The Portable William Blake (31 page)
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Authors: William Blake
Upon the margin’d ocean conversing with shadows dire.
The Daughters of Albion hear her woes, & eccho back her sighs.
THE END
AMERICA
A PROPHECY
(1793)
PRELUDIUMThe shadowy Daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc, When fourteen suns had faintly journey’d o’er his dark abode:
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron:
Crown’d with a helmet & dark hair the nameless female stood;
A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,
When pestilence is shot from heaven: no other arms she need!
Invulnerable tho’ naked, save where clouds roll round her loins
Their awful folds in the dark air: silent she stood as night;
For never from her iron tongue could voice or sound arise,
But dumb till that dread day when Orc assay’d his fierce embrace.
“Dark Virgin,” said the hairy youth, “thy father stern, abhorr’d,
Rivets my tenfold chains while still on high my spirit soars;
Sometimes an eagle screaming in the sky, sometimes a lion
Stalking upon the mountains, & sometimes a whale, I lash
The raging fathomless abyss; anon a serpent folding
Around the pillars of Urthona, and round thy dark limbs
On the Canadian wilds I fold; feeble my spirit folds,
For chain’d beneath I rend these caverns: when thou bringest food
I howl my joy, and my red eyes seek to behold thy face—
In vain! these clouds roll to & fro, & hide thee from my sight.”
Silent as despairing love, and strong as jealousy,
The hairy shoulders rend the links; free are the wrists of fire;
Round the terrific loins he siez’d the panting, struggling womb;
It joy’d: she put aside her clouds & smiled her first-born smile,
As when a black cloud shews its lightnings to the silent deep.
Soon as she saw the terrible boy, then burst the virgin cry:
“I know thee, I have found thee, & I will not let thee go:
Thou art the image of God who dwells in darkness of Africa,
And thou art fall’n to give me life in regions of dark death.
On my American plains I feel the struggling afflictions
Endur’d by roots that writhe their arms into the nether deep.
I see a Serpent in Canada who courts me to his love,
In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru;
I see a Whale in the South-sea, drinking my soul away.
O what limb rending pains I feel! thy fire & my frost
Mingle in howling pains, in furrows by thy lightnings rent.
This is eternal death, and this the torment long foretold.”
A PROPHECYThe Guardian Prince of Albion bums 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 Albion’s fiery Prince.
Washington spoke: “Friends of America! look over the Atlantic sea;
A bended bow is lifted in heaven, & a heavy iron chain
Descends, link by link, from Albion’s cliffs across the sea, to bind
Brothers & sons of America till our faces pale and yellow,
Heads deprest, voices weak, eyes downcast, hands workbruis’ 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 Albion’s 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.
Albion’s Angel stood beside the Stone of night, and saw
The terror like a comet, or more like the planet red
That once enclos’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 glow’d 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 oppressor’s 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 Albion’s Angel wrathful burnt
Beside the Stone of Night, and like the Eternal Lion’s 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 transgressor of God’s Law,
Why dost thou come to Angel’s eyes in this terrific form?”
The Terror answer’d: “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 everything 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 consum’d;
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 darken’d; 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 rear’d 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 mother’s 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 & Albion’s 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 Boston’s 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 unrestrain’d 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 Albion’s 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 Bernard’s house; the flames cover’d 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 Albion’s Angel; who, enrag’d, his secret clouds open’d
From north to south and burnt outstretch’d 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 Albion’s Angels camp’d
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