The Portable Blake

by William Blake

  They groan’d aloud on Tyburn’s Brook,

  Albion gave his deadly groan,

  And all the Atlantic Mountains shook.

  Albion’s Spectre from his Loins

  Tore forth in all the pomp of War:

  Satan his name: in flames of fire

  He stretch’d his Druid Pillars far.

  Jerusalem fell from Lambeth’s Vale

  Down thro’ Poplar & Old Bow,

  Thro’ Malden & across the Sea,

  In War & howling, death & woe.

  The Rhine was red with human blood,

  The Danube roll’d a purple tide,

  On the Euphrates Satan stood,

  And over Asia stretch’d his pride.

  He wither’d up sweet Zion’s Hill

  From every Nation of the Earth;

  He wither’d up Jerusalem’s Gates,

  And in a dark Land gave her birth.

  He wither’d up the Human Form

  By laws of sacrifice for sin,

  Till it became a Mortal Worm,

  But O! translucent all within.

  The Divine Vision still was seen,

  Still was the Human Form Divine,

  Weeping in weak & mortal clay,

  O Jesus, still the Form was thine.

  And thine the Human Face, & thine

  The Human Hands & Feet & Breath,

  Entering thro’ the Gates of Birth

  And passing thro’ the Gates of Death.

  And 0 thou Lamb of God, whom I

  Slew in my dark self-righteous pride,

  Art thou return’d to Albion’s Land?

  And is Jerusalem thy Bride?

  Come to my arms & never more

  Depart, but dwell for ever here:

  Create my Spirit to thy Love:

  Subdue my Spectre to thy Fear.

  Spectre of Albion! warlike Fiend!

  In clouds of blood & ruin roll’d,

  I here reclaim thee as my own,

  My Selfhood! Satan! arm’d in gold

  Is this thy soft Family-Love,

  Thy cruel Patriarchal pride,

  Planting thy Family alone,

  Destroying all the World beside?

  A man’s worst enemies are those

  Of his own house & family;

  And he who makes his law a curse,

  By his own law shall surely die.

  In my Exchanges every Land

  Shall walk, & mine in every Land,

  Mutual shall build Jerusalem,

  Both heart in heart & hand in hand.

  If Humility is Christianity, you, O Jews, are the true Christians. If your tradition that Man contained in his Limbs all Animals is True, & they were separated from him by cruel Sacrifices, and when compulsory cruel Sacrifices had brought Humanity into a Feminine Tabernacle in the loins of Abraham & David, the Lamb of God, the Saviour became apparent on Earth as the Prophets had foretold, The Return of Israel is a Return to Mental Sacrifice & War. Take up the Cross, O Israel, & follow Jesus.

  He never can be a Friend to the Human Race who is the Preacher of Natural Morality or Natural Religion; he is a flatterer who means to betray, to perpetuate Tyrant Pride & the Laws of that Babylon which he foresees shall shortly be destroyed, with the Spiritual and not the Natural Sword. He is in the State named Rahab, which State must be put off before he can be the Friend of Man.

  You, 0 Deists, profess yourselves the Enemies of Christianity, and you are so: you are also the Enemies of the Human Race & of Universal Nature. Man is born a Spectre or Satan & is altogether an Evil, & requires a New Selfhood continually, & must continually be changed into his direct Contrary. But your Greek Philosophy (which is a remnant of Druidism) teaches that Man is Righteous in his Vegetated Spectre: an Opinion of fatal & accursed consequence to Man, as the Ancients saw plainly by Revelation, to the intire abrogation of Experimental Theory; and many believed what they saw and Prophecied of Jesus.

  Man must & will have Some Religion: if he has not the Religion of Jesus, he will have the Religion of Satan & will erect the Synagogue of Satan, calling the Prince of this World, God, and destroying all who do not worship Satan under the Name of God. Will any one say, “Where are those who worship Satan under the Name of God?” Where are they? Listen! Every Religion that Preaches Vengeance for Sin is the Religion of the Enemy & Avenger and not of the Forgiver of Sin, and their God is Satan, Named by the Divine Name. Your Religion, O Deists! Deism, is the Worship of the God of this World by the means of what you call Natural Religion and Natural Philosophy, and of Natural Morality or Self-Righteousness, the Selfish Virtues of the Natural Heart. This was the Religion of the Pharisees who murder’ d Jesus. Deism is the same & ends in the same.

  Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, Hume, charge the Spiritually Religious with Hypocrisy; but how a Monk, or a Methodist either, can be a Hypocrite, I cannot concieve. We are Men of like passions with others & pretend not to be holier than others; therefore, when a Religious Man falls into Sin, he ought not to be call’d a Hypocrite; this title is more properly to be given to a Player who falls into Sin, whose profession is Virtue & Morality & the making Men Self-Righteous. Foote in calling Whitefield, Hypocrite, was himself one; for Whitefield pretended not to be holier than others, but confessed his Sins before all the World. Voltaire! Rousseau! You cannot escape my charge that you are Pharisees & Hypocrites, for you are constantly talking of the Virtues of the Human Heart and particularly of your own, that you may accuse others, & especially the Religious, whose errors you, by this display of pretended Virtue, chiefly design to expose. Rousseau thought Men Good by Nature: he found them Evil & found no friend. Friendship cannot exist without Forgiveness of Sins continually. The Book written by Rousseau call’d his Confessions, is an apology & cloke for his sin & not a confession.

  But you also charge the poor Monks & Religious with being the causes of War, while you acquit & flatter the Alexanders & Caesars, the Lewis’s & Fredericks, who alone are its causes & its actors. But the Religion of Jesus, Forgiveness of Sin, can never be the cause of a War nor of a single Martyrdom.

  Those who Martyr others or who cause War are Deists, but never can be Forgivers of Sin. The Glory of Christianity is To Conquer by Forgiveness. All the Destruction, therefore, in Christian Europe has arisen from Deism, which is Natural Religion.

  I saw a Monk of Charlemaine

  Arise before my sight:

  I talk’d with the Grey Monk as we stood

  In beams of infernal light.

  Gibbon arose with a lash of steel,

  And Voltaire with a wracking wheel:

  The Schools, in clouds of learning roll’d,

  Arose with War in iron & gold.

  “Thou lazy Monk,” they sound afar,

  “In vain condemning glorious War;

  ”And in your Cell you shall ever dwell:

  “Rise, War, & bind him in his Cell!”

  The blood red ran from the Grey Monk’s side,

  His hands & feet were wounded wide,

  His body bent, his arms & knees

  Like to the roots of ancient trees.

  When Satan first the black bow bent

  And the Moral Law from the Gospel rent,

  He forg’d the Law into a Sword

  And spill’d the blood of mercy’s Lord.

  Titus! Constantine! Charlemaine!

  O Voltaire! Rousseau! Gibbon! Vain

  Your Grecian Mocks & Roman Sword

  Against this image of his Lord!

  For a Tear is an Intellectual thing,

  And a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King,

  And the bitter groan of a Martyr’s woe

  Is an Arrow from the Almightie’s Bow.

  TO THE CHRISTIANS

  Devils are

  False Religions.

  “Saul, Saul,

  ”Why persecutest thou me?”

  I give you the end of a

  golden string,

  Only wind it into a ball,

  It will lead
you in at Heaven’s gate

  Built in Jerusalem’s wall.

  We are told to abstain from fleshly desires that we may lose no time from the Work of the Lord: Every moment lost is a moment that cannot be redeemed; every pleasure that intermingles with the duty of our station is a folly unredeemable, & is planted like the seed of a wild flower among our wheat: All the tortures of repentance are tortures of self-reproach on account of our leaving the Divine Harvest to the Enemy, the struggles of intanglement with incoherent roots. I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination, Imagination, the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow, & in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more. The Apostles knew of no other Gospel. What were all their spiritual gifts? What is the Divine Spirit? is the Holy Ghost any other than an Intellectual Fountain? What is the Harvest of the Gospel & its Labours? What is that Talent which it is a curse to hide? What are the Treasures of Heaven which we are to lay up for ourselves, are they any other than Mental Studies & Performances? What are all the Gifts of the Gospel, are they not all Mental Gifts? Is God a Spirit who must be worshipped in Spirit & in Truth, and are not the Gifts of the Spirit Every-thing to Man? O ye Religious, discountenance every one among you who shall pretend to despise Art & Science! I call upon you in the Name of Jesus! What is the Life of Man but Art & Science? is it Meat & Drink? is not the Body more than Raiment? What is Mortality but the things relating to the Body which Dies? What is Immortality but the things relating to the Spirit which Lives Eternally? What is the Joy of Heaven but Improvement in the things of the Spirit? What are the Pains of Hell but Ignorance, Bodily Lust, Idleness & devastation of the things of the Spirit? Answer this to yourselves, & expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art & Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel. Is not this plain & manifest to the thought? Can you think at all & not pronounce heartily That to Labour in Knowledge is to Build up Jerusalem, and to Despise Knowledge is to Despise Jerusalem & her Builders. And remember: He who despises & mocks a Mental Gift in another, calling it pride & selfishness & sin, mocks Jesus the giver of every Mental Gift, which always appear to the ignorance-loving Hypocrite as Sins; but that which is a Sin in the sight of cruel Man is not so in the sight of our kind God. Let every Christian, as much as in him lies, engage himself openly & publicly before all the World in some Mental pursuit for the Building up of Jerusalem.

  I stood among my valleys of the south

  And saw a flame of fire, even as a Wheel

  Of fire surrounding all the heavens: it went

  From west to east, against the current of

  Creation, and devour’d all things in its loud

  Fury & thundering course round heaven & earth.

  By it the Sun was roll’d into an orb,

  By it the Moon faded into a globe

  Travelling thro’ the night; for, from its dire

  And restless fury, Man himself shrunk up

  Into a little root a fathom long.

  And I asked a Watcher & a Holy-One

  Its Name; he answered: “It is the Wheel of Religion.”

  I wept & said: “Is this the law of Jesus,

  This terrible devouring sword turning every way?”

  He answer’d: “Jesus died because he strove

  Against the current of this Wheel; its Name

  Is Caiaphas, the dark preacher of Death,

  Of sin, of sorrow & of punishment:

  Opposing Nature! It is Natural Religion;

  But Jesus is the bright Preacher of Life

  Creating Nature from this fiery Law

  By self-denial & forgiveness of Sin.

  Go therefore, cast out devils in Christ’s name,

  Heal thou the sick of spiritual disease,

  Pity the evil, for thou art not sent

  To smite with terror & with punishments

  Those that are sick, like to the Pharisees

  Crucifying & encompassing sea & land

  For proselytes to tyranny & wrath;

  But to the Publicans & Harlots go,

  Teach them True Happiness, but let no curse

  Go forth out of thy mouth to blight their peace;

  For Hell is open’d to Heaven: thine eyes beheld

  The dungeons burst & the Prisoners set free.”

  England! awake! awake! awake!

  Jerusalem thy Sister callsl

  Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death

  And close her from thy ancient walk?

  Thy hills & valleys felt her feet

  Gently upon their bosoms move:

  Thy gates beheld sweet Zion’s ways:

  Then was a time of joy and love.

  And now the time returns again:

  Our souls exult, & London’s towers

  Recieve the Lamb of God to dwell

  In England’s green & pleasant bowers.

  [INTRODUCTION]

  Of the Sleep of Ulro! and of the passage through Eternal Death! and of the awaking to Eternal Life.

  This theme calls me in sleep night after night, & ev’ry morn

  Awakes me at sun-rise; then I see the Saviour over me

  Spreading his beams of love & dictating the words of this mild song.

  “Awake! awake O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! expand!

  I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine:

  Fibres of love from man to man thro’ Albion’s pleasant land.

  In all the dark Atlantic vale down from the hills of Surrey

  A black water accumulates; return Albion! return!

  Thy brethren call thee, and thy fathers and thy sons,

  Thy nurses and thy mothers, thy sisters and thy daughters

  Weep at thy soul’s disease, and the Divine Vision is darken’d,

  Thy Emanation that was wont to play before thy face,

  Beaming forth with her daughters into the Divine bosom:

  “Where hast thou hidden thy Emanation, lovely Jerusalem,

  From the vision and fruition of the Holy-one?

  I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend:

  Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me:

  Lo! we are One, forgiving all Evil, Not seeking recompense.

  Ye are my members, 0 ye sleepers of Beulah, land of shades!”

  [BLAKE’S TASK]

  Trembling I sit day and night, my friends are astonish’d at me,

  Yet they forgive my wanderings. I rest not from my great task!

  To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes

  Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought, into Eternity

  Ever expanding in the Bosom of God, the Human Imagination.

  O Saviour pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness & love!

  Annihilate the Selfhood in me: be thou all my life!

  Guide thou my hand, which trembles exceedingly upon the rock of ages,

  While I write....

  [THE FURNACE AND THE LOOM]

  The Male is a Furnace of beryll; the Female is a golden Loom.

  I behold them, and their rushing fires overwhelm my Soul

  In London’s darkness, and my tears fall day and night

  Upon the Emanations of Albion’s Sons, the Daughters of Albion,

  Names anciently remember’d, but now contemn’d as fictions

  Although in every bosom they controll our Vegetative powers.

  [THE CONTRARIES]

  And this is the manner of the Sons of Albion in their strength:

  They take the Two Contraries which are call’d Qualities, with which

  Every Substance is clothed: they name them Good & Evil

  From them they make an Abstract, which is a Negation

  Not only of the Substance from which it is derived,

  A murderer of its own Body, but also a murderer

  Of every Divine Member:
it is the Reasoning Power,

  An Abstract objecting power that Negatives everything.

  This is the Spectre of Man, the Holy Reasoning Power,

  And in its Holiness is closed the Abomination of Desolation.

  [BLAKE’S MOTTO]

  “I must Create a System or be enslav’d by another Man’s.

  I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create.”

  [THE EARTH]

  The Vegetative Universe opens like a flower from the Earth’s center

  In which is Eternity. It expands in Stars to the Mundane Shell

  And there it meets Eternity again, both within and without,

  And the abstract Voids between the Stars are the Satanic Wheels.

  There is the Cave, the Rock, the Tree, the Lake of Udan Adan,

  The Forest and the Marsh and the Pits of bitumen deadly,

  The Rocks of solid fire, the Ice valleys, the Plains

  Of burning sand, the rivers, cataract & Lakes of Fire,

  The Islands of the fiery Lakes, the Trees of Malice, Revenge

  And black Anxiety, and the Cities of the Salamandrine men,

  (But whatever is visible to the Generated Man

  Is a Creation of mercy & love from the Satanic Void).

  The land of darkness flamed, but no light & no repose:

  The land of snows of trembling & of iron hail incessant:

  The land of earthquakes, and the land of woven labyrinths:

  The land of snares & traps & wheels & pit-falls & dire mills: