The Portable William Blake (34 page)

1. Los, smitten with astonishment,
Frighten’d at the hurtling bones

 

2. And at the surging, sulphureous,
Perturbed Immortal, mad raging

 

3. In whirlwinds & pitch & nitre
Round the furious limbs of Los.

 

4. And Los formed nets & gins
And threw the nets round about.

 

5. He watch’d in shudd’ring fear
The dark changes, & bound every change
With rivets of iron & brass.

 

6. And these were the changes of Urizen:

1. Ages on ages roll’d over him;
In stony sleep ages roll’d over him,
Like a dark waste stretching, chang‘able,
By earthquakes riv’n, belching sullen fires:
On ages roll’d ages in ghastly
Sick torment; around him in whirlwinds
Of darkness the eternal Prophet howl’d,
Beating still on his rivets of iron,
Pouring sodor of iron; dividing
The horrible night into watches.

 

2. And Urizen (so his eternal name)
His prolific delight obscur’d more & more
In dark secresy, hiding in surgeing
Sulphureous fluid his phantasies.
The Eternal Prophet heav’d the dark bellows,
And turn’d restless the tongs, and the hammer
Incessant beat, forging chains new & new,
Numb’ring with links hours, days & years.

 

3. The Eternal mind, bounded, began to roll
Eddies of wrath ceaseless round & round,
And the sulphureous foam, surgeing thick,
Settled, a lake, bright & shining clear,
White as the snow on the mountains cold.

 

4. Forgetfulness, dumbness, necessity,
In chains of the mind locked up,
Like fetters of ice shrinking together,
Disorganiz’d, rent from Eternity,
Los beat on his fetters of iron,
And heated his furnaces, & pour’d
Iron sodor and sodor of brass.

 

5. Restless turn’d the Immortal inchain’d,
Heaving dolorous, anguish’d unbearable;
Till a roof, shaggy wild, inclos’d
In an orb his fountain of thought.

 

6. In a horrible, dreamful slumber,
Like the linked infernal chain,
A vast Spine writh’d in torment
Upon the winds, shooting pain’d
Ribs, like a bending cavern;
And bones of solidness froze
Over all his nerves of joy.
And a first Age passed over,
And a state of dismal woe.

 

7. From the caverns of his jointed Spine
Down sunk with fright a red
Round Globe, hot burning, deep,
Deep down into the Abyss;
Panting, Conglobing, Trembling,
Shooting out ten thousand branches
Around his solid bones.
And a second Age passed over,
And a state of dismal woe.

 

8. In harrowing fear rolling round,
His nervous brain shot branches
Round the branches of his heart
On high into two little orbs,
And fixed in two little caves,
Hiding carefully from the wind,
His Eyes beheld the deep.
And a third Age passed over,
And a state of dismal woe.

 

9. The pangs of hope began.
In heavy pain, striving, struggling,
Two Ears in close volutions
From beneath his orbs of vision
Shot spiring out and petrified
As they grew. And a fourth Age passed,
And a state of dismal woe.

 

10. In ghastly torment sick,
Hanging upon the wind,
Two Nostrils bend down to the deep.
And a fifth Age passed over,
And a state of dismal woe.

 

11. In ghastly torment sick,
Within his ribs bloated round,
A craving Hungry Cavern;
Thence arose his channel’d Throat,
And, like a red flame, a Tongue
Of thirst & of hunger appear’d.
And a sixth Age passed over,
And a state of dismal woe.

 

12. Enraged & stifled with torment,
He threw his right Arm to the north,
His left Arm to the south
Shooting out in anguish deep,
And his feet stamp’d the nether Abyss
In trembling & howling & dismay.
And a seventh Age passed over,
And a state of dismal woe.

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 roll’d 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 pour’d 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,
Fibrous, 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 shudder’d 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 fasten’d in the pillars;
With infinite labour the Eternals
A woof wove, and called it Science.

1.But Los saw the Female & pitied;
He embrac’d her; she wept, she refus’d;
In perverse and cruel delight
She fled from his arms, yet he follow’d.

 

2.Eternity shudder’d when they saw
Man begetting his likeness
On his own divided image.

 

3.A time passed over: the Eternals
Began to erect the tent,
When Enitharmon, sick,
Felt a Worm within her Womb.

 

4.Yet helpless it lay like a Worm
In the trembling womb
To be moulded into existence.

 

5.All day the worm lay on her bosom;
All night within her womb
The worm lay till it grew to a serpent,
With dolorous hissings & poisons
Round Enitharmon’s loins folding.

 

6.Coil’d within Enitharmon’s womb
The serpent grew, casting its scales;
With sharp pangs the hissings began
To change to a grating cry:
Many sorrows and dismal throes,
Many forms of fish, bird & beast
Brought forth an Infant form
Where was a worm before.

 

7.The Eternals their tent finished
Alarm’d with these gloomy visions,
When Enitharmon groaning
Produc’d a man Child to the light.

 

8.A shriek ran thro’ Eternity,
And a paralytic stroke,
At the birth of the Human shadow.

 

9.Delving earth in his resistless way,
Howling, the Child with fierce flames
Issu’d from Enitharmon.

 

10.The Eternals closed the tent;
They beat down the stakes, the cords
Stretch’d for a work of eternity.
No more Los beheld Eternity.

 

11.In his hands he siez’d the infant,
He bathed him in springs of sorrow,
He gave him to Enitharmon.

1.They named the child Orc; he grew,
Fed with milk of Enitharmon.

 

2.Los awoke her. 0 sorrow & pain!
A tight’ning girdle grew
Around his bosom. In sobbings
He burst the girdle in twain;
But still another girdle
Oppress’d his bosom. In sobbings
Again he burst it. Again
Another girdle succeeds.
The girdle was form’d by day,
By night was burst in twain.

 

3.These falling down on the rock
Into an iron Chain
In each other link by link lock’d.

 

4.They took Orc to the top of a mountain.
O how Enitharmon weptl
They chain’d his young limbs to the rock
With the Chain of Jealousy
Beneath Urizen’s deathful shadow.

 

5. The dead heard the voice of the child
And began to awake from sleep;
All things heard the voice of the child
And began to awake to life.

 

6.And Urizen, craving with hunger,
Stung with the odours of Nature,
Explor’d his dens around.

 

7.He form’d a line & a plummet
To divide the Abyss beneath;
He form’d a dividing rule;

 

8.He formed scales to weigh,
He formed massy weights;
He formed a brazen quadrant;
He formed golden compasses,
And began to explore the Abyss;
And he planted a garden of fruits.

 

9.But Los encircled Enitharmon
With fires of Prophecy
From the sight of Urizen & Ore.

1.Urizen explor’d his dens,
Mountain, moor & wilderness,
With a globe of fire lighting his journey,
A fearful journey, annoy’d
By cruel enormities, forms
Of life on his forsaken mountains.

 

2.And his world teem’d vast enormities,
Fright’ning, faithless, fawning
Portions of life, similitudes
Of a foot, or a hand, or a head,
Or a heart, or an eye; they swam mischevous,
Dread terrors, delighting in blood.

 

3.Most Urizen sicken’d to see
His eternal creations appear,
Sons & daughters of sorrow on mountains
Weeping, wailing. First Thiriel appear’d,
Astonish’d at his own existence,
Like a man from a cloud born; & Utha,
From the waters emerging, laments;
Grodna rent the deep earth, howling
Amaz’d; his heavens immense cracks
Like the ground parch’d with heat, then Fuzon
Flam’d out, first begotten, last born;
All his Eternal sons in like manner;
His daughters from green herbs & cattle,
From monsters & worms of the pit.

 

4.He in darkness clos’d view’d all his race,
And his soul sicken’d! he curs’d
Both sons & daughters; for he saw
That no flesh nor spirit could keep
His iron laws one moment.

 

5.For he saw that life liv’d upon death:
The Ox in the slaughter house moans,
The Dog at the wintry door;
And he wept & he called it Pity,
And his tears flowed down on the winds.

 

6.Cold he wander’d on high, over their cities
In weeping & pain & woe;
And wherever he wander’d, in sorrows
Upon the aged heavens,
A cold shadow follow’d behind him
Like a spider’s web, moist, cold & dim,
Drawing out from his sorrowing soul,
The dungeon-like heaven dividing,
Where ever the footsteps of Urizen
Walked over the cities in sorrow;

 

7.Till a Web, dark & cold, throughout all
The tormented element stretch’d
From the sorrows of Urizen’s soul.
And the Web is a Female in embrio.
None could break the Web, no wings of fire,

 

8.So twisted the cords, & so knotted
The meshes, twisted like to the human brain.

1.Then the Inhabitants of those Cities
Felt their Nerves change into Marrow,
And hardening Bones began
In swift diseases and torments,
In throbbings & shootings & grindings
Thro’ all the coasts; till weaken’d
The Senses inward rush’d, shrinking
Beneath the dark net of infection;

 

2.Till the shrunken eyes, clouded over,
Discern’d not the woven hipocrisy;
But the streaky slime in their heavens,
Brought together by narrowing perceptions,
Appear’d transparent air; for their eyes
Grew small like the eyes of a man,
And in reptile forms shrinking together,
Of seven feet stature they remain’d.

 

3.Six days they shrunk up from existence,
And on the seventh day they rested,
And they bless’d the seventh day, in sick hope,
And forgot their eternal life.

 

4.And their thirty cities divided
In form of a human heart.
No more could they rise at will
In the infinite void, but bound down
To earth by their narrowing perceptions
They lived a period of years;
Then left a noisom body
To the jaws of devouring darkness.

 

5.And their children wept, & built
Tombs in the desolate places,
And form’d laws of prudence, and call’d them
The eternal laws of God.

 

6.And the thirty cities remain’d,
Surrounded by salt floods, now call’d
Africa: its name was then Egypt.

 

7.The remaining sons of Urizen
Beheld their brethren shrink together
Beneath the Net of Urizen.
Perswasion was in vain;
For the ears of the inhabitants
Were wither’d & deafen’d & cold,
And their eyes could not discern
Their brethren of other cities.

 

8.So Fuzon call’d all together
The remaining children of Urizen,
And they left the pendulous earth.
They called it Egypt, & left it.