The Thrush, the Linnet & the Goldfinch, Robin & the Wren
Awake the Sun from his sweet reverie upon the Mountain.
The Nightingale again assays his song, & thro the day
And thro’ the night warbles luxuriant, every Bird of Song
Attending his loud harmony with admiration & love.
This is a Vision of the lamentation of Beulah over Ololon.
Thou percievest the Flowers put forth their precious Odours,
And none can tell how from so small a center comes such sweets,
Forgetting that within that Center Eternity expands
Its ever during doors that Og & Anak fiercely guard.
First, e’er the morning breaks, joy opens in the flowery bosoms,
Joy even to tears, which the Sun rising dries; first the Wild Thyme
And Meadow-sweet, downy & soft waving among the reeds,
Light springing on the air, lead the sweet Dance: they wake
The Honeysuckle sleeping on the Oak; the flaunting beauty
Revels along upon the wind; the White-thorn, lovely May,
Opens her many lovely eyes listening; the Rose still sleeps,
None dare to wake her; soon she bursts her crimson curtain’ d bed
And comes forth in the majesty of beauty; every Flower, The Pink, the Jessamine, the Wall-flower, the Carnation,
The Jonquil, the mild Lilly, opes her heavens; every Tree
And Flower & Herb soon fill the air with an innumerable Dance,
Yet all in order sweet & lovely. Men are sick with Love,
Such is a Vision of the lamentation of Beulah over Ololon.
[JUDGE THEN, OF THY OWN SELF]
“We are not Individuals but States, Combinations of Individuals.
We were Angels of the Divine Presence, & were Druids in Annandale,
Compell’d to combine into Form by Satan, the Spectre of Albion,
Who made himself a God & destroyed the Human Form Divine.
But the Divine Humanity & Mercy gave us a Human Form
Because we were combin’d in Freedom & holy Brotherhood,
While those combin’d by Satan’s Tyranny, first in the blood of War
And Sacrifice & next in Chains of imprisonment, are Shapeless Rocks
Retaining only Satan’s Mathematic Holiness, Length, Bredth & Highth,
Calling the Human Imagination, which is the Divine Vision & Fruition
In which Man liveth eternally, madness & blasphemy against
Its own Qualities, which are Servants of Humanity, not Gods or Lords.
Distinguish therefore States from Individuals in those States.
States Change, but Individual Identities never change nor cease.
You cannot go to Eternal Death in that which can never Die.
Satan & Adam are States Created into Twenty-seven Churches,
And thou, O Milton, art a State about to be Created,
Called Eternal Annihilation, that none but the Living shall
Dare to enter, & they shall enter triumphant over Death
And Hell & the Grave: States that are not, but ah! Seem to be.
Judge then of thy Own Self: thy Eternal Lineaments explore,
What is Eternal & what Changeable, & what Annihilable.
The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself.
Affection or Love becomes a State when divided from Imagination.
The Memory is a State always, & the Reason is a State Created to be Annihilated & a new Ratio Created.
Whatever can be Created can be Annihilated: Forms cannot:
The Oak is cut down by the Ax, the Lamb falls by the Knife,
But their Forms Eternal Exist For-ever. Amen. Hallelujah!”
Thus they converse with the Dead, watching round the Couch of Death;
For God himself enters Death’s Door always with those that enter
And lays down in the Grave with them, in Visions of Eternity,
Till they awake & see Jesus & the Linen Clothes lying
That the Females had Woven for them, & the Gates of their Father’s House.
[THE LOOM OF DEATH]
... “How are the Wars of man, which in Great Eternity
Appear around in the External Spheres of Visionary Life,
Here render’d Deadly within the Life & Interior Vision?
How are the Beasts & Birds & Fishes & Plants & Minerals Here fix’d into a frozen bulk subject to decay & death?
Those Visions of Human Life & Shadows of Wisdom & Knowledge
Are here frozen to unexpansive deadly destroying terrors,
And War & Hunting, the Two Fountains of the River of Life,
Are become Fountains of bitter Death & of corroding Hell,
Till Brotherhood is chang’d into a Curse & a Flattery
By Differences between Ideas, that Ideas themselves (which are
The Divine Members) may be slain in offerings for sin.
O dreadful Loom of Death! O piteous Female forms compell’d
To weave the Woof of Death! ...”
[JERUSALEM BOUND]
I also stood in Satan’s bosom & beheld its desolations:
A ruin’d Man, a ruin’d building of God, not made with hands:
Its plains of burning sand, its mountains of marble terrible:
Its pits & declivities flowing with molten ore & fountains
Of pitch & nitre: its ruin’d palaces & cities & mighty works:
Its furnaces of affliction, in which his Angels & Emanations
Labour with blacken’d visages among its stupendous ruins,
Arches & pyramids & porches, colonades & domes,
In which dwells Mystery, Babylon; here is her secret place,
From hence she comes forth on the Churches in delight;
Here is her Cup fill’d with its poisons in these horrid vales,
And here her scarlet Veil woven in pestilence & war;
Here is Jerusalem bound in chains in the Dens of Babylon.
In the Eastern porch of Satan’s Universe Milton stood & said:
“Satan! my Spectre! I know my power thee to annihilate
And be a greater in thy place & be thy Tabernacle,
A covering for thee to do thy will, till one greater comes
And smites me as I smote thee & becomes my covering.
Such are the Laws of thy false Heav’ns; but Laws of Eternity
Are not such; know thou, I come to Self Annihilation.
Such are the Laws of Eternity, that each shall mutually
Annihilate himself for others’ good, as I for thee.
Thy purpose & the purpose of thy Priests & of thy Churches
Is to impress on men the fear of death, to teach Trembling & fear, terror, constriction, abject selfishness.
Mine is to teach Men to despise death & to go on
In fearless majesty annihilating Self, laughing to scorn
Thy Laws & terrors, shaking down thy Synagogues as webs.
I come to discover before Heav’n & Hell the Self righteousness
In all its Hypocritic turpitude, opening to every eye
These wonders of Satan’s holiness, shewing to the Earth
The Idol Virtues of the Natural Heart, & Satan’s Seat
Explore in all its Selfish Natural Virtue, & put off
In Self annihilation all that is not of God alone,
To put off Self & all I have, ever & ever. Amen.”
Satan heard, Coming in a cloud, with trumpets & flaming fire,
Saying: “I am God the judge of all, the living & the dead.
Fall therefore down & worship me, submit thy supreme Dictate to my eternal Will, & to my dictate bow.
I hold the Balances of Right & Just & mine the Sword.
Seven Angels bear my Name & in those Seven I appear,
But I alone am God & I alone in Heav’n & Earth
Of all that live dare utter this, others tremble & bow,
Till All Things
become One Great Satan, in Holiness
Oppos’d to Mercy, and the Divine Delusion, Jesus, be no more.”
[BATHE IN THE WATERS OF LIFE]
But turning toward Ololon in terrible majesty Milton
Replied: “Obey thou the Words of the Inspired Man.
All that can be annihilated must be annihilated
That the Children of Jerusalem may be saved from slavery.
There is a Negation, & there is a Contrary:
The Negation must be destroy’d to redeem the Contraries.
The Negation is the Spectre, the Reasoning Power in Man:
This is a false Body, in Incrustation over my Immortal
Spirit, a Selfhood which must be put off & annihilated alway.
To cleanse the Face of my Spirit by Self-examination,
To bathe in the Waters of Life, to wash off the Not Human,
I come in Self-annihilation & the grandeur of Inspiration,
To cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith in the Saviour,
To cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration,
To cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton from Albion’s covering,
To take off his filthy garments & clothe him with Imagination,
To cast aside from Poetry all that is not Inspiration,
That it no longer shall dare to mock with the aspersion of Madness
Cast on the Inspired by the tame high finisher of paltry Blots
Indefinite, or paltry Rhymes, or paltry Harmonies,
Who creeps into State Government like a catterpiller to destroy;
To cast off the idiot Questioner who is always questioning
But never capable of answering, who sits with a sly grin
Silent plotting when to question, like a thief in a cave,
Who publishes doubt & calls it knowledge, whose Science is Despair,
Whose pretence to knowledge is Envy, whose whole Science is
To destroy the wisdom of ages to gratify ravenous Envy That rages round him like a Wolf day & night without rest:
He smiles with condescension, he talks of Benevolence & Virtue,
And those who act with Benevolence & Virtue they murder time on time.
These are the destroyers of Jerusalem, these are the murderers
Of Jesus, who deny the Faith & mock at Eternal Life,
Who pretend to Poetry that they may destroy Imagination
By imitation of Nature’s Images drawn from Remembrance.
These are the Sexual Garments, the Abomination of Desolation,
Hiding the Human Lineaments as with an Ark & Curtains
Which Jesus rent & now shall wholly purge away with Fire
Till Generation is swallow’d up in Regeneration.”
[THE LAST VISION]
And I beheld the Twenty-four Cities of Albion
Arise upon their Thrones to Judge the Nations of the Earth;
And the Immortal Four in whom the Twenty-four appear Fourfold
Arose around Albion’s body. Jesus wept & walked forth
From Felpham’s Vale clothed in Clouds of blood, to enter into
Albion’s Bosom, the bosom of death, & the Four surrounded him
In the Column of Fire in Felpham’s Vale; then to their mouths the Four
Applied their Four Trumpets & them sounded to the Four winds.
Terror struck in the Vale I stood at that immortal sound.
My bones trembled, I fell outstretch’d upon the path
A moment, & my Soul return’d into its mortal state
To Resurrection & Judgment in the Vegetable Body,
And my sweet Shadow of Delight stood trembling by my side.
Immediately the Lark mounted with a loud trill from Felpham’s Vale,
And the Wild Thyme from Wimbleton’s green & impurpled Hills,
And Los & Enitharmon rose over the Hills of Surrey:
Their clouds roll over London with a south wind; soft Oothoon
Pants in the Vales of Lambeth, weeping o’er her Human Harvest.
Los listens to the Cry of the Poor Man, his Cloud
Over London in volume terrific low bended in anger.
Rintrah & Palamabron view the Human Harvest beneath.
Their Wine-presses & Barns stand open, the Ovens are prepar’d,
The Waggons ready; terrific Lions & Tygers sport & play.
All Animals upon the Earth are prepar’d in all their strength
To go forth to the Great Harvest & Vintage of the Nations
From JERUSALEM
(1804-1820)
THE EMANATION OF THE GIANT ALBION
SHEEP TO THE PUBLIC GOATS
After my three years slumber on the banks of the Ocean, I again display my Giant forms to the Public. My former Giants & Fairies having reciev’d the highest reward possible, the love and friendship of those with whom to be connected is to be blessed. I cannot doubt that this more consolidated & extended work will be as kindly recieved.... I also hope the Reader will be with me, wholly One in Jesus our Lord, who is the God of Fire and Lord of Love to whom the Ancients look’d and saw his day afar off, with trembling & amazement.
The Spirit of Jesus is continual forgiveness of Sin: he who waits to be righteous before he enters into the Saviour’s kingdom, the Divine Body, will never enter there. I am perhaps the most sinful of men. I pretend not to holiness: yet I pretend to love, to see, to converse with daily as man with man, & the more to have an interest in the Friend of Sinners. Therefore, dear Reader, forgive what you do not approve, & love me for this energetic exertion of my talent.
Reader! lover of books! lover of heaven,
And of that God from whom all things are given,
Who in mysterious Sinai’s awful cave
To Man the wondrous art of writing gave:
Again he speaks in thunder and in fire!
Thunder of Thought, & flames of fierce desire:
Even from the depths of Hell his voice I hear
Within the unfathom’d caverns of my Ear.
Therefore I print; nor vain my types shall be:
Heaven, Earth & Hell henceforth shall live in harmony.
Of the Measure in which
the following Poem is written.
We who dwell on Earth can do nothing of ourselves; every thing is conducted by Spirits, no less than Digestion or Sleep.... When this Verse was first dictated to me, I consider’d a Monotonous Cadence, like that used by Milton & Shakespeare & all writers of English Blank Verse, derived from the modem bondage of Rhyming, to be a necessary and indispensible part of Verse. But I soon found that in the mouth of a true Orator such monotony was not only awkward, but as much a bondage as rhyme itself. I therefore have produced a variety in every line, both of cadences & number of syllables. Every word and every letter is studied and put into its fit place; the terrific numbers are reserved for the terrific parts, the mild & gentle for the mild & gentle parts, and the prosaic for inferior parts; all are necessary to each other. Poetry Fetter’d Fetters the Human Race. Nations are Destroy’d or Flourish in proportion as Their Poetry, Painting and Music are Destroy’d or Flourish! The Primeval State of Man was Wisdom, Art and Science.
TO THE JEWS
Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion! Can it be? Is it a Truth that the Learned have explored? Was Britain the Primitive Seat of the Patriarchal Religion? If it is true, my title-page is also True, that Jerusalem was & is the Emanation of the Giant Albion. It is True and cannot be controverted. Ye are united, 0 ye Inhabitants of Earth, in One Religion, The Religion of Jesus, the most Ancient, the Eternal & the Everlasting Gospel. The Wicked will turn it to Wickedness. the Righteous to Righteousness. Amen! Huzza! Selah! “All things Begin & End in Albion’s Ancient Druid
Rocky Shore.”
Your Ancestors derived their origin from Abraham, Heber, Shem and Noah, who were Druids, as the Druid Temples (which are the Patriarchal Pillars & Oak Groves) over the whole Earth witness to this day.
You have a tradition,
that Man anciently contain’d in his mighty limbs all things in Heaven & Earth: this you recieved from the Druids. “But now the Starry Heavens are fled from the mighty limbs of Albion.”
Albion was the Parent of the Druids, & in his Chaotic State of Sleep, Satan & Adam & the whole World was Created by the Elohim.
The fields from Islington to Marybone,
To Primrose Hill and Saint John’s Wood,
Were builded over with pillars of gold,
And there Jerusalem’s pillars stood.
Her Little-ones ran on the fields,
The Lamb of God among them seen,
And fair Jerusalem his Bride,
Among the little meadows green.
Pancrass & Kentish-town repose
Among her golden pillars high,
Among her golden arches which
Shine upon the starry sky.
The Jew’s-harp-house & the Green Man,
The Ponds where Boys to bathe delight,
The fields of Cows by Willan’s farm,
Shine in Jerusalem’s pleasant sight.
She walks upon our meadows green,
The Lamb of God walks by her side,
And every English Child is seen
Children of Jesus & his Bride.
Forgiving trespasses and sins
Lest Babylon with cruel Og
With Moral & Self-righteous Law
Should Crucify in Satan’s Synagogue!
What are those golden Builders doing
Near mournful ever-weeping Paddington,
Standing above that mighty Ruin
Where Satan the first victory won,
Where Albion slept beneath the Fatal Tree,
And the Druids’ golden Knife
Rioted in human gore,
In Offerings of Human Life?
The Portable William Blake Page 33
