings
He burst the girdle in twain;
But still another girdle
Oppress’d his bosom. In sobbings
Again he burst it. Again
Another girdle succeeds.
The girdle was form’d by day,
By night was burst in twain.
3.These falling down on the rock
Into an iron Chain
In each other link by link lock’d.
4.They took Orc to the top of a mountain.
O how Enitharmon weptl
They chain’d his young limbs to the rock
With the Chain of Jealousy
Beneath Urizen’s deathful shadow.
5. The dead heard the voice of the child
And began to awake from sleep;
All things heard the voice of the child
And began to awake to life.
6.And Urizen, craving with hunger,
Stung with the odours of Nature,
Explor’d his dens around.
7.He form’d a line & a plummet
To divide the Abyss beneath;
He form’d a dividing rule;
8.He formed scales to weigh,
He formed massy weights;
He formed a brazen quadrant;
He formed golden compasses,
And began to explore the Abyss;
And he planted a garden of fruits.
9.But Los encircled Enitharmon
With fires of Prophecy
From the sight of Urizen & Ore.
10.And she bore an enormous race.
VIII
1.Urizen explor’d his dens,
Mountain, moor & wilderness,
With a globe of fire lighting his journey,
A fearful journey, annoy’d
By cruel enormities, forms
Of life on his forsaken mountains.
2.And his world teem’d vast enormities,
Fright’ning, faithless, fawning
Portions of life, similitudes
Of a foot, or a hand, or a head,
Or a heart, or an eye; they swam mischevous,
Dread terrors, delighting in blood.
3.Most Urizen sicken’d to see
His eternal creations appear,
Sons & daughters of sorrow on mountains
Weeping, wailing. First Thiriel appear’d,
Astonish’d at his own existence,
Like a man from a cloud born; & Utha,
From the waters emerging, laments;
Grodna rent the deep earth, howling
Amaz’d; his heavens immense cracks
Like the ground parch’d with heat, then Fuzon
Flam’d out, first begotten, last born;
All his Eternal sons in like manner;
His daughters from green herbs & cattle,
From monsters & worms of the pit.
4.He in darkness clos’d view’d all his race,
And his soul sicken’d! he curs’d
Both sons & daughters; for he saw
That no flesh nor spirit could keep
His iron laws one moment.
5.For he saw that life liv’d upon death:
The Ox in the slaughter house moans,
The Dog at the wintry door;
And he wept & he called it Pity,
&nb
sp; And his tears flowed down on the winds.
6.Cold he wander’d on high, over their cities
In weeping & pain & woe;
And wherever he wander’d, in sorrows
Upon the aged heavens,
A cold shadow follow’d behind him
Like a spider’s web, moist, cold & dim,
Drawing out from his sorrowing soul,
The dungeon-like heaven dividing,
Where ever the footsteps of Urizen
Walked over the cities in sorrow;
7.Till a Web, dark & cold, throughout all
The tormented element stretch’d
From the sorrows of Urizen’s soul.
And the Web is a Female in embrio.
None could break the Web, no wings of fire,
8.So twisted the cords, & so knotted
The meshes, twisted like to the human brain.
9.And all call’d it The Net of Religion.
IX
1.Then the Inhabitants of those Cities
Felt their Nerves change into Marrow,
And hardening Bones began
In swift diseases and torments,
In throbbings & shootings & grindings
Thro’ all the coasts; till weaken’d
The Senses inward rush’d, shrinking
Beneath the dark net of infection;
2.Till the shrunken eyes, clouded over,
Discern’d not the woven hipocrisy;
But the streaky slime in their heavens,
Brought together by narrowing perceptions,
Appear’d transparent air; for their eyes
Grew small like the eyes of a man,
And in reptile forms shrinking together,
Of seven feet stature they remain’d.
3.Six days they shrunk up from existence,
And on the seventh day they rested,
And they bless’d the seventh day, in sick hope,
And forgot their eternal life.
4.And their thirty cities divided
In form of a human heart.
No more could they rise at will
In the infinite void, but bound down
To earth by their narrowing perceptions
They lived a period of years;
Then left a noisom body
To the jaws of devouring darkness.
5.And their children wept, & built
Tombs in the desolate places,
And form’d laws of prudence, and call’d them
The eternal laws of God.
6.And the thirty cities remain’d,
Surrounded by salt floods, now call’d
Africa: its name was then Egypt.
7.The remaining sons of Urizen
Beheld their brethren shrink together
Beneath the Net of Urizen.
Perswasion was in vain;
For the ears of the inhabitants
Were wither’d & deafen’d & cold,
And their eyes could not discern
Their brethren of other cities.
8.So Fuzon call’d all together
The remaining children of Urizen,
And they left the pendulous earth.
They called it Egypt, & left it.
9.And the salt Ocean rolled englob’d.
THE END OF THE FIRST BOOK OF URIZEN
THE BOOK OF AHANIA
(1795)
I
1.Fuzon on a chariot iron-wing’d
On spiked flames rose; his hot visage
Flam’d furious; sparkles his hair & beard
Shot down his wide bosom and shoulders.
On clouds of smoke rages his chariot
And his right hand burns red in its cloud
Moulding into a vast Globe his wrath,
As the thunder-stone is moulded.
Son of Urizen’s silent burnings:
2.“Shall we worship this Demon of smoke,’
Said Fuzon, ”this abstract non-entity,
“This cloudy God seated on waters,
”Now seen, now obscur’d, King of sorrow?’
3.So he spoke in a fiery flame,
On Urizen frowning indignant,
The Globe of wrath shaking on high;
Roaring with fury he threw
The howling Globe; burning it flew
Length‘ning into a hungry beam. Swiftly
4.Oppos’d to the exulting flam’d beam,
The broad Disk of Urizen upheav’d
Across the Void many a mile.
5.It was forg’d in mills where the winter
Beats incessant: ten winters the disk
Unremitting endur’d the cold hammer.
6.But the strong arm that sent it remember’d
The sounding beam: laughing, it tore through
That beaten mass, keeping its direction,
The cold loins of Urizen dividing.
7.Dire shriek’d his invisible Lust;
Deep groan’d Urizen! stretching his awful hand,
Ahania (so name his parted soul)
He siez’d on his mountains of Jealousy.
He groan’d anguish’d, & called her Sin,
Kissing her and weeping over her;
Then hid her in darkness, in silence,
Jealous, tho’ she was invisible.
8.She fell down a faint shadow wand‘ring
In chaos and circling dark Urizen,
As the moon anguish’d circles the earth,
Hopeless! abhorr’d! a death-shadow,
Unseen, unbodied, unknown,
The mother of Pestilence.
9.But the fiery beam of Fuzon
Was a pillar of fire to Egypt
Five hundred years wand‘ring on earth,
Till Los siez’d it and beat in a mass
With the body of the sun.
II
1.But the forehead of Urizen gathering,
And his eyes pale with anguish, his lips
Blue & changing, in tears and bitter
Contrition he prepar’d his Bow,
2.Form’d of Ribs, that in his dark solitude,
When obscur’d in his forests, fell monsters
Arose. For his dire Contemplations
Rush’d down like floods from his mountains,
In torrents of mud settling thick,
With Eggs of unnatural production:
Forthwith hatching, some howl’d on his hills,
Some in vales, some aloft flew in air.
3.Of these, an enormous dread Serpent,
Scaled and poisonous horned,
Approach’d Urizen, even to his knees,
As he sat on his dark rooted Oak.
4.With his horns he push’d furious:
Great the conflict & great the jealousy
In cold poisons, but Urizen smote him.
5.First he poison’d the rocks with his blood,
Then polish’d his ribs, and his sinews
Dried, laid them apart till winter;
Then a Bow black prepar’d: on this Bow
A poisoned rock plac’d in silence.
He utter’d these words to the Bow:
6.”0 Bow of the clouds of secresy!
O nerve of that lust-form’d monster!
Send this rock swift, invisible thro’
The black clouds on the bosom of Fuzon.”
7.So saying, In torment of his wounds
He bent the enormous ribs slowly, A circle of darkness! then fixed
The sinew in its rest; then the Rock,
Poisonous source, plac’d with art, lifting difficult
Its weighty bulk; silent the rock lay,
8.While Fuzon, his tygers unloosing,
Thought Urizen slain by his wrath.
”I am God!” said he, ”eldest of things.”
9.Sudden sings the rock; swift & invisible
On Fuzon flew, enter’d his bosom;
His beautiful visage, his tresses
That gave light to the mornings of heaven
,
Were smitten with darkness, deform’d
And outstretch’d on the edge of the forest.
10.But the Rock fell upon the Earth,
Mount Sinai in Arabia.
III
1.The Globe shook, and Urizen seated
On black clouds his sore wound anointed;
The ointment flow’d down on the void
Mix’d with blood—here the snake gets her poison.
2.With difficulty & great pain Urizen
Lifted on high the dead corse:
On his shoulders he bore it to where
A Tree hung over the Immensity.
3.For when Urizen shrunk away
From Eternals, he sat on a rock
Barren: a rock which himself
From redounding fancies had petrified.
Many tears fell on the rock,
Many sparks of vegetation.
Soon shot the pained root
Of Mystery under his heel:
It grew a thick tree: he wrote
In silence his book of iron,