Book the Second
Thou hearest the Nightingale begin the Song of Spring.
The Lark sitting upon his earthly bed, just as the morn
Apears, listens silent; then springing from the waving Corn-field loud
He leads the Choir of Day! trill, thrill, thrill, trill,
Mounting upon the wings of light into the great Expanse,
Reechoing against the lovely blue & shining heavenly Shell.
His little throat labours with inspiration; every feather
On throat & breast & wings vibrates with the effluence Divine.
All Nature listens silent to him, & the awful Sun
Stands still upon the Mountain looking on this little Bird
With eyes of soft humility & wonder, love & awe.
Then loud from their green covert all the Birds begin their Song:
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 perceivest the Flowers put forth their precious Odours,
And none can tell how form so small a center comes such sweets,
Forgetting that within that Center Eternity expends
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 innumberable Dance,
Yet all in order sweet & lovely. Men are sick with Love.
Such is a Vision of the Lamentation of Beulah over Ololon.
And Milton oft sat upon the Couch of Death, & oft conversed
In vision & dream beatific with the Seven Angels of the Presence:
‘I have turned my back upon these Heavens builded on cruelty.
My Spectre still wandering thro’ them follows my Emanation;
He hunts her footsteps thro’ the snow & the wintry hail & rain.
The idiot Reasoner laughs at the Man of Imagination,
And from laughter proceeds o murder by undervaluing calumny.’
Then Hillel, who is Lucifer, replied over the Couch of Death,
And thus the Seven angels instructed him, & thus they converse:
‘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 make 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;
Whild 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 in Twenty-seven Churches,
And thou, O Milton, are 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 of 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 Vision 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.
* * *
There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find,
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it; but the Industrious find
This Moment & it multiply; & when it once is found
It renovates every Moment of the Day if rightly placed.
In this Moment Ololon descended to Los & Enitharmon,
Unseen beyond the Mundane Shell, Southward in Milton’s track.
Just in this Moment when the morning odours rise abroads,
And first from the Wild thyme, stands a Fountain in a rock
Of crystal flowing into two Streams: one flow thro’ Golgonooza
And thro’ Beulah to Eden, beneath Los’s western wall;
The other flows thro’ the Aerial Void & all the Churches,
Meeting again in Golgonooze beyond Satan’s Seat.
The Wild thyme is Los’s Messenger to Eden, a mighty Demon,
Terrible, deadly & poisonous his presence in Ulro dark;
Therefore the appears only a small Root creeping in grass,
Covering over the Rock of Odours his bright purple mantle
Beside the Fount, above the Lark’s Nest in Golgonooza.
Luvah slept here in death, & here is Luvah’s empty Tomb.
Ololon sat beside this Fountain on the Rock of Odours.
Just at the place to where the Lark mounts is a Crystal Gate:
It is the entrance of the First Heaven, named Luther; for
The Lark is Los’s Messenger thro’ the Twenty-seven Churches,
That the Seven Eyes of god, who walk even to Satan’s Seat
Thro’ all the Twenty-seven Heavens, may not slumber nor sleep.
But the Lark’s Nest is at the gate of Los, at the eastern
Gate of wide Golgonooza, & the Lark is Los’s Messenger.
When on the highest lift of his light pinions he arrives
At that bright Gate, another Lark meets him, & back to back
They touch their pinions, tip tip, and each descend
To their respective Earths, & there all night consult with Angels
Of Providence & with the eyes of God all night in slumbers
Inspired, & at the dawn of day send out another Lark
Into another Heaven to carry news upon his wings.
Thus are the Messengers dispatch’d till they reach the Earth again
In the East Gate of Golgonooza; & the twenty-eighth bright
Lark met the Female Ololon descending my Garden.
Thus it appears to Mortal eyes & those of the Ulro Heavens,
But not thus to Immortals; the Lark is a mighty Angel.
For Ololon step’d into the Polypus within the Mundane Shell –
They could not step into Vegetable Worlds without becoming
The enemies of Humanity, except in a Female Form –
And as One Female Ololon and all its mighty Hosts
Appear’d, a Virgin of twelve years. Nor time nor space was
To the perception of the Virgin Ololon; but as the
Flash of lightning, but more quick, the virgin in my Garden
Before my Cottage stood; for the Satanic space is delusion.
For when Los join’d with me he took me in his fi’ry
Whirlwind.
My Vegetated portion was hurried from Lambeth’s shades;
He set me down in Pelpham’s Vale & prepar’d a beautiful
Cottage for me, that in three years I might write all these Visions
To display Nature’s cruel holiness, the deceits of Natural Religion.
Walking in my Cottage Garden sudden I beheld
The Virgin Ololon & address’d her as a Daughter of Beulah:
‘Virgin of Providence fear not to enter into my Cottage.
What is thy message to thy friend? What am I now to do?
Is it again to plunge into deeper affliction? Behold me
Ready to obey, but pity thou my Shadow of Delight.
Enter my Cottage, comfort her, for she is sick with fatigue.’
The Virgin answer’d: ‘Knowest thou of Milton who descended
Driven form Eternity? Him I seek! terrified at my Act
In Great Eternity which thou knowest, I come him to seek.’
So Ololon utter’d in words distinct the anxious thought:
Mild was the voice, but more distinct than any earthly.
That Milton’s Shadow heard; & condensing all his Fibres
Into a strength impregnable of majesty & beauty infinite,
I saw he was the Covering Cherub, & within him Satan
And Rahab, in an outside which is fallacious, within
Beyond the outline of Identity, in the Selfhood deadly.
And he appear’d the Wicker Man of Scandinavia, in whom
Jerusalem’s children consume in flames among the Stars.
Descending down into my Garden, a Human Wonder of God
Reaching form heaven to earth, a Cloud & Human Form,
I beheld Milton with astonishment, & in him beheld
The Monstrous Churches of Beulah, the Gods of Ulro dark
Twelve monstrous dishumaniz’d terrors, Synagogues of Satan,
A Double Twelve & Thrice Nine: such their divisions.
* * *
and Milton, collecting all his fibres into impregnable strength,
Descended down a Paved work of all kinds of precious stones
Out from the eastern sky; descending down into my Cottage
Garden, clothed in black, severe & silent he descended.
The Spectre of Satan stood upon the roaring sea & beheld
Milton within his sleeping Humanity; trembling & shudd’ring
He stood upon the waves, a Twenty-seven-fold mighty Demon,
Gorgeous & beautiful; loud roll his thunders against Milton.
Loud Satan thunder’d, loud & dark upon mild Felpham shore;
Not daring to touch one fibre he howl’d round upon the Sea.
I also stood in Satan’s bosom & beheld its desolatons:
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, colonnades & 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 mutully
Annighilate himself for other’s 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 it Hypocritic turpitude, opening to every eye
These wonders of Satan’s holiness, shewing to the Earth
The Idol Virtues of the Natural Hearth, & 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 Divines Delusion, Jesus, be no more.’
Suddenly around Milton on my Path the Starry Seven
Burn’d terrible! My Path became a solid fire, as bright
As the clear Sun, & Milton silent came down on my Path.
And there went forth from the Starry limbs of the Seven, Forms
Human, with Trumpets innumerable, sounding articulate
As the Seven spake; and they stood in a mighty Column of Fire
Surrounding Felpham’s Vale, reaching to the Mundane Shell, Saying:
‘Awake, Albion awake! reclaim thy Reasoning Spectre. Subdue
Him to the Divine Mercy; Cast him down into the Lake
Of Los that ever burneth with fire, ever & ever, Amen!
Let the Four Zoas awake form Slumbers of Six Thousand Years.’
Then loud the Furnaces of Los were heard, & seen as Seven Heavens
Stretching from south to north over the mountains of Albion.
Satan heard’ trembling round his Body, he incircled it;
He trembled with exceeding great trembling & astonishment,
Howling in his Spectre round his Body, hung’ring to devour
But fearing for the pain; for if he touches a Vital
His torment is unendurable. Therefore he cannot devour,
But howls round it as a lion round his prey continually.
Loud Satan thunder’d, loud& dark upon mild Felpham’s Shore,
Coming in a Cloud with Trumpets & with Fiery Flame,
An awful Form eastward, form midst of a bright Pavedwork
Of Precious stones by Cherubim surrounded, so permitted
(Lest he should fall apart in his Eternal Death) to imitate
The Eternal Great Humanity Divine surrounded by
His Cherubim & Seraphim in ever happy Eternity.
Beneath sat Chaos: sin on his right hand, Death on his left;
And Ancient Night spread over all the heav’n his Mantle of Laws.
He trembled with exceeding great trembling & astonishment.
Then Albion rose up in the Night of Beulah on his Couch
Of dread repose seen by the visionary eye; his face is toward
The east, toward Jerusalem’s Gates; groaning he sat above
His rocks. London & Bath & Legions & Edinburgh
Are the four pillars of his Throne; his left foot near London
Covers the shades of Tyburn; his instep from Windsor
To Primrose Hill stretching to Highgate & Holloway;
London is between his knees, its basements fourfold;
His right foot stretches to the sea on Dover cliffs, his heel
On Canterbury’s ruins; his right hand covers lofty Wales,
His left Scotland; his bosom girt with gold involves
York, Edinburgh, Durham & Carlisle, & on the front
Bath, Oxford, Cambridge, Norwich; his right elbow
Leans on the Rocks of Erin’s Land, Ireland, ancient nation;
His head bends over London. He sees his embodied Spectre
Trembling before him with exceeding great trembling & fear.
He views Jerusalem & Babylon, his tears flow down.
He mov’d his right foot to Cornwall, his left to the rocks of Bognor;
He strove to rise to walk into the Deep, but strength failing
Forbad; & down with dreadful groans he sunk upon his Couch
In moony Beulah. Los, his strong Guard, walks round beneath the Moon.
Urizen faints in terror, striving among the Brooks of Arnon
With Milton’s Spirit. As the Plowman of Artificer of Shepherd
While in the labours of his Calling sends his thought abroad
To labour in the ocean or in the starry heaven, So Milton
Labour’d in Chasms of the Mundane Shell, tho’ here before
My Cottage midst the Starry Seven, where the Virgin Ololon
Stood rembling in the Porch. Loud Satan thunder’d on the stormy Sea,
Circling Albion’s Cliffs in which the Four-fold World resides,
Tho’s seen in fallacy outside, a fallacy of Satan’s Churches.
Before Ololon Milton stood & perceiv’d the Eternal Form
Of that mild Vision; wondrous were their acts by me unknown
Except remotely; and I heard Ololon say to Milton:
‘I see thee strive upon the Brooks of Arnon. There a dread
And awful Man I see, o’vercover’d with the mantle of years.
I behold Los & Urizen, I behold Orc & Tharmas,
The Four Zoas of Albion, & thy Spirit with them striving,
In Self annihilation giving thy life to thy enemies.
Are those who contemn Religion & seek to annihilate it
Become in their Feminine portions the causes & promoters
Of these Religions? How is this thing, this Newtonian Phantasm,
This Voltaire & Rousseau, this Hume & Gibbon & Bolingbroke,
This Natural Religion, this impossibleabsurdity?
Is Ololon the cause of this? O where shall I hide my face?
These tears fall for the little ones, the Children of Jerusalem,
Lest they be annihilated in thy annihilation.’
No sooner she had spoke but Rahab Babylon appear’d
Eastward upon the Paved work across Europe & Asia,
Glorious as the midday Sun, in Satan’s bosom glowing,
A Female hidden in a Male, Religion hidden in War,
Nam’d Moral Virtue, cruel two-fold Monster shining bright,
A Dragon red & hidden Harlot which John in Patmos saw.
And all beneath the Nations innumberable of Ulro
Apear’d: the Seven Kingdoms of Canaan & Five Baalim
Of Philistea into Twelve divided, call’d after the Names
Of Israel, as they are in Eden – Mountain, River & Plain,
City & sandy Desart intermingled beyond mortal ken.
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 form 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, an Incrustation over my Immortal
Spirit, a Selfhood which must be put off & annihilated always.
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 form Albion’s covering,
To take off his filthy garments, & clothe him with Imagination;
To cast aside from Poetry all that is not Inspiration,
That is 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 wit 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.’
Then trembled the Virgin Ololon & reply’d in clouds of despair:
‘Is this our Feminine Portion, the Six-fold Miltonic Female?
Terrible this Portion trembles before thee, O awful Man!
Altho’ our Human Power can sustain the severe contentions
Of Friendship, our Sexual cannot, but flies into the Ulro.
Hence arose all our terrors in Eternity; & now remembrance
Returns upon us. Are we Contraries, O Milton, Thou & I?
O Immortal! how were we led to War the Wars of Death?
Is this the Void Outside of Existence, which if enter’d into
Becomes a Womb? & is this the Death Couch of Albion?
Thou goest to Eternal Death, & all must go with thee.’
So saying, the Virgin divided Six-fold, & with a shriek
Dolorous that ran thro’ all Creation, a Double-Six-fold Wonder,
Away from Ololon she divided & fled into the depths
Of Milton’s Shadow, as a Dove upon the stormy Sea.
Then as a Moony Ark Ololon descended to Felpham’s Vale
In clouds of blood, in streams of gore, with dreadful thunderings
Into the Fires of Intellect that rejoic’d in Felpham’s Vale
Around the Starry Eight. With one accord the Starry Eight became
One Man, Jesus the Saviour, wonderful! Round his limbs
The Clouds of Ololon folded as a Garment dipped in blood,
Written within & without in woven letters; & the Writing
Is the Divine Revelation in the Litteral expression,
A Garment of War. I heard it nam’d the Woof of Six Thousand Years.
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 Four-fold
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 trembles. 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 form 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.
Finis
poem by William Blake from Milton (1810)
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Night the First
'If you account it Wisdom when you are angry to be silent and
Not shew it: I do not account that Wisdom but folly.
Every Man's Wisdom is peculiar ro his own Individuality.
Lo Satan, my youngest born, art thou not Prince of the Starry Hosts
And of the Wheels of Heaven, to turn the Mills day & night?
Art thou not Newton's Pantocrator weaving the the woof of Locke?
To Mortals the Mills seem every thing & the Harrow of Shaddai
A scheme of Human conduct invisible & incomprehensible.
Get to thy Labours at the Mills & leave me to my wrath.'
. . .
Ah weak & wide astray: Ah shut in narrow doleful form
Creeping in reptile flesh upon the bosom of the ground:
The Eye of Man a little narrow orb closd up & dark
Scarcely beholding the great light, conversing with the Void:
The Ear a little shell in small volutions shutting out
All melodies & comprehending only Discord & Harmony;
The Tongue a little moisture Fills, a little food it cloys,
A little sound it utters & its cries are fa;sely heard,
Then brings forth Moral Virtue the cruel Virgin Babylon.
'Can such an Eye judge of the stars? & looking thro its tubes
Measure the sunny rays that point their spears in Udanadan?
Can such an Ear filld with the vapours of the yawning pit
Judge of the pure melodious harp struck by a hand divine:
Can such closed Nostrils feel a joy? or tell of autumn fruits
When grapes & figs burst their covering to the joyful air?
Can such a Tongue boast of the living waters? or take in
Ought but the Vegetable Ratio & loathe the faint delight?
Can such gross Lips percieve? alas, folded within themselves
They touch not ought but pallid turn & tremble at every wind.'
For Satan flaming with Rintrah's fury hidden beneath his own mildness
Accus'd Palamabron before the Assembly of ingratitude: of malice:
He created Seven deadly Sins drawing out his infernal scroll
Of Moral laws and cruel punishments upon the clouds of Jehovah
To pervert the Divine voice in its entrance to the earth
With thunder of war & trumpets' sound, with armies of disease,
Punishments & deaths musterd & number'd; 'Saying I am God alone;
There is no other: let all obey my principles of moral individuality.
I have brough them from the uppermost innermost recesses
Of my Eternal Mind, transgressors I will rend off for ever,
As now I rend this accursed Family from my covering.'
Thus Satan rag'd amidst the Assembly: and his bosom grew
Opake against the Divine Vision, the paved terraces of
His bosom inwards shone with fires, but the stones becoming opake
Hid him from sight, in an extreme blackness and darkness,
And there a World of deeper Ulrio was opend, in the midst
Of the Assembly. In Satan's bosom a vast unfathomable Abyss.
Astonishment held the Assembly in an awful silence: and tears
Fell down as dews of night, & a loud solemn universal groan
Was utter'd from the east & from the west & from the south
And from the north; and Satan stood opake immeasurable
Covering the east with solid blackness, round his hidden heart
With thunders utterd from his hidden wheels: accusing loud
The Divine Mercy for protecting Palamabron in his tent.
Rintrah rear'd up walls of rocks and pourd rovers & moats
Of fire round the walls: columns of fire guard around
Between Satan and Palmabron in the terrible darkness.
And Satan not having the Science of Wrath, but only of Pity
Rent them asunder, and wrath was left to wrath, & pity to pity.
He sunk down a dreadful Death, unlike the slumbers of Beulah.
The Sparation was terrible: the Dead was repos'd on his Couch
Beneath the Couch of Albion, on the seven mountains of Rome
In the whole place of the Covering Cherub, Rome, Babylon & Tyre.
His Spectre raging furious descended into its Space.
. . .
'Let the Bard himself witness. Where hadst thou this terrible Song?'
The Bard replied: 'I am Inspired! I know it his Truth! for I Sing
According to the inspiration of Poetic Genius
Whos is the eternal all-protecting Divine Humanity
To whom he Glory & Power & Dominion Evermore Amen.'
. . .
Then Milton rose up from the heavens of Albion ardorous!
The whole Assembly wept propgetic, seeing in Milton's face
And in his lineaments divine the Shades of Death & Ulro.
He took off the robe of the promise, & ungirded himself from the oath of God.
And Milton said, 'I go to Eternal Death! The Nations still
Follow after the destestable Gods of Priam; in pomp
Of warlike selfhood, contradicting and blaspheming.
When will the Resurrection come; ro deliver the sleeping body
From corruptibility; O when, Lord Jesus, wilt thou come?
Tarry no longer; for my soul lies at the gates of death.
I will arise and look forth for the morning of the grave.
I will go down to the sepulcher to see if morning breaks!
Lest the Last Judgement come & find me unannihilate
And I siez'd & giv'n into the hands of my own Selfhood.
The Lamb of God is seen thro' mists & shadows, hov'ring
Over the sepulchers in clouds of Jehovah & winds of Elohim,
A disk of blood distant, distant; & heav'ns & earths will roll dark between.
What do I here before the Judgement? without my Emanation?
With the daufgters of memory, & not with the daughters of inspiration?
I in my Selfhood am that Satan: I am that Evil One!
He is my Spectre! in my obedience to loose him from my Hells,
To claim the Hells, my Furnaces, I go to Eternal Death.'
. . .
Four Universes round the Mundane Egg remain Chaotic,
One to the North, named Urthona: One to the South, named Urizen:
One to the East, named Luvah: One to the West, named Tharmas.
They are the Four Zoa's that stood around the Throne Divine:
But when Luvah assum;d the World of Urizen to the South:
And Albion was slain upon his mountains, & in his tent:
All fell towards the Center in dire ruiin, sinking down.
And in the South remains a burning fire; in the East a void;
In the West, a world of raging waters; in the North a solid,
Unfathomable: without end. But in the midst of these
In built eternally the Universe of Los and Enitharmon:
. . .
poem by William Blake from Vala or The Four Zoas: Night the First
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Book the First
Daughters of Beulah! Muses who inspire the Poet’s Song,
Record the journey of immortal Milton thro’ you Realms
Of terror & mild moony luster, in soft sexual delusions
Of varied beauty, to delight the wanderer and repose
His burning thirst & descending down the Nerves of my right arm
From out the Portals of my Brain, where by your ministry
The Eternal Great Humanity Divine planted his Paradise,
And in it caus’d the Spectres of the Dead to take sweet forms
In likeness of himself. Tell also of the False Tongue! vegetated
Beneath your land of shadows, of its sacrifices and
Its offerings, even till Jesus, the image of the Invisible God,
Became its prey – a curse, an offering and an atonement
For Death Eternal in the heavens of Albion, & before the Gates
Of Jerusalem his Emanation, in the heavens beneath Beulah.
Say first! what mov’d Milton, who walk’d about in Eternity
One hundred years, pond’ring the intricate mazes of Providence,
Unhappy tho’ in heav’n – he obey’d, he murmur’d not, he was silent
Viewing his Sixfold Emanation scatter’d thro’ the deep
In torment – To go into the deep, her to redeem & himself perish?
What cause at length mov’d Milton to this unexampled deed?
A Bard’s prophetic Song! for sitting at eternal tables,
Terrific among the Sons of Albion in chorus solemn & loud,
A Bard broke forth! all sat attentive to the awful man.
* * *
Then Milton rose up form the heavens of Albion ardorous.
The whole Assembly wept prophetic, seeing in Milton’s face
And in his lineaments divine the shades of Death & Ulro.
He took off the robe of the promise, & ungirded himself from the oath of God.
And Milton said: ‘I go to Eternal Death! The Nations still
Follow after the detestable Gods of Priam, in pomp
Of warlike selfhood, contradicting and blaspheming.
When will the Resurrection come to deliver the sleeping body
From corruptibility? O when, Lord Jesus, wilt thou come?
Tarry no longer, for my soul lies at the gates of death.
I will arise and look forth for the morning of the grave;
I will go down to the sepulcher to see if morning breaks;
I will go down to self annihilation and eternal death,
Lest the Last Judgment come & find me unannihilate,
And I be seiz’d & giv’n into the hands of my own Selfhood.
The Lamb of God is seen thro’ mists & shadows, hov’ring
Over the sepulchers in clouds of Jehovah & winds of Elohim,
A disk of blood, distant; & heav’ns & earths roll dark between.
What do I here before the Judgment? without my Emanation?
With the daughters of memory & not with the daughters of inspiration?
I in my Selfhood am that Satan; I am that Evil One!
He is my Spectre! In my obedience to loose him from my Hells,
To claim the Hells, my Furnaces, I go to Eternal Death.’
* * *
But Milton entering my Foot, I saw in the nether
Regions of the Imagination – also all men on Earth
And all in Heaven saw in the nether region of the Imagination
In Ulro beneath Beulah – the vast breach of Milton’s descent.
But I knew not that it was Milton, for man cannot know
What passes in his members till periods of Space & Time
Reveal the secrets of Eternity; for more extensive
Than any other earthly things are Man’s earthly lineaments.
And all this Vegetable World appear’d on my left Foot,
As a bright sandal from’d immortal of precious stones & gold:
I stooped down & bound it on to walk forward thro’ Eternity.
* * *
…what time I bound my sandals
On to walk forward thro’ Eternity, Los descended to me;
And Los behind me stood, a terrible flaming Sun, just close
Behind my back. I turned round in terror, and behold!
Los stood in that fierce glowing fire, & he also stoop’d down
And bound my sandals on in Udan-Adan. Trembling I stood
Exceedingly with fear & terror, standing in the Vale
Of Lambeth; but he kissed me, and wish’d me health,
And I became One Man with him arising in my strength.
‘Twas too late now to recede. Los had enter’d into my soul;
his terrors now posses’d me whole! I arose in fury & strength.
‘I am that Shadowy Prophet who Six Thousand Years ago
Fell from my station in the Eternal bosom. Six Thousand Years
Are finish’d. I return! both Time & Space obey my will.
I in Six Thousand Years walk up and down; for not one Moment
Of Time is lost, nor one Event of Space unpermanent,
But all remain; every fabric of Six Thousand Years
Remains permanent. Tho’ on the Earth where Satan
Fell and was cut off all things vanish & are seen no more,
They vanish not from me & mine; we guard them first & last.
The generations of men run on in the tide of Time,
But leave their destin’d lineaments permanent for ever & ever.’
* * *
Los is by mortals nam’d Time; Enitharmon is nam’d Space.
But they depict him bald & aged who is in eternal youth,
All powerful, and his locks flourish like the brows of morning.
He is the Spirit of Prophecy, the ever apparent Elias.
Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Time’s swiftness,
Which is the swiftest of all things, all were eternal torment.
All the Gods of the Kingdoms of Earth labour in Los’s Halls:
Every one is a fallen Son of the Spirit of Prophecy;
He is the Fourth Zoa, that stood around the Throne Divine.
* * *
Thou seest the Constellations in the deep & wondrous Night;
They rise in order and countinue their immortal courses
Upon the mountains & in vales, with harp & heavenly song,
With flute & clarion, with cups & measures fill’d with foaming wine.
Glitt’ring the streams reflect the Vision of beatitude,
And the calm Ocean joys beneath & smooths his awful waves.
These are the Sons of Los, & these the Labourers of the Vintage.
Thou seest the gorgeous clothed Flies that dance & sport in summer
Upon the sunny brooks & meadows; every one the dance
Knows in its intricate mazes of delight artful to weave,
Each one to sound his instruments of music in the dace,
To touch each other & recede, to cross & change & return.
These are the Children of Los. Thou seest the Trees on mountains;
The wind blows heavy, loud they thunder thro’ the darksome sky,
Uttering prophecies & speaking instructive words to the sons
Of men. These are the Sons of Los, these the Visions of Eternity;
But we see only as it were the hem of their garments
When with our vegetable eyes we view these wondrous Visions.
…
And every Generated Body in its inward form
Is a garden of delight & a building of magnificence,
Built by the Sons of Los in Bowlahoola & Allamanda;
And the herbs & flowers & furniture & beds &chambers
Continually woven in the Looms of Enitharmon’s Daughters,
In bright Cathedron’s golden Dome with care & love & tears.
For the various Classes of Men are all mark’d out determinate
In Bowlahoola, & as the Spectures choose their affinities
So they are born on Earth, & every Class is determinate;
But not by Natural, but by Spiritual power alone, because
The Natural power continually seeks & tends to Destruction,
Ending in Death, which would of itself be Eternal Death.
And all are Class’d by Spiritual & not by Natural power,
And every Neutral Effect has a Spiritual Cause, and Not
A Natural; for a natural Cause only seems: it is a Delusion
Of Ulro, & a ratio of the perishing Vegetable Memory.
* * *
But others of the Sons of Los build Moments & Minutes & Hours
And Days & Months & Years & Ages & Periods, wondrous buildings;
And every Moment has a Couch of gold for soft repose,
(A Moment equals a pulsation of the artery),
And between every two Moments stands a Daughter of Beulah
To feed the Sleepers on their Couches with maternal care.
And Every Minute has an azure Tent with silken Veils;
And Every Hour has a bright golden Gate carved with skill;
And every Day & Night has Walls of brass & Gates of adamant,
Shining like precious stones & ornamented with appropriate signs;
And every Month a silver paved Terrace builded high;
And every Year invulnerable Barriers wit high Towers;
And every Age is Moated deep with Bridges of silver & gold;
And every Seven Ages is Incircled with a Flaming Fire.
Now Seven Ages is amounting to Two Hundred Years:
Each has its Guard, each Moment, Minute, Hour, Day, Month & Year.
All are the work of Fairy hands of the Four Elements.
The Guard are Angels of Providence on duty evermore.
Every Time less than a pulsation of the artery
Is equal in its period & value to Six Thousand Years;
For in this Period the Poet’s work is Done, and all the Great
Events of Time start forth & are conciev’d in such a Period,
Within a Moment, a Pulsation of the Artery.
The Sky is an immortal Tent built by the Sons of Los;
And every Space that a Man views around his dwelling-place,
Standing on his own roof or in his garden on a mount
Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his Universe;
And on its verge to Sun rises & sets, the Clouds bow
To meet the flat Earth & the Sea I such an order’d Space.
The Starry heavens reach no further, but here bend and set
On all sides, & the two Poles turn on their valves of gold;
And if he move his dwelling-place, his heavens also move
Where’er he goes, & all his neighbourhood bewail his loss.
Such are the Spaces called Earth, &such its dimension.
As to that false appearance which appears to the reasoner,
As of a Globe rolling thro’ Voidness, it is a delusion of Ulro.
The Microscope knows not of this, nor the Telescope; they alter
The ration of the Spectator’s Organs, but leave Objects untouch’d.
For every Space larger than a red globule of Man’s blood
Is visionary, and is created by the Hammer of Los;
And every Space smaller than a Globule of Man’s blood opens
Into Eternity, of which this vegetable Earth is but a shadow.
The red Globule is the unwearied Sun by Los created
To measure Time and Space to mortal Men every morning.
Bowlahoola & Allamanda are placed on each side
Of that Pulsation & that Globule, terrible their power.
* * *
poem by William Blake from Milton (1810)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Invocation
Daughters of Beulah! Muses who inspire the Poet's Song,
Record the journey of immortal Milton thro' your realms
Of terror and mild moony lustre, in soft Sexual delusions
Of varièd beauty, to delight the wanderer, and repose
His burning thirst and freezing hunger! Come into my hand,
By your mild power descending down the nerves of my right arm
From out the portals of my Brain, where by your ministry
The Eternal Great Humanity Divine planted His Paradise,
And in it caus'd the Spectres of the Dead to take sweet form
In likeness of Himself. Tell also of the False Tongue, vegetated
Beneath your land of Shadows, of its sacrifices and
Its offerings; even till Jesus, the image of the Invisible God,
Became its prey; a curse, an offering, and an atonement
For Death Eternal, in the Heavens of Albion, and before the Gates
Of Jerusalem his Emanation, in the Heavens beneath Beulah!
poem by William Blake
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The Book of Urizen: Chapter V
1. In terrors Los shrunk from his task:
His great hammer fell from his hand:
His fires beheld, and sickening,
Hid their strong limbs in smoke.
For with noises ruinous loud;
With hurtlings & clashings & groans
The Immortal endur'd his chains,
Tho' bound in a deadly sleep.
2. All the myriads of Eternity:
All the wisdom & joy of life:
Roll like a sea around him,
Except what his little orbs
Of sight by degrees unfold.
3. And now his eternal life
Like a dream was obliterated
4. Shudd'ring, the Eternal Prophet smote
With a stroke, from his north to south region
The bellows & hammer are silent now
A nerveless silence, his prophetic voice
Siez'd; a cold solitude & dark void
The Eternal Prophet & Urizen clos'd
5. Ages on ages rolld over them
Cut off from life & light frozen
Into horrible forms of deformity
Los suffer'd his fires to decay
Then he look'd back with anxious desire
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 pourd 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;
Fib'rous, 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 shudderd 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 fastend in the pillars
With infinite labour the Eternals
A woof wove, and called it Science
poem by William Blake
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A Prophecy
The deep of winter came,
What time the secret child
Descended thro’ the orient gates of the eternal day.
War ceas’d, & all the troops like shadows fled to their abodes.
Then Enitharmon saw her sons & daughters rise around;
Like pearly clouds they meet together in the crystal house;
And Los, possessor of the moon, joy’d in the peaceful night,
Thus speaking, while his num’rous sons shook their bright fiery wings:
‘Again the night is come
That strong Urthona takes his rest,
And Urizen unloos’d from chains
Glows ike a meteor in the distant north.
Stretch forth your hands and strike the elemental strings!
Awake the thunders of the deep,
‘The shrill winds wake!
Till all the sons of Urizen look out and envy Los:
Seize all the spirits of life and bind
Their warbling joys to our loud strings;
Bind all the nourishing sweets of earth
To give us bliss, that we may drink the sparkling wine of Los;
And let us laugh at war,
Despising toil and care,
Because the days and nights of joy in lucky hours renew.’
‘Arise, O Orc, from thy deep den,
First born of Enitharmon, rise!
And we will crown thy head with garlands of the ruddy vine;
For now thou art bound,
And I may see thee in the hour of bliss, my eldest born.’
The horrent Demon rose, surrounded with red stars of fire,
Whirling about in furious circles round the immortal fiend.
Then Enitharmon down descended into his red light,
And thus her voice rose to her children; the distant heavens reply:
‘Now comes the night of Enitharmon’s joy!
Who shall I call? Who shall I send?
That Woman, lovely Woman! may have dominion?
Arise, O Rintrah, thee I call! & Palamabron, thee!
Go! tell the human race that Woman’s love is Sin;
That an Eternal life awaits the worms of sixty winters
In an allegorical abode where existence hath never come.
Forbid all Joy, & from her childhood shall the little female
Spread nets in every secret path.
‘My weary eyelids draw towards the evening, my bliss is yet but new!
‘Arise, O Rintrah, eldest born, second to none but Orc.
O lion Rintrah, raise thy fury form thy forests black;
Bring Palamabron, horned priest, skipping upon the mountains,
And silent Elynittria, the silver bowed queen.
Rintrah, where has thou hid thy bride?
Weeps she in desart shades?
Alas, my Rintrah! bring all thy brethren, O thou king of fire.
Prince of the sun, I see thee with thy innumberable race,
Thick as the summer stars;
But each ramping his golden mane shakes,
And thine eyes rejoice because of strength, O Rintrah, furious king.’
Enitharmon slept,
Eighteen hundred years. Man was a Dream!
The night of Nature and their harps unstrung.
She slept in middle of her nightly song,
Eighteen hundred years, a female dream.
Shadows of men in fleeting bands upon the winds
Divide the heavens of Europe,
Till Albion’s Angel, smitten with his own plagues, fled with his bands.
The cloud bears hard on Albion’s shore,
Fill’d with immortal demons of futurity.
In council gather the smitten Angels of Albion.
The cloud bears hard upon the council house, down rushing
On the heads of Albion’s Angels.
One hour they lay buried beneath the ruins of that hall;
But as the stars rise from the salt lake they arise in pain,
In troubled mists o’erclouded by the terrors of struggling times.
In thoughts perturb’d they rose from the bright ruins, silent following
The fiery King, who sought his ancient temple serpertform’d
That stretches out its shady length along the Island white.
Round him roll’d his clouds of war; silent the Angel went,
Along the infininte shores of Thames to golden Verulam.
There stand the venerable porches that high-towering rear
Their oak-surrounded pillars, form’d of massy stones, uncut
Will tool, stones precious – such eternal in the heavens,
Of colours twelve, few known on earth, give light in the opake,
Plac’d in the order of the stars. When the five senses whelm’d
In deluge o’er the earth-born man, then turn’d the fluxile eyes
Into two stationary orbs, concentrating all things;
The ever-varying spiral ascents to the heavens of heavens
Were bended downward, and the nostrils’ golden gate shut,
Turn’d outward, barr’d and petrify’d against the infinite.
Thought chang’d the infinite to a serpent, that which pitieth
To a devouring flame; and man fled from its face and hid
In forests of night. Then all the eternal forests were divided
Into earths rolling in circles of space, that like an ocean rush’d
And overwhelmed all except this finite wall of flesh.
Then was the serpent temple form’d, image of infinite
Shut up in finite revolutions, and man became an Angel,
Heaven a mighty circle turning, god a tyrant crown’d.
Now arriv’d the ancient Guardian at the southern porch
That, planted thick with trees of blackest leaf, & in a vale
Obscure, inclos’d the stone of Night. Oblique it stood, o’erhung
With purple flowers and berries red, image of that sweet south
Once open to the heavens and elevated on the human neck,
Now overgrown with hair and cover’d with a stony roof.
Downward ‘tis sunk beneath th’ attractive north, that round the feet
A raging whirlpool draws the dizzy enquirer to his grave.
Albion’s Angel rose upon the Stone of Night.
He saw Urizen on the Atlantic;
And his brazen Book
That Kings & Priests had copied on earth
Expanded from North to South.
And the clouds & fires pale roll’d round in the night of Enitharmon,
Round Albion’s cliffs & London’s walls (still Enitharmon slept);
Rolling volumes of grey mist involve Churches, Palaces, Towers;
For Urizen unclasp’d his Book, feeding his soul with pity.
Thy youth of England, hid in gloom, curse the pain’d heavens, compell’d
Into the deadly night to see the form of Albion’s Angel.
Their parents brought them forth, & aged ignorance preaches, canting,
On a vast rock, perceived by those senses that are clos’d from thought –
Bleak, dark, abrupt it stands & overshadows London city.
They saw his boney feet on the rock, the flesh consum’d in flames;
They saw the Serpent temple lifted above, shadowing the Island white;
They heard the voice of Albion’s Angel howling in flames of Orc,
Seeking the trump of the last doom.
Above the rest the howl was heard from Westminster louder and louder.
The Guardian of the secret codes forsook his ancient mansion,
Driven out by the flames of Orc; his furr’d robes & false locks
Adhered and grew one with his flesh, and nerves & veins shot thro’ them.
With dismal torment sick, hanging upon the wind, he fled
Groveling along Great George Street thro’ the Park gate; all the soldiers
Fled from his sight; he drag’d his torments to the wilderness.
Thus was the howl thro’ Europe!
For Orc rejoic’d to hear the howling shadows;
But Palamabron shot his lightnings trenching down his wide back,
And Rintrah hung with all his legions in the nether deep.
Enitharmon laugh’d in her sleep to see (O woman’s triumph)
Every house a den, every man bound; the shadows are fill’d
With specters, and the windows wove over with curses of iron;
Over the doors ‘Thou shalt not,’ & over the chimneys “Fear’ is written;
With bands of iron round their necks fasten’d into the walls
The citizens; in leaden gives the inhabitants of suburbs
Walk heavy; soft and bent are the bones of villagers.
Between the clouds of Urizen the flames of Orc roll heavy
Around the limbs of Albion’s Guardian, his flesh consuming.
Howlings & hissings, shrieks & groans & voices of despair
Arise around him in the cloudy Heavens of Albion. Furious,
The red limb’d Angel seiz’d, in horror and torment,
The Trump of the last doom; but he could not blow the iron tube!
Thrice he assay’d presumptuous to awake the dead to Judgment.
A mighty Spirit leap’d from the land of Albion,
Nam’d Newton; he seiz’d the Trump & blow’d the enormous blast!
Yellow as leaves of Autumn the myriads fo Angelic hosts
Fell thro’ the wintry skies seeking their graves,
Rattling their hollow bones in howling and lamentation.
Then Enitharmon woke, nor knew that she had slept;
And eighteen hundred years were fled
As if they had not been.
She call’d her sons & daughters
To the sports of night,
Within her crystal house;
And thus her song proceeds:
‘Arise, Ethinthus! tho’ the earth-worm call,
Let him call in vain;
Till the night of holy shadows
And human solitude is past!
‘Ethinthus,, queen of waters, how thou shinest in the sky!
My daughter, how do I rejoice! for thy children flock around
Like the gay fishes on the wave when the cold moon drinks the dew.
Ethinthus! thou art sweet as comforts to my fainting soul,
For now thy waters warble round the feet of Enitharmon.
‘Manathu-Vorcyon! I behold thee flaming in my halls,
light of thy mother’s soul! I see thy lovely eagles round;
thy golden wings are my delight, & thy flames of soft delusion.
’where is my lureing bird of Edin? Leutha, silent love!
Leutha, the many colur’d bow delights upon thy wings,
Soft soul of flowers, Leutha!
Sweet smiling pestilence! I see thy blushing light;
Thy daughters many changing
Revolve like sweet perfumes ascending, O Leutha, silken queen!
‘Where is the youthful Antamon, prince of the pearly dew?
O Antamon, why wilt thou leave thy mother enitharmon?
Alone I see thee, crystal form,
Floating upon the bosom’d air
With lineaments of gratified desire.
My Antamon, the seven churches of Leutha seek thy love.
‘I hear the soft Oothoon in Enitharmon’s tents.
Why wilt thou give up woman’s secrecy, my melancholy child?
Between two moments bliss is ripe.
O Theotormon robb’d of joy, I see thy salt tears flow
Down the steps of my crystal house.
‘Sotha & Thiralatha, secret dwellers of dreamful caves,
arise and please the horrent fiend with your melodious songs.
Still all your thunders golden hoof’d, & bind your horses black.
Orc! smile upon my children!
Smile, son of my afflictions.
Arise, O Orc, and give our mountains joy of thy red light.’
She ceas’d; for All were forth at soport beneath the solemn moon,
Waking the stars of Urizen with their immortal songs,
That nature felt thro’ all the pores the enormous revelry,
Till morning oped the eastern gate.
Then every on fled to his station, & Enitharmon wept.
But terrible Orc, when he beheld the morning in the east,
Shot from the heights of Enitharmon,
And in the vineyards of red France appear’d the light of his fury.
The sun glow’d fiery red!
The furious terrors flew around
On golden chariots raging, with red wheels dropping with blood;
The Lions lash their wrathful tails;
The Tigers couch upon the prey & suck the ruddy tide;
And Enitharmon groans & cries in anguish and dismay.
Then Los arose; his head he rear’d in snaky thunders clad,
And with a cry that shook all nature to the utmost pole
Call’d all his sons to the strife of blood.
poem by William Blake from Europe a Prophecy (1794)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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To Thomas Butts
TO my friend Butts I write
My first vision of light,
On the yellow sands sitting.
The sun was emitting
His glorious beams
From Heaven’s high streams.
Over sea, over land,
My eyes did expand
Into regions of air,
Away from all care;
Into regions of fire,
Remote from desire;
The light of the morning
Heaven’s mountains adorning:
In particles bright,
The jewels of light
Distinct shone and clear.
Amaz’d and in fear
I each particle gazèd,
Astonish’d, amazèd;
For each was a Man
Human-form’d. Swift I ran,
For they beckon’d to me,
Remote by the sea,
Saying: ‘Each grain of sand,
Every stone on the land,
Each rock and each hill,
Each fountain and rill,
Each herb and each tree,
Mountain, hill, earth, and sea,
Cloud, meteor, and star,
Are men seen afar.’
I stood in the streams
Of Heaven’s bright beams,
And saw Felpham sweet
Beneath my bright feet,
In soft Female charms;
And in her fair arms
My Shadow I knew,
And my wife’s Shadow too,
And my sister, and friend.
We like infants descend
In our Shadows on earth,
Like a weak mortal birth.
My eyes, more and more,
Like a sea without shore,
Continue expanding,
The Heavens commanding;
Till the jewels of light,
Heavenly men beaming bright,
Appear’d as One Man,
Who complacent began
My limbs to enfold
In His beams of bright gold;
Like dross purg’d away
All my mire and my clay.
Soft consum’d in delight,
In His bosom sun-bright
I remain’d. Soft He smil’d,
And I heard His voice mild,
Saying: ‘This is My fold,
O thou ram horn’d with gold,
Who awakest from sleep
On the sides of the deep.
On the mountains around
The roarings resound
Of the lion and wolf,
The loud sea, and deep gulf.
These are guards of My fold,
O thou ram horn’d with gold!’
And the voice faded mild;
I remain’d as a child;
All I ever had known
Before me bright shone:
I saw you and your wife
By the fountains of life.
Such the vision to me
Appear’d on the sea.
poem by William Blake
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The Song of Los
Africa
I will sing you a song of Los, the Eternal Prophet:
He sung it to four harps at the tables of Eternity.
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 hypocrisy Way
Against one another; so let them War on, slaves to the eternal Elements.’)
Noah shrunk beneath the wathers;
Abram fled in fires from Chaldea;
Moses beheld upon Mount Sinai forms of dark delusion.
To Trismegistur Palamabroon gave an abstract Law,
To Pythagoras, Socrates & Plato.
Time rolled on o’er all the sons of Har; time after time
Orc 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 form 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, Palace,
Like nets & gins & traps to catch the joys of Eternity,
And all the rest a desart;
Till like a dream Eternity was obliterated & erased,
Since that dread day when Har and Heva fled,
Because their brethren & sisters liv’d in War & Lust;
And as they fled, they shrunk
Into two narrow doleful forms,
Creeping in reptile flesh upon
The bosom of the ground,
And all the vast of Nature shrunk
Before their shrunken eyes.
Thus the terrible race of Los & Enitharmon gave
Laws & Religions to the sons of Har, binding them more
And more to Earth, closing and restraining,
Till a Philosophy of Five Senses was complete.
Urizen wept &gave it into the hands of Newton & Locke.
Clouds roll heavy upon the Alps round Rousseau & Voltaire,
And on the mountains of Lebanon round the deceased Gods
Of Asia, & on the desarts of Africa round the Fallen Angels.
The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent.
Asia
THE Kings of Asia heard
The howl rise up from Europe!
And each ran out from his Web,
From his ancient woven Den;
For the darkness of Asia was startled
At the thick-flaming, thought-creating fires or Orc.
And the Kings of Asia stood
And cried in bitterness of soul:
‘Shall not the King call for Famine from the heath,
Nor the Priest for Pestilence from the fen?
To restrain! To dismay! To thin!
The inhabitants of mountain and plain,
In the day of full-feeding prosperity
And the night of delicious songs.
‘Shall not the Councellor throw his curb
Of Poverty on the laborious?
To fix the price of labour,
To invent allegoric riches;
‘And the privy admonishers of men
Call for fires in the City,
For heaps of smoking ruins,
In the night of prosperity & wantonness?
‘To turn man form his path,
To restrain the child from the womb,
To cut off the bread from the city,
That the remnant may learn to obey;
‘That the pride of the heart may fail,
That the lust of the eyes may be quench’d,
That the delicate ear in its infancy
May be dull’d, and the nostrils clos’d up,
To teach mortal worms the path
That leads form the gates of the Grave.’
Urizen heard them cry,
And his shudd’ring waving wings
Went enormous above the red flames,
Drawing clouds of despair thro’ the havens
Of Europe as he went.
And his Books of brass, iron & gold
Melted over the land as he flew,
Heavy-waving, howling, weeping.
And he stood over Judea,
And stay’d in his ancient place,
And stretch’d his clouds over Jerusalem.
For Adam, a mouldering skeleton,
Lay bleach’d on the garden of Eden;
And Noah as whit as snow
On the mountains of Ararat.
Then the thunders of Urizen bellow’d aloud
From his woven darkness above.
Orc, raging in European darkness,
Arose like a pillar of fire above the Alps,
Like a serpent of fiery flame!
The sullen Earth
Shrunk!
Forth from the dead dust rattling bones to bones
Join; shaking convuls’d, the shiv’ring clay breathes,
And all flesh naked stands: Fathers and Friends,
Mothers & Infants, Kings & Warriors.
The Grave shrieks with delight, & shakes
Her hollow womb, & clasps the solid stem.
Her bosom swells with wild desire,
And milk & blood & glandous wine
In rivers rush & shout & dance
On mountain, dale and plain.
The SONG of LOS is Ended
Urizen Wept.
poem by William Blake (1795)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Finis
Reveal the dragon thro' the human; coursing swift as fire
To the close hall of counsel, where his Angel form renews.
In a sweet vale shelter'd with cedars, that eternal stretch
Their unmov'd branches, stood the hall; built when the moon shot forth,
In that dread night when Urizen call'd the stars round his feet;
Then burst the center from its orb, and found a place beneath;
And Earth conglob'd, in narrow room, roll'd round its sulphur Sun.
To this deep valley situated by the flowing Thames;
Where George the third holds council. & his Lords & Commons meet:
Shut out from mortal sight the Angel came; the vale was dark
With clouds of smoke from the Atlantic, that in volumes roll'd
Between the mountains, dismal visions mope around the house.
On chairs of iron, canopied with mystic ornaments,
Of life by magic power condens'd; infernal forms art-bound
The council sat; all rose before the aged apparition;
His snowy beard that streams like lambent flames down his wide breast
Wetting with tears, & his white garments cast a wintry light.
Then as arm'd clouds arise terrific round the northern drum;
The world is silent at the flapping of the folding banners;
So still terrors rent the house: as when the solemn globe
Launch'd to the unknown shore, while Sotha held the northern helm,
Till to that void it came & fell; so the dark house was rent,
The valley mov'd beneath; its shining pillars split in twain,
And its roofs crack across down falling on th'Angelic seats.
[Then Albions Angel rose] resolv'd to the cove of armoury:
His shield that bound twelve demons & their cities in its orb,
He took down from its trembling pillar; from its cavern deep,
His helm was brought by Londons Guardian, & his thirsty spear
By the wise spirit of Londons river: silent stood the King breathing damp mists:
And on his aged limbs they clasp'd the armour of terrible gold.
Infinite Londons awful spires cast a dreadful cold
Even on rational things beneath, and from the palace walls
Around Saint James's chill & heavy, even to the city gate.
On the vast stone whose name is Truth he stood, his cloudy shield
Smote with his scepter, the scale bound orb loud howld; th' ancie[nt] pillar
Trembling sunk, an earthquake roll'd along the massy pile.
In glittring armour, swift as winds; intelligent as clouds;
Four winged heralds mount the furious blasts & blow their trumps
Gold, silver, brass & iron clangors clamoring rend the shores.
Like white clouds rising from the deeps, his fifty-two armies
From the four cliffs of Albion rise, mustering around their Prince;
Angels of cities and of parishes and villages and families,
In armour as the nerves of wisdom, each his station holds.
In opposition dire, a warlike cloud the myriads stood
In the red air before the Demon; [seen even by mortal men:
Who call it Fancy, & shut the gates of sense, & in their chambers,
Sleep like the dead.] But like a constellation ris'n and blazing
Over the rugged ocean; so the Angels of Albion hung,
a frowning shadow, like an aged King in arms of gold,
Who wept over a den, in which his only son outstretch'd
By rebels hands was slain; his white beard wav'd in the wild wind.
On mountains & cliffs of snow the awful apparition hover'd;
And like the voices of religious dead, heard in the mountains:
When holy zeal scents the sweet valleys of ripe virgin bliss;
Such was the hollow voice that o'er America lamented.
As when a dream of Thiralatha flies the midnight hour:
In vain the dreamer grasps the joyful images, they fly
Seen in obscured traces in the Vale of Leutha, So
The British Colonies beneath the woful Princes fade.
And so the Princes fade from earth, scarce seen by souls of men
But tho' obscur'd, this is the form of the Angelic land.
poem by William Blake from America a Prophecy (1793)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Stalking The Earth
Quietly as every Christian walks, that eternal enemy Satan stalks,
He’s Stalking the earth this very hour, seeking those he may devour.
Satan’s like a hungry lion friend, with destruction being his only end.
Satan my friend you know is wise, but he indeed is the father of lies.
He comes to you in a disguise, seeking friend your spiritual demise.
Rebuke him in the Name of Christ, Jesus who died to save your life.
He fills your day with frustration, to take your mind off your salvation,
And why God left you on the earth, and has given you spiritual birth.
Friend Satan wants nothing less, than to make your life an evil mess.
And to take your mind off of Christ, so he can then, destroy your life.
Today he roams earth to deceive, and attack those who do believe.
However, Satan shall not prevail, even though all his powers assail.
Friend, even his largest assault, against Christ will come to naught.
Satan’s in a hopeless situation, as he’s facing eternal condemnation.
And destruction is his only desire, knowing that he faces eternal fire.
But if you belong to Jesus Christ, He my friend will protect your life.
For on the cross He paid the price, as Satan was defeated by Christ,
And in the times that we are tried, in Christ Jesus Believers can abide.
For by Jesus it is said and done, Satan by Christ has been overcome.
And as Satan is destroyed by Christ, Believers will enter Eternal Life.
He will deceive the nations no more, when cast into Hell forevermore.
Cast down into the eternal pit, with the Beast and the False Prophet.
By Christ he will see his demise; forever from Hell his smoke will rise.
Friend, upon the cross of Calvary, Christ made the way to set us free,
Free from Satan, death and sin, to live up in Heaven forever with Him.
(Copyright ©06/2005)
Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran BLANC,
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!
O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshipped the Invisible alone.
Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my Thought,
Yea, with my Life and Life's own secret joy:
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing--there
As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.
Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the Vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jaggéd rocks,
For ever shattered and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?
And who commanded (and the silence came),
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?
Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain--
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made your glorious as the Gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?--
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Yet eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element!
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!
Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast--
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
To rise before me--Rise, O ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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A Prophecy
The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent,
Sullen fires across the Atlantic glow to America's shore:
Piercing the souls of warlike men, who rise in silent night,
Washington, Franklin, Paine & Warren, Gates, Hancock & Green;
Meet on the coast glowing with blood from Albions fiery Prince.
Washington spoke; Friends of America look over the Atlantic sea;
A bended bow is lifted in heaven, & a heavy iron chain t158
Descends link by link from Albions cliffs across the sea to bind
Brothers & sons of America, till our faces pale and yellow;
Heads deprest, voices weak, eyes downcast, hands work-bruis'd,
Feet bleeding on the sultry sands, and the furrows of the whip
Descend to generations that in future times forget.––
The strong voice ceas'd; for a terrible blast swept over the heaving sea;
The eastern cloud rent; on his cliffs stood Albions wrathful Prince
A dragon form clashing his scales at midnight he arose,
And flam'd red meteors round the land of Albion beneath[.]
His voice, his locks, his awful shoulders, and his glowing eyes,
Appear to the Americans upon the cloudy night.
Solemn heave the Atlantic waves between the gloomy nations,
Swelling, belching from its deeps red clouds & raging Fires!
Albion is sick. America faints! enrag'd the Zenith grew.
As human blood shooting its veins all round the orbed heaven
Red rose the clouds from the Atlantic in vast wheels of blood
And in the red clouds rose a Wonder o'er the Atlantic sea;
Intense! naked! a Human fire fierce glowing, as the wedge
Of iron heated in the furnace; his terrible limbs were fire
With myriads of cloudy terrors banners dark & towers
Surrounded; heat but not light went thro' the murky atmosphere
The King of England looking westward trembles at the vision
Albions Angel stood beside the Stone of night, and saw
The terror like a comet, or more like the planet red
That once inclos'd the terrible wandering comets in its sphere.
Then Mars thou wast our center, & the planets three flew round
Thy crimson disk; so e'er the Sun was rent from thy red sphere;
The Spectre glowd his horrid length staining the temple long
With beams of blood; & thus a voice came forth, and shook the temple
The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations;
The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;
The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry'd.
Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!
Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst;
Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:
Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;
Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.
And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge;
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream.
Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.
In thunders ends the voice. Then Albions Angel wrathful burnt
Beside the Stone of Night; and like the Eternal Lions howl
In famine & war, reply'd. Art thou not Orc, who serpent-form'd
Stands at the gate of Enitharmon to devour her children;
Blasphemous Demon, Antichrist, hater of Dignities;
Lover of wild rebellion, and transgresser of Gods Law;
Why dost thou come to Angels eyes in this terrific form?
The terror answerd: I am Orc, wreath'd round the accursed tree:
The times are ended; shadows pass the morning gins to break;
The fiery joy, that Urizen perverted to ten commands,
What night he led the starry hosts thro' the wide wilderness:
That stony law I stamp to dust: and scatter religion abroad
To the four winds as a torn book, & none shall gather the leaves;
But they shall rot on desart sands, & consume in bottomless deeps;
To make the desarts blossom, & the deeps shrink to their fountains,
And to renew the fiery joy, and burst the stony roof.
That pale religious letchery, seeking Virginity,
May find it in a harlot, and in coarse-clad honesty
The undefil'd tho' ravish'd in her cradle night and morn:
For every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life;
Because the soul of sweet delight can never be defil'd.
Fires inwrap the earthly globe, yet man is not consumd;
Amidst the lustful fires he walks: his feet become like brass,
His knees and thighs like silver, & his breast and head like gold.
Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets & alarm my Thirteen Angels!
Loud howls the eternal Wolf! the eternal Lion lashes his tail!
America is darkned; and my punishing Demons terrified
Crouch howling before their caverns deep like skins dry'd in the wind.
They cannot smite the wheat, nor quench the fatness of the earth.
They cannot smite with sorrows, nor subdue the plow and spade.
They cannot wall the city, nor moat round the castle of princes.
They cannot bring the stubbed oak to overgrow the hills.
For terrible men stand on the shores, & in their robes I see
Children take shelter from the lightnings, there stands Washington
And Paine and Warren with their foreheads reard toward the east
But clouds obscure my aged sight. A vision from afar!
Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets & alarm my thirteen Angels:
Ah vision from afar! Ah rebel form that rent the ancient
Heavens; Eternal Viper self-renew'd, rolling in clouds
I see thee in thick clouds and darkness on America's shore.
Writhing in pangs of abhorred birth; red flames the crest rebellious
And eyes of death; the harlot womb oft opened in vain
Heaves in enormous circles, now the times are return'd upon thee,
Devourer of thy parent, now thy unutterable torment renews.
Sound! sound! my loud war trumpets & alarm my thirteen Angels!
Ah terrible birth! a young one bursting! where is the weeping mouth?
And where the mothers milk? instead those ever-hissing jaws
And parched lips drop with fresh gore; now roll thou in the clouds
Thy mother lays her length outstretch'd upon the shore beneath.
Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets & alarm my thirteen Angels!
Loud howls the eternal Wolf: the eternal Lion lashes his tail!
Thus wept the Angel voice & as he wept the terrible blasts
Of trumpets, blew a loud alarm across the Atlantic deep.
No trumpets answer; no reply of clarions or of fifes,
Silent the Colonies remain and refuse the loud alarm.
On those vast shady hills between America & Albions shore;
Now barr'd out by the Atlantic sea: call'd Atlantean hills:
Because from their bright summits you may pass to the Golden world
An ancient palace, archetype of mighty Emperies,
Rears its immortal pinnacles, built in the forest of God
By Ariston the king of beauty for his stolen bride,
Here on their magic seats the thirteen Angels sat perturb'd
For clouds from the Atlantic hover o'er the solemn roof.
Fiery the Angels rose, & as they rose deep thunder roll'd
Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc
And Bostons Angel cried aloud as they flew thro' the dark night.
He cried: Why trembles honesty and like a murderer,
Why seeks he refuge from the frowns of his immortal station!
Must the generous tremble & leave his joy, to the idle: to the pestilence!
That mock him? who commanded this? what God? what Angel!
To keep the gen'rous from experience till the ungenerous
Are unrestraind performers of the energies of nature;
Till pity is become a trade, and generosity a science,
That men get rich by, & the sandy desart is giv'n to the strong
What God is he, writes laws of peace, & clothes him in a tempest
What pitying Angel lusts for tears, and fans himself with sighs
What crawling villain preaches abstinence & wraps himself
In fat of lambs? no more I follow, no more obedience pay.
So cried he, rending off his robe & throwing down his scepter.
In sight of Albions Guardian, and all the thirteen Angels
Rent off their robes to the hungry wind, & threw their golden scepters
Down on the land of America. indignant they descended
Headlong from out their heav'nly heights, descending swift as fires
Over the land; naked & flaming are their lineaments seen
In the deep gloom, by Washington & Paine & Warren they stood
And the flame folded roaring fierce within the pitchy night
Before the Demon red, who burnt towards America,
In black smoke thunders and loud winds rejoicing in its terror
Breaking in smoky wreaths from the wild deep, & gath'ring thick
In flames as of a furnace on the land from North to South
What time the thirteen Governors that England sent convene
In Bernards house; the flames coverd the land, they rouze they cry
Shaking their mental chains they rush in fury to the sea
To quench their anguish; at the feet of Washington down fall'n
They grovel on the sand and writhing lie, while all
The British soldiers thro' the thirteen states sent up a howl
Of anguish: threw their swords & muskets to the earth & ran
From their encampments and dark castles seeking where to hide
From the grim flames; and from the visions of Orc; in sight
Of Albions Angel; who enrag'd his secret clouds open'd
From north to south, and burnt outstretchd on wings of wrath cov'ring
The eastern sky, spreading his awful wings across the heavens;
Beneath him roll'd his num'rous hosts, all Albions Angels camp'd
Darkend the Atlantic mountains & their trumpets shook the valleys
Arm'd with diseases of the earth to cast upon the Abyss,
Their numbers forty millions, must'ring in the eastern sky.
In the flames stood & view'd the armies drawn out in the sky
Washington Franklin Paine & Warren Allen Gates & Lee:
And heard the voice of Albions Angel give the thunderous command:
His plagues obedient to his voice flew forth out of their clouds
Falling upon America, as a storm to cut them off
As a blight cuts the tender corn when it begins to appear.
Dark is the heaven above, & cold & hard the earth beneath;
And as a plague wind fill'd with insects cuts off man & beast;
And as a sea o'erwhelms a land in the day of an earthquake;
Fury! rage! madness! in a wind swept through America
And the red flames of Orc that folded roaring fierce around
The angry shores, and the fierce rushing of th'inhabitants together:
The citizens of New-York close their books & lock their chests;
The mariners of Boston drop their anchors and unlade;
The scribe of Pensylvania casts his pen upon the earth;
The builder of Virginia throws his hammer down in fear.
Then had America been lost, o'erwhelm'd by the Atlantic,
And Earth had lost another portion of the infinite,
But all rush together in the night in wrath and raging fire
The red fires rag'd! the plagues recoil'd! then rolld they back with fury
On Albions Angels; then the Pestilence began in streaks of red
Across the limbs of Albions Guardian, the spotted plague smote Bristols
And the Leprosy Londons Spirit, sickening all their bands:
The millions sent up a howl of anguish and threw off their hammerd mail,
And cast their swords & spears to earth, & stood a naked multitude.
Albions Guardian writhed in torment on the eastern sky
Pale quivring toward the brain his glimmering eyes, teeth chattering
Howling & shuddering his legs quivering; convuls'd each muscle & sinew
Sick'ning lay Londons Guardian, and the ancient miter'd York
Their heads on snowy hills, their ensigns sick'ning in the sky
The plagues creep on the burning winds driven by flames of Orc,
And by the fierce Americans rushing together in the night
Driven o'er the Guardians of Ireland and Scotland and Wales
They spotted with plagues forsook the frontiers & their banners seard
With fires of hell, deform their ancient heavens with shame & woe.
Hid in his caves the Bard of Albion felt the enormous plagues.
And a cowl of flesh grew o'er his head & scales on his back & ribs;
And rough with black scales all his Angels fright their ancient heavens
The doors of marriage are open, and the Priests in rustling scales
Rush into reptile coverts, hiding from the fires of Orc,
That play around the golden roofsin wreaths of fierce desire,
Leaving the females naked and glowing with the lusts of youth
For the female spirits of the dead pining in bonds of religion;
Run from their fetters reddening, & in long drawn arches sitting:
They feel the nerves of youth renew, and desires of ancient times,
Over their pale limbs as a vine when the tender grape appears
Over the hills, the vales, the cities, rage the red flames fierce;
The Heavens melted from north to south; and Urizen who sat
Above all heavens in thunders wrap'd, emerg'd his leprous head
From out his holy shrine, his tears in deluge piteous
Falling into the deep sublime! flag'd with grey-brow'd snows
And thunderous visages, his jealous wings wav'd over the deep;
Weeping in dismal howling woe he dark descended howling
Around the smitten bands, clothed in tears & trembling shudd'ring cold.
His stored snows he poured forth, and his icy magazines
He open'd on the deep, and on the Atlantic sea white shiv'ring.
Leprous his limbs, all over white, and hoary was his visage.
Weeping in dismal howlings before the stern Americans
Hiding the Demon red with clouds & cold mists from the earth;
Till Angels & weak men twelve years should govern o'er the strong:
And then their end should come, when France reciev'd the Demons light.
Stiff shudderings shook the heav'nly thrones! France Spain & Italy,
In terror view'd the bands of Albion, and the ancient Guardians
Fainting upon the elements, smitten with their own plagues
They slow advance to shut the five gates of their law-built heaven
Filled with blasting fancies and with mildews of despair
With fierce disease and lust, unable to stem the fires of Orc;
But the five gates were consum'd, & their bolts and hinges melted
And the fierce flames burnt round the heavens, & round the abodes of men
poem by William Blake from America a Prophecy (1793)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Heaven And Hell
Imagine no Heaven and no Hell, these are words on which to dwell,
Written by a spiritually empty pen, this, to deceive a world of men.
Told to think about just today, ignoring what God’s Word does say,
Suggesting nothing about eternity, but only what their eyes can see.
But, there is a Heaven up above, a place in Eternity, filled with love,
The dwelling place of Eternal God, reigning above the earth we trod.
And there really is a Hell beneath, full of wailing and gnashing teeth.
The Hell Christ described my friend, is a lake of fire that has no end.
This man’s imagination will not last, when his life upon earth is past,
And indeed all men will face reality, when they pass on into eternity.
Heaven and Hell were spoke of, by Jesus Christ, who reigns above.
Hell was created by God for sin, that in mortal bodies reigns within,
Created for Satan and his crew, not initially intended for me or you,
A place in Heaven is prepared for us, who in Christ place their trust,
But, one thing that cannot enter in, the Glories of Heaven is our sin.
So Christ came as our sacrifice, to cleanse believers, for Paradise.
Up in Heaven not down in Hell, is where believers one day will dwell,
And not through vain imagination, but through God’s great Salvation.
Hell eternally is prepared for, Satan and all men who reject The Lord,
Far from a mindless interjection, it is for many their eternal selection.
(Copyright ©08/2007)
Broken Love
MY Spectre around me night and day
Like a wild beast guards my way;
My Emanation far within
Weeps incessantly for my sin.
‘A fathomless and boundless deep,
There we wander, there we weep;
On the hungry craving wind
My Spectre follows thee behind.
‘He scents thy footsteps in the snow
Wheresoever thou dost go,
Thro’ the wintry hail and rain.
When wilt thou return again?
’Dost thou not in pride and scorn
Fill with tempests all my morn,
And with jealousies and fears
Fill my pleasant nights with tears?
‘Seven of my sweet loves thy knife
Has bereavèd of their life.
Their marble tombs I built with tears,
And with cold and shuddering fears.
‘Seven more loves weep night and day
Round the tombs where my loves lay,
And seven more loves attend each night
Around my couch with torches bright.
‘And seven more loves in my bed
Crown with wine my mournful head,
Pitying and forgiving all
Thy transgressions great and small.
‘When wilt thou return and view
My loves, and them to life renew?
When wilt thou return and live?
When wilt thou pity as I forgive?’
‘O’er my sins thou sit and moan:
Hast thou no sins of thy own?
O’er my sins thou sit and weep,
And lull thy own sins fast asleep.
‘What transgressions I commit
Are for thy transgressions fit.
They thy harlots, thou their slave;
And my bed becomes their grave.
‘Never, never, I return:
Still for victory I burn.
Living, thee alone I’ll have;
And when dead I’ll be thy grave.
‘Thro’ the Heaven and Earth and Hell
Thou shalt never, quell:
I will fly and thou pursue:
Night and morn the flight renew.’
‘Poor, pale, pitiable form
That I follow in a storm;
Iron tears and groans of lead
Bind around my aching head.
‘Till I turn from Female love
And root up the Infernal Grove,
I shall never worthy be
To step into Eternity.
‘And, to end thy cruel mocks,
Annihilate thee on the rocks,
And another form create
To be subservient to my fate.
‘Let us agree to give up love,
And root up the Infernal Grove;
Then shall we return and see
The worlds of happy Eternity.
‘And throughout all Eternity
I forgive you, you forgive me.
As our dear Redeemer said:
“This the Wine, and this the Bread.”’
poem by William Blake
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Preludium
The nameless shadowy female rose form out the breast of Orc,
Her snaky hair brandishing in the winds of Enitharmon;
And thus her voice arose:
‘O mother Enitharmon, wilt thou bring forth other sons,
To cause my name to vanish, that my place may not be found?
For I am faint with travel!
Like the dark cloud disburden’d in the day of dismal thunder.
‘My roots are brandish’d in the heavens, my fruits in earth beneath
Surge, foam and labour into life, first born & first consum’d!
Consumed and consuming!
Then why shouldst thou, accused mother, bring me into life?
‘I warp my turban of thick clouds around my lab’ring head,
And fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs.
Yet the red sun and moon
And all the overflowing stars rain down prolific pains.
‘Unwilling I look up to heaven! unwilling count the stars!
Sitting in fathomless abyss of my immortal shrine,
I seize their burning power
And bring forth howling terrors, all devouring fiery kings,
‘Devouring & devoured, roaming in dark and desolate mountains
in forests of eternal death, shrieking in hollow trees.
Ah mother Enitharmon!
Stamp not with solid form the vig’rous progeny of fires.
‘I bring forth form my teeming bosom myriads of flames,
And thou dost stamp them with a signet; then they roam abroad
And leave me void as death.
Ah! I am drown’d in shady woe, and visionary joy.
‘And who shall bind the infinite with an eternal band?
To compass it with swaddling bands? And who shall cherish it
With milk and honey?
I see it smile & I roll inward & my voice is past.’
She ceast, & roll’d her shady clouds
Into the secret palce.
poem by William Blake from Europe a Prophecy (1794)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Book of Ahania
CHAP: 1
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 uphav’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 seiz’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 seiz’d it and beat in a mass
With the body of the sun.
CHAP: 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. ‘O Bow of the clouds of secrecy,
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 tigers 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
That gave light to the mornings of heaven
Were smitten with darkenss, 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
Miz’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
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, form 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
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 and 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 scruf’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 yyears 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.
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
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 bless on my beds,
And bosoms of mild 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,
With thy hand full of generous fire,
Walked forth form 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 mother’s-joys, sleeping in bliss.
14. ‘But now, alone, over rocks, mountains,
Cast out form 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 form the birth are buried
Before they see the light?’
poem by William Blake
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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The Gates of Paradise
My Eternal Man set in Repose
The Female from his darkness rose
And She found me beneath a Tree
A Mandrake & in her Veil hid me
Serpent Reasonings us entice
Of Good & Evil: Virtue and Vice
Doubt Self Jealous Watry folly
Struggling thro Earth's Melancholy
Naked in Air in Shame & Fear
Blind in Fire with shield & spear
Two Horn'd Reasoning Cloven Fiction
In Doubt which is Self contradiction
A dark Hermaphrodite We stood
Rational Truth Root of Evil & Good
Round me flew the Flaming Sword
Round her snowy Whirlwinds roard
Freezing her Veil the Mundane Shell
I rent the Veil where the Dead dwell
When weary Man enters his Cave
He meets his Saviour in the Grave
Some find a Female Garment there
And some a Male, woven with care
Lest the Sexual Garments sweet
Should grow a devouring Winding sheet
One Dies! Alas! The Living & Dead
One is slain & One is fled
In Vain-glory hatcht & nurst
By double Spectres Self Accurst
My Son! my Son! thou treatest me
But as I have instructed thee
On the shadows of the Moon
Climbing thro Nights highest noon
In Times Ocean falling drownd
In Aged Ignorance profound
Holy & cold I clipd the Wings
Of all Sublunary Things
And in depths of my Dungeons
Closed the Father & the Sons
But when once I did descry
The Immortal Man that cannot Die
Thro evening shades I haste away
To close the Labours of my Day
The Door of Death I open found
And the Worm Weaving in the Ground
Thou'rt my Mother from the Womb
Wife, Sister, Daughter to the Tomb
Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife
And weeping over the Web of Life
poem by William Blake
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Unlike Any Other Being
Every one is born in the flesh and they try to live their very best.
But from the moment we begin, our heart friend is tainted with sin.
We are born with a human nature and a cut above other creatures.
Unlike any other being we have been made in The Creator’s image.
In order to have Christ like love, one needs to be born from above.
We’re born with original sin and from the Garden that’s how it’s been.
And at the moment we’re conceived we are targeted to be deceived.
Adam’s sin was passed on to you, that’s every single Gentile and Jew.
And since we come from Adam and Eve, we too, can become deceived.
Friend Satan comes to deceive but Christ gives you power to believe.
He gives freely to all who believe, a gift by faith you just receive.
Satan only wants you to destroy; while Christ comes to give you joy.
Believe on The Lord Jesus Christ and you will receive Eternal Life.
And on the way to Eternal Life you become a New Creature in Christ.
God’s Mercy you can not win if you desire to continue a life of sin.
And being born spiritually dead, a dark eternity is what lies ahead.
But Christ as the second Adam friend provided for us a better end.
When we were children of the night Jesus came to guide us into Light.
And Christ came down to this strife to lead Believers into New Life.
A life of sin is empty and dead, so why not have New Life instead.
Born in a sinful darkened state, death is everyone’s ultimate fate.
Sin was cast out of Paradise and God will cause its future demise.
But to all men who are truly wise, The Lord has given spiritual eyes.
Eyes to see with Godly sight, that all men need The Light of Christ.
(Copyright ©08/2004)
The More Things Change
The more we see real change, the more things remain the same,
In regards to the world’s morality, and what moves you and me.
There’s a battle for righteousness, which is going on in all of us,
A battle opposing what is right, through evil forces of the night.
Though oblivious to it some may be, this is a battle for eternity,
A battle using hearts and minds, with many people, of all kinds.
The battle waged by Satan friend, a wicked battle, unto the end,
One warring against every soul, to get a harvest from man’s fall.
With nothing new under the sun, Satan still today uses everyone,
And his strategy’s still the same, as the Lord he’s out to defame.
Satan has one desire for all, the eternal damnation of man’s soul,
After influencing you to disbelieve, he continues only to deceive.
Satan is determined because Christ, still offers all men New Life,
Contrary to eternal death ahead, for him, who says God is dead.
It is the Devil’s unchanging ploy, to deceive all and then destroy,
And Satan today is alive and well, seducing multitudes into Hell.
All hope men have in this life, as the Devil fills hearts with strife,
Is in He, who changes not at all, Christ, who died for every soul,
His plan since Adam and Eve, is Eternal Life for all who believe,
As the last change Satan will see, is the Lake of Fire for eternity.
(Copyright ©02/2008)
The Everlasting Gospel
The vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my vision’s greatest enemy.
Thine has a great hook nose like thine;
Mine has a snub nose like to mine.
Thine is the Friend of all Mankind;
Mine speaks in parables to the blind.
Thine loves the same world that mine hates;
Thy heaven doors are my hell gates.
Socrates taught what Meletus
Loath’d as a nation’s bitterest curse,
And Caiaphas was in his own mind
A benefactor to mankind.
Both read the Bible day and night,
But thou read’st black where I read white.
Was Jesus gentle, or did He
Give any marks of gentility?
When twelve years old He ran away,
And left His parents in dismay.
When after three days’ sorrow found,
Loud as Sinai’s trumpet-sound:
‘No earthly parents I confess—
My Heavenly Father’s business!
Ye understand not what I say,
And, angry, force Me to obey.
Obedience is a duty then,
And favour gains with God and men.’
John from the wilderness loud cried;
Satan gloried in his pride.
‘Come,’ said Satan, ‘come away,
I’ll soon see if you’ll obey!
John for disobedience bled,
But you can turn the stones to bread.
God’s high king and God’s high priest
Shall plant their glories in your breast,
If Caiaphas you will obey,
If Herod you with bloody prey
Feed with the sacrifice, and be
Obedient, fall down, worship me.’
Thunders and lightnings broke around,
And Jesus’ voice in thunders’ sound:
‘Thus I seize the spiritual prey.
Ye smiters with disease, make way.
I come your King and God to seize,
Is God a smiter with disease?’
The God of this world rag’d in vain:
He bound old Satan in His chain,
And, bursting forth, His furious ire
Became a chariot of fire.
Throughout the land He took His course,
And trac’d diseases to their source.
He curs’d the Scribe and Pharisee,
Trampling down hypocrisy.
Where’er His chariot took its way,
There Gates of Death let in the Day,
Broke down from every chain and bar;
And Satan in His spiritual war
Dragg’d at His chariot-wheels: loud howl’d
The God of this world: louder roll’d
The chariot-wheels, and louder still
His voice was heard from Zion’s Hill,
And in His hand the scourge shone bright;
He scourg’d the merchant Canaanite
From out the Temple of His Mind,
And in his body tight does bind
Satan and all his hellish crew;
And thus with wrath He did subdue
The serpent bulk of Nature’s dross,
Till He had nail’d it to the Cross.
He took on sin in the Virgin’s womb
And put it off on the Cross and tomb
To be worshipp’d by the Church of Rome.
Was Jesus humble? or did He
Give any proofs of humility?
Boast of high things with humble tone,
And give with charity a stone?
When but a child He ran away,
And left His parents in dismay.
When they had wander’d three days long
These were the words upon His tongue:
‘No earthly parents I confess:
I am doing My Father’s business.’
When the rich learnèd Pharisee
Came to consult Him secretly,
Upon his heart with iron pen
He wrote ‘Ye must be born again.’
He was too proud to take a bribe;
He spoke with authority, not like a Scribe.
He says with most consummate art
‘Follow Me, I am meek and lowly of heart,
As that is the only way to escape
The miser’s net and the glutton’s trap.’
What can be done with such desperate fools
Who follow after the heathen schools?
I was standing by when Jesus died;
What I call’d humility, they call’d pride.
He who loves his enemies betrays his friends.
This surely is not what Jesus intends;
But the sneaking pride of heroic schools,
And the Scribes’ and Pharisees’ virtuous rules;
For He acts with honest, triumphant pride,
And this is the cause that Jesus dies.
He did not die with Christian ease,
Asking pardon of His enemies:
If He had, Caiaphas would forgive;
Sneaking submission can always live.
He had only to say that God was the Devil,
And the Devil was God, like a Christian civil;
Mild Christian regrets to the Devil confess
For affronting him thrice in the wilderness;
He had soon been bloody Caesar’s elf,
And at last he would have been Caesar himself,
Like Dr. Priestly and Bacon and Newton—
Poor spiritual knowledge is not worth a button
For thus the Gospel Sir Isaac confutes:
‘God can only be known by His attributes;
And as for the indwelling of the Holy Ghost,
Or of Christ and His Father, it’s all a boast
And pride, and vanity of the imagination,
That disdains to follow this world’s fashion.’
To teach doubt and experiment
Certainly was not what Christ meant.
What was He doing all that time,
From twelve years old to manly prime?
Was He then idle, or the less
About His Father’s business?
Or was His wisdom held in scorn
Before His wrath began to burn
In miracles throughout the land,
That quite unnerv’d the Seraph band?
If He had been Antichrist, Creeping Jesus,
He’d have done anything to please us;
Gone sneaking into synagogues,
And not us’d the Elders and Priests like dogs;
But humble as a lamb or ass
Obey’d Himself to Caiaphas.
God wants not man to humble himself:
That is the trick of the Ancient Elf.
This is the race that Jesus ran:
Humble to God, haughty to man,
Cursing the Rulers before the people
Even to the Temple’s highest steeple,
And when He humbled Himself to God
Then descended the cruel rod.
‘If Thou Humblest Thyself, Thou humblest Me.
Thou also dwell’st in Eternity.
Thou art a Man: God is no more:
Thy own Humanity learn to adore,
For that is My spirit of life.
Awake, arise to spiritual strife,
And Thy revenge abroad display
In terrors at the last Judgement Day.
God’s mercy and long suffering
Is but the sinner to judgement to bring.
Thou on the Cross for them shalt pray—
And take revenge at the Last Day.’
Jesus replied, and thunders hurl’d:
‘I never will pray for the world.
Once I did so when I pray’d in the Garden;
I wish’d to take with Me a bodily pardon.’
Can that which was of woman born,
In the absence of the morn,
When the Soul fell into sleep,
And Archangels round it weep,
Shooting out against the light
Fibres of a deadly night,
Reasoning upon its own dark fiction,
In doubt which is self-contradiction?
Humility is only doubt,
And does the sun and moon blot out,
Rooting over with thorns and stems
The buried soul and all its gems.
This life’s five windows of the soul
Distorts the Heavens from pole to pole,
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not thro’, the eye
That was born in a night, to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in the beams of light.
Did Jesus teach doubt? or did He
Give any lessons of philosophy,
Charge Visionaries with deceiving,
Or call men wise for not believing?…
Was Jesus born of a Virgin pure
With narrow soul and looks demure?
If He intended to take on sin
The Mother should an harlot been,
Just such a one as Magdalen,
With seven devils in her pen.
Or were Jew virgins still more curs’d,
And more sucking devils nurs’d?
Or what was it which He took on
That He might bring salvation?
A body subject to be tempted,
From neither pain nor grief exempted;
Or such a body as might not feel
The passions that with sinners deal?
Yes, but they say He never fell.
Ask Caiaphas; for he can tell.—
‘He mock’d the Sabbath, and He mock’d
The Sabbath’s God, and He unlock’d
The evil spirits from their shrines,
And turn’d fishermen to divines;
O’erturn’d the tent of secret sins,
And its golden cords and pins,
In the bloody shrine of war
Pour’d around from star to star,—
Halls of justice, hating vice,
Where the Devil combs his lice.
He turn’d the devils into swine
That He might tempt the Jews to dine;
Since which, a pig has got a look
That for a Jew may be mistook.
“Obey your parents.”—What says He?
“Woman, what have I to do with thee?
No earthly parents I confess:
I am doing my Father’s business.”
He scorn’d Earth’s parents, scorn’d Earth’s God,
And mock’d the one and the other’s rod;
His seventy Disciples sent
Against Religion and Government—
They by the sword of Justice fell,
And Him their cruel murderer tell.
He left His father’s trade to roam,
A wand’ring vagrant without home;
And thus He others’ labour stole,
That He might live above control.
The publicans and harlots He
Selected for His company,
And from the adulteress turn’d away
God’s righteous law, that lost its prey.’
Was Jesus chaste? or did He
Give any lessons of chastity?
The Morning blushèd fiery red:
Mary was found in adulterous bed;
Earth groan’d beneath, and Heaven above
Trembled at discovery of Love.
Jesus was sitting in Moses’ chair.
They brought the trembling woman there.
Moses commands she be ston’d to death.
What was the sound of Jesus’ breath?
He laid His hand on Moses’ law;
The ancient Heavens, in silent awe,
Writ with curses from pole to pole,
All away began to roll.
The Earth trembling and naked lay
In secret bed of mortal clay;
On Sinai felt the Hand Divine
Pulling back the bloody shrine;
And she heard the breath of God,
As she heard by Eden’s flood:
‘Good and Evil are no more!
Sinai’s trumpets cease to roar!
Cease, finger of God, to write!
The Heavens are not clean in Thy sight.
Thou art good, and Thou alone;
Nor may the sinner cast one stone.
To be good only, is to be
A God or else a Pharisee.
Thou Angel of the Presence Divine,
That didst create this Body of Mine,
Wherefore hast thou writ these laws
And created Hell’s dark jaws?
My Presence I will take from thee:
A cold leper thou shalt be.
Tho’ thou wast so pure and bright
That Heaven was impure in thy sight,
Tho’ thy oath turn’d Heaven pale,
Tho’ thy covenant built Hell’s jail,
Tho’ thou didst all to chaos roll
With the Serpent for its soul,
Still the breath Divine does move,
And the breath Divine is Love.
Mary, fear not! Let me see
The seven devils that torment thee.
Hide not from My sight thy sin,
That forgiveness thou may’st win.
Has no man condemnèd thee?’
‘No man, Lord.’ ‘Then what is he
Who shall accuse thee? Come ye forth,
Fallen fiends of heavenly birth,
That have forgot your ancient love,
And driven away my trembling Dove.
You shall bow before her feet;
You shall lick the dust for meat;
And tho’ you cannot love, but hate,
Shall be beggars at Love’s gate.
What was thy love? Let Me see it;
Was it love or dark deceit?’
‘Love too long from me has fled;
’Twas dark deceit, to earn my bread;
’Twas covet, or ’twas custom, or
Some trifle not worth caring for;
That they may call a shame and sin
Love’s temple that God dwelleth in,
And hide in secret hidden shrine
The naked Human Form Divine,
And render that a lawless thing
On which the Soul expands its wing.
But this, O Lord, this was my sin,
When first I let these devils in,
In dark pretence to chastity
Blaspheming Love, blaspheming Thee,
Thence rose secret adulteries,
And thence did covet also rise.
My sin Thou hast forgiven me;
Canst Thou forgive my blasphemy?
Canst Thou return to this dark hell,
And in my burning bosom dwell?
And canst Thou die that I may live?
And canst Thou pity and forgive?’
Then roll’d the shadowy Man away
From the limbs of Jesus, to make them His prey,
An ever devouring appetite,
Glittering with festering venoms bright;
Crying ‘Crucify this cause of distress,
Who don’t keep the secrets of holiness!
The mental powers by diseases we bind;
But He heals the deaf, the dumb, and the blind.
Whom God has afflicted for secret ends,
He comforts and heals and calls them friends.’
But, when Jesus was crucified,
Then was perfected His galling pride.
In three nights He devour’d His prey,
And still He devours the body of clay;
For dust and clay is the Serpent’s meat,
Which never was made for Man to eat.
Seeing this False Christ, in fury and passion
I made my voice heard all over the nation.
What are those…
I am sure this Jesus will not do,
Either for Englishman or Jew.
poem by William Blake
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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My Spectre around me night and day
My Spectre around me night and day
Like a Wild beast guards my way
My Emanation far within
Weeps incessantly for my Sin
A Fathomless and boundless deep
There we wander there we weep
On the hungry craving wind
My Spectre follows thee behind
He scents thy footsteps in the snow
Wheresoever thou dost go
Thro the wintry hail and rain
When wilt thou return again
Dost thou not in Pride and scorn
Fill with tempests all my morn
And with jealousies and fears
Fill my pleasant nights with tears
Seven of my sweet loves thy knife
Has bereaved of their life
Their marble tombs I built with tearst
And with cold and shuddering fears
Seven more loves weep night and day
Round the tombs where my loves lay
And seven more loves attend each night
Around my couch with torches bright
And seven more Loves in my bed
Crown with wine my mournful headt
Pitying and forgiving all
Thy transgressions great and small
When wilt thou return and view
My loves and them to life renew
When wilt thou return and live
When wilt thou pity as I forgivet
Never Never I return t
Still for Victory I burn
Living thee alone Ill have
And when dead Ill be thy Grave
Thro the Heavn and Earth and Hell
Thou shalt never never quell
I will fly and thou pursue
Night and Morn the flight renew
Till I turn from Female Lovet
And root up the Infernal Grovet
I shall never worthy bet
To Step into Eternity
And to end thy cruel mockst
Annihilate thee on the rockst
And another form create
To be subservient to my Fate
Let us agree to give up Love
And root up the infernal grove
Then shall we return and see
The worlds of happy Eternity
And Throughout all Eternityt
I forgive you you forgive me
As our dear Redeemer said
This the Wine and this the Bread
poem by William Blake from Songs and Ballads (1794)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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