The Complete Poems
Page 21
A tight’ning girdle grew,
10 Around his bosom. In sobbings
He burst the girdle in twain,
But still another girdle
Oppressd 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
20 In each other link by link lock’d
4. They took Orc to the top of a mountain.
O how Enitharmon wept!
They chain’d his young limbs to the rock
With the Chain of Jealousy
Beneath Urizens 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.
30 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
40 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 & Orc.
10. And she bore an enormous race
CHAP: VIII
1. Urizen explor’d his dens
Mountain, moor, & wilderness,
With a globe of fire lighting his journey
A fearful journey, annoy’d
50 By cruel enormities: forms
PLATE 23
Of life on his forsaken mountains
2. And his world teemd vast enormities
Frightning; 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
10 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
20 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
PLATE 25
The Ox in the slaughter house moans
The Dog at the wintry door
And he wept, & 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 where-ever he wanderd in sorrows
Upon the aged heavens
A cold shadow follow’d behind him
10 Like a spiders web, moist, cold, & dim
Drawing out from his sorrowing soul
The dungeon-like heaven dividing
Where ever the footsteps of Urizen
Walk’d over the cities in sorrow.
7. Till a Web dark & cold, throughout all
The tormented element stretch’d
From the sorrows of Urizens soul
And the Web is a Female in embrio.
None could break the Web, no wings of fire.
20 8. So twisted the cords, & so knotted
The meshes: twisted like to the human brain
9. And all calld it, The Net of Religion.
CHAP: 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,
30 Beneath the dark net of infection.
2. Till the shrunken eyes clouded over
Discernd not the woven hipocrisy
But the streaky slime in their heavens
Brought together by narrowing perceptions
Appeard transparent air; for their eyes
Grew small like the eyes of a man
And in reptile forms shrinking together
Of seven feet stature they remaind
3. Six days they shrunk up from existence
40 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
PLATE 28
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 remaind
Surrounded by salt floods, now call’d
10 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
20 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
PLATE 2
AHANIA
CHAP: Ist
1: Fuzon, on a chariot iron-wing’d
On spiked flames rose; his hot visage
Flam’d furious! sparkles in 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 Urizens silent burnings
10 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
Lengthning into a hungry beam. Swiftly
20 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.
30 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 groand anguishd & 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 wandring
In chaos and circling dark Urizen,
40 As the moon anguishd circles the earth;
Hopeless! abhorrd! 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 wandring on earth
Till Los siezd it and beat in a mass
With the body of the sun.
PLATE 3
CHAP: IId
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
10 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
20 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: O 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
30 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
40 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.
CHAP: III
1: The Globe shook; and Urizen seated
On black clouds his sore wound anointed
The ointment flow’d down on the void
50 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,
60 Many sparks of vegetation;
Soon shot the painted root
Of Mystery, under his heel:
It grew a thick tree; he wrote
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
70 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
PLATE 4
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.
CHAP: IV
1: Forth flew the arrows of pestilence
10 Round the pale living Corse on the tree
2: For in Urizens 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,
20 Till petrific pain scurfd 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
30 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:
Urizens 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 groand on the Tree.
CHAP: 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
50 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!
60 4: Weeping I walk over rocks
Over dens & thro’ valle
ys 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!
70 I cannot kiss the place
Whereon his bright feet have trod,
PLATE 5
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:
10 8: To awake my king in the morn!
To embrace Ahanias 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.
20 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
O Urizen, sported and sang;
12: Then thou with thy lap full of seed
30 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
40 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
PLATE 3
LOS
CHAP: 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 stedfast Earth
And thus her speech broke forth.
3: O Times remote!