The Portable William Blake

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The Portable William Blake Page 27

by Blake, William

In silence his book of iron,

  Till the horrid plant bending its boughs

  Grew to roots when it felt the earth,

  And again sprung to many a tree.

  4.Amaz’d started Urizen, when

  He beheld himself compassed round

  And high roofed over with trees.

  He arose, but the stems stood so thick

  He with difficulty and great pain

  Brought his Books, all but the Book

  Of iron, from the dismal shade.

  5.The Tree still grows over the Void

  Enrooting itself all around,

  An endless labyrinth of woe!

  6.The corse of his first begotten

  On the accursed Tree of Mystery,

  On the topmost stem of this Tree,

  Urizen nail’d Fuzon’s corse.

  IV

  1.Forth flew the arrows of pestilence

  Round the pale living Corse on the tree.

  2.For in Urizen’s slumbers of abstraction

  In the infinite ages of Eternity,

  When his Nerves of Joy melted & flow’d,

  A white Lake on the dark blue air

  In perturb’d pain and dismal torment

  Now stretching out, now swift conglobing,

  3.Effluvia vapor’d above

  In noxious clouds; these hover’d thick

  Over the disorganiz’d Immortal,

  Till petrific pain scurf’d o’er the Lakes

  As the bones of man, solid & dark.

  4.The clouds of disease hover’d wide

  Around the Immortal in torment,

  Perching around the hurtling bones,

  Disease on disease, shape on shape

  Winged screaming in blood & torment.

  5.The Eternal Prophet beat on his anvils;

  Enrag’d in the desolate darkness

  He forg’d nets of iron around

  And Los threw them around the bones.

  6.The shapes screaming flutter’d vain:

  Some combin’d into muscles & glands,

  Some organs for craving and lust;

  Most remain’d on the tormented void,

  Urizen’s army of horrors.

  7.Round the pale living Corse on the Tree

  Forty years flew the arrows of pestilence.

  8.Wailing and terror and woe

  Ran thro’ all his dismal world; Forty years all his sons & daughters

  Felt their skulls harden; then Asia

  Arose in the pendulous deep.

  9.They reptilize upon the Earth.

  10.Fuzon groan’d on the Tree.

  V

  1.The lamenting voice of Ahania

  Weeping upon the void!

  And round the Tree of Fuzon,

  Distant in solitary night,

  Her voice was heard, but no form

  Had she; but her tears from clouds

  Eternal fell round the Tree.

  2.And the voice cried: ”Ah, Urizen! Love!

  Flower of morning! I weep on the verge

  Of Non-entity; how wide the Abyss

  Between Ahania and thee!

  3.“I lie on the verge of the deep;

  I see thy dark clouds ascend;

  I see thy black forests and floods,

  A horrible waste to my eyes!

  4.”Weeping I walk over rocks,

  Over dens & thro’ valleys of death.

  Why didst thou despise Ahania

  To cast me from thy bright presence

  Into the World of Loneness?

  5.“I cannot touch his hand,

  Nor weep on his knees, nor hear

  His voice & bow, nor see his eyes

  And joy, nor hear his footsteps and

  My heart leap at the lovely sound!

  I cannot kiss the place

  Whereon his bright feet have trod,

  But I wander on the rocks

  With hard necessity.

  6.”Where is my golden palace?

  Where my ivory bed?

  Where the joy of my morning hour?

  Where the sons of eternity singing

  7.“To awake bright Urizen, my king,

  To arise to the mountain sport,

  To the bliss of eternal valleys;

  8.”To awake my king in the morn,

  To embrace Ahania’s joy

  On the bredth of his open bosom?

  From my soft cloud of dew to fall

  In showers of life on his harvests,

  9.“When he gave my happy soul

  To the sons of eternal joy,

  When he took the daughters of life

  Into my chambers of love,

  10.”When I found babes of bliss on my beds

  And bosoms of milk in my chambers

  Fill’d with eternal seed.

  O eternal births sung round Ahania

  In interchange sweet of their joys!

  11.“Swell’d with ripeness & fat with fatness,

  Bursting on winds, my odors,

  My ripe figs and rich pomegranates

  In infant joy at thy feet,

  0 Urizen, sported and sang.

  12.”Then thou with thy lap full of seed,

  With thy hand full of generous fire

  Walked forth from the clouds of morning,

  On the virgins of springing joy,

  On the human soul to cast

  The seed of eternal science.

  13.“The sweat poured down thy temples;

  To Ahania return’d in evening,

  The moisture awoke to birth

  My mothers-joys, sleeping in bliss

  .

  14.”But now alone over rocks, mountains,

  Cast out from thy lovely bosom,

  Cruel jealousy! selfish fear!

  Self-destroying, how can delight

  Renew in these chains of darkness,

  Where bones of beasts are strown

  On the bleak and snowy mountains,

  Where bones from the birth are buried

  Before they see the light?”

  FINIS

  THE BOOK OF LOS

  (1795)

  I

  1.Eno, aged Mother,

  Who the chariot of Leutha guides

  Since the day of thunders in old time,

  2.Sitting beneath the eternal Oak

  Trembled and shook the steadfast Earth,

  And thus her speech broke forth:

  3.“0 Times remote!

  When Love & Joy were adoration,

  And none impure were deem’d:

  Not Eyeless Covet,

  Nor Thin-lip’d Envy,

  Nor Bristled Wrath,

  Nor Curled Wantonness;

  4.”But Covet was poured full,

  Envy fed with fat of lambs,

  Wrath with lion’s gore,

  Wantonness lull’d to sleep

  With the virgin’s lute

  Or sated with her love;

  5.“Till Covet broke his locks 6: ban

  And slept with open doors; Envy sung at the rich man’s feast;

  Wrath was follow’d up and down

  By a little ewe lamb,

  And Wantonness on his own true love

  Begot a giant race.”

  6.Raging furious, the flames of desire

  Ran thro’ heaven & earth, living flames

  Intelligent, organix‘d, arm’d

  With destruction & plagues. In the midst

  The Eternal Prophet, bound in a chain,

  Compell’d to watch Urizen’s shadow,

  7.Rag’d with curses & sparkles of fury:

  Round the flames roll, as Los hurls his chains,

  Mounting up from his fury, condens’d,

  Rolling round & round, mounting on high

  Into vacuum, into non-entity

  Where nothing was; dashed wide apart,

  His feet stamp the eternal fierce-raging

  Rivers of wide flame; they roll round

  And round on all si
des, making their way

  Into darkness and shadowy obscurity.

  8.Wide apart stood the fires: Los remain’d

  In the void between fire and fire:

  In trembling and horror they beheld him;

  They stood wide apart, driv’n by his hands

  And his feet, which the nether abyss

  Stamp’d in fury and hot indignation.

  9.But no light from the fires! all was

  Darkness round Los: heat was not; for bound up

  Into fiery spheres from his fury,

  The gigantic flames trembled and hid.

  10.Coldness, darkness, obstruction, a Solid

  Without fluctuation, hard as adamant,

  Black as marble of Egypt, impenetrable,

  Bound in the fierce raging Immortal;

  And the seperated fires froze in:

  A vast solid without fluctuation

  Bound in his expanding clear senses.

  II

  1.The Immortal stood frozen amidst The vast rock of eternity times And times, a night of vast durance, Impatient, stifled, stiffen‘d, hard’ned;

  2.Till impatience no longer could bear

  The hard bondage: rent, rent, the vast solid,

  With a crash from immense to immense,

  3.Cracked across into numberless fragments.

  The Prophetic wrath, strugling for vent,

  Hurls apart, stamping furious to dust

  And crumbling with bursting sobs, heaves

  The black marble on high into fragments.

  4.Hurl’d apart on all sides as a falling

  Rock, the innumerable fragments away

  Fell asunder; and horrible vacuum

  Beneath him, & on all sides round,

  5.Falling, falling, Los fell & fell,

  Sunk precipitant, heavy, down, down,

  Times on times, night on night, day on day—

  Truth has bounds, Error none—falling, falling,

  Years on years, and ages on ages

  Still he fell thro’ the void, still a void

  Found for falling, day & night without end;

  For tho’ day or night was not, their spaces

  Were measur’d by his incessant whirls

  In the horrid vacuity bottomless.

  6.The Immortal revolving, indignant,

  First in wrath threw his limbs like the babe

  New born into our world: wrath subsided,

  And contemplative thoughts first arose;

  Then aloft his head rear’d in the Abyss

  And his downward-borne fall chang’d oblique

  7.Many ages of groans, till there grew

  Branchy forms organizing the Human

  Into finite inflexible organs;

  8.Till in process from falling he bore

  Sidelong on the purple air, wafting

  The weak breeze in efforts o‘erwearied.

  9.Incessant the falling Mind labour’d,

  Organizing itself, till the Vacuum

  Became element, pliant to rise

  Or to fall or to swim or to fly,

  With ease searching the dire vacuity.

  III

  1.The Lungs heave incessant, dull, and heavy;

  For as yet were all other parts formless,

  Shiv‘ring, clinging around like a cloud,

  Dim & glutinous as the white Polypus

  Driv’n by waves & englob’d on the tide.

  2.And the unformed part crav’d repose;

  Sleep began; the Lungs heave on the wave:

  Weary, overweigh’d, sinking beneath

  In a stifling black fluid, he woke.

  3.He arose on the waters; but soon

  Heavy falling, his organs like roots

  Shooting out from the seed, shot beneath,

  And a vast world of waters around him

  In furious torrents began.

  4.Then he sunk, & around his spent Lungs

  Began intricate pipes that drew in

  The spawn of the waters, Outbranching

  An immense Fibrous Form, stretching out

  Thro’ the bottoms of immensity raging.

  5.He rose on the floods; then he smote

  The wild deep with his terrible wrath,

  Seperating the heavy and thin.

  6.Down the heavy sunk, cleaving around

  To the fragments of solid: up rose

  The thin, flowing round the fierce fires

  That glow’d furious in the expanse.

  IV

  1.Then Light first began: from the fires,

  Beams, conducted by fluid so pure,

  Flow’d around the Immense. Los beheld

  Forthwith, writhing upon the dark void,

  The Back bone of Urizen appear

  Hurtling upon the wind

  Like a serpent! like an iron chain

  Whirling about in the Deep.

  2.Upfolding his Fibres together

  To a Form of impregnable strength,

  Los, astonish’d and terrified, built

  Furnaces; he formed an Anvil,

  A Hammer of adamant: then began

  The binding of Urizen day and night.

  3.Circling round the dark Demon with bowlings,

  Dismay & sharp blightings, the Prophet-Of

  Eternity beat on his iron links.

  4.And first from those infinite fires,

  The light that flow’d down on the winds

  He siez‘d, beating incessant, condensing

  The subtil particles in an Orb.

  5.Roaring indignant, the bright sparks

  Endur’d the vast Hammer; but unwearied

  Los beat on the Anvil, till glorious

  An immense Orb of fire he fram’d.

  6.Oft he quench’d it beneath in the Deeps,

  Then survey’d the all bright mass, Again

  Siezing fires from the terrific Orbs,

  He heated the round Globe, then beat,

  While, roaring, his Furnaces endur’d

  The chain’d Orb in their infinite wombs

  .

  7.Nine ages completed their circles

  When Los heated the glowing mass, casting

  It down into the Deeps: the Deeps fled

  Away in redounding smoke: the Sun

  Stood self-balanc’d. And Los smil’d with joy.

  He the vast Spine of Urizen siez’d,

  And bound down to the glowing illusion.

  8.But no light! for the Deep fled away

  On all sides, and left an unform’d

  Dark vacuity: here Urizen lay

  In fierce torments on his glowing bed;

  9.Till his Brain in a rock & his Heart

  In a fleshy slough formed four rivers

  Obscuring the immense Orb of fire

  Flowing down into night: till a Form

  Was completed, a Human Illusion

  In darkness and deep clouds involv’d.

  THE END OF THE BOOK OF LOS

  THE SONG OF LOS

  (1795)

  AFRICA

  I will sing you a song of Los, the Eternal Prophet:

  He sung it to four harps at the tables of Etemity. In heart-formed Africa

  Urizen faded! Ariston shudder’d! And thus the Song began:

  Adam stood in the garden of Eden

  And Noah on the mountains of Ararat;

  They saw Urizen give his Laws to the Nations

  By the hands of the children of Los.

  Adam shudder’d! Noah faded! black grew the sunny African

  When Rintrah gave Abstract Philosophy to Brama in the East.

  (Night spoke to the Cloud:

  “Lo these Human form’d spirits, in smiling hipocrisy, War

  Against one another; so let them War on, slaves to the eternal Elements.”)

  Noah shrunk beneath the waters;

  Abram fled in fires from Chaldea;

  Moses beheld upon Mount Sinai forms of dark delusion.

  To Trismegi
stus, Palamabron gave an abstract Law:

  To Pythagoras, Socrates & Plato.

  Times rolled on o‘er all the sons of Har: time after time

  Ore on Mount Atlas howl’d, chain’d down with the Chain of Jealousy;

  Then Oothoon hover’d over Judah & Jerusalem,

  And Jesus heard her voice (a man of sorrows) he reciev’ d

  A Gospel from wretched Theotormon.

  The human race began to wither, for the healthy built

  Secluded places, fearing the joys of Love,

  And the diseased only propagated.

  So Antamon call’d up Leutha from her valleys of delight

  And to Mahomet a loose Bible gave.

  But in the North, to Odin, Sotha gave a Code of War,

  Because of Diralada, thinking to reclaim his joy.

  These were the Churches, Hospitals, Castles, Palaces,

  Like nets & gins & traps to catch the joys of Eternity,

 

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