The Portable William Blake

Home > Other > The Portable William Blake > Page 26
The Portable William Blake Page 26

by Blake, William

But the space, undivided by existence,

  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 wep
t & he called it Pity,

  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

  Tha
t 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

 

‹ Prev