The Complete Poems

  A tight’ning girdle grew,

  10 Around his bosom. In sobbings

  He burst the girdle in twain,

  But still another girdle

  Oppressd his bosom, In sobbings

  Again he burst it. Again

  Another girdle succeeds

  The girdle was form’d by day;

  By night was burst in twain.

  3. These falling down on the rock

  Into an iron Chain

  20 In each other link by link lock’d

  4. They took Orc to the top of a mountain.

  O how Enitharmon wept!

  They chain’d his young limbs to the rock

  With the Chain of Jealousy

  Beneath Urizens deathful shadow

  5. The dead heard the voice of the child

  And began to awake from sleep

  All things. heard the voice of the child

  And began to awake to life.

  30 6. And Urizen craving with hunger

  Stung with the odours of Nature

  Explor’d his dens around

  7. He form’d a line & a plummet

  To divide the Abyss beneath.

  He form’d a dividing rule:

  8. He formed scales to weigh;

  He formed massy weights;

  He formed a brazen quadrant;

  He formed golden compasses

  40 And began to explore the Abyss

  And he planted a garden of fruits

  9. But Los encircled Enitharmon

  With fires of Prophecy

  From the sight of Urizen & Orc.

  10. And she bore an enormous race

  CHAP: VIII

  1. Urizen explor’d his dens

  Mountain, moor, & wilderness,

  With a globe of fire lighting his journey

  A fearful journey, annoy’d

  50 By cruel enormities: forms

  PLATE 23

  Of life on his forsaken mountains

  2. And his world teemd vast enormities

  Frightning; faithless; fawning

  Portions of life; similitudes

  Of a foot, or a hand, or a head

  Or a heart, or an eye, they swam mischevous

  Dread terrors! delighting in blood

  3. Most Urizen sicken’d to see

  His eternal creations appear

  10 Sons & daughters of sorrow on mountains

  Weeping! wailing! first Thiriel appear’d

  Astonish’d at his own existence

  Like a man from a cloud born, & Utha

  From the waters emerging, laments!

  Grodna rent the deep earth howling

  Amaz’d! his heavens immense cracks

  Like the ground parch’d with heat; then Fuzon

  Flam’d out! first begotten, last born.

  All his eternal sons in like manner

  20 His daughters from green herbs & cattle

  From monsters, & worms of the pit.

  4. He in darkness clos’d, view’d all his race

  And his soul sicken’d! he curs’d

  Both sons & daughters; for he saw

  That no flesh nor spirit could keep

  His iron laws one moment,

  5. For he saw that life liv’d upon death

  PLATE 25

  The Ox in the slaughter house moans

  The Dog at the wintry door

  And he wept, & he called it Pity

  And his tears flowed down on the winds

  6. Cold he wander’d on high, over their cities

  In weeping & pain & woe!

  And where-ever he wanderd in sorrows

  Upon the aged heavens

  A cold shadow follow’d behind him

  10 Like a spiders web, moist, cold, & dim

  Drawing out from his sorrowing soul

  The dungeon-like heaven dividing

  Where ever the footsteps of Urizen

  Walk’d over the cities in sorrow.

  7. Till a Web dark & cold, throughout all

  The tormented element stretch’d

  From the sorrows of Urizens soul

  And the Web is a Female in embrio.

  None could break the Web, no wings of fire.

  20 8. So twisted the cords, & so knotted

  The meshes: twisted like to the human brain

  9. And all calld it, The Net of Religion.

  CHAP: IX

  1. Then the Inhabitants of those Cities:

  Felt their Nerves change into Marrow

  And hardening Bones began

  In swift diseases and torments,

  In throbbings & shootings & grindings

  Thro’ all the coasts; till weaken’d

  The Senses inward rush’d shrinking,

  30 Beneath the dark net of infection.

  2. Till the shrunken eyes clouded over

  Discernd not the woven hipocrisy

  But the streaky slime in their heavens

  Brought together by narrowing perceptions

  Appeard transparent air; for their eyes

  Grew small like the eyes of a man

  And in reptile forms shrinking together

  Of seven feet stature they remaind

  3. Six days they shrunk up from existence

  40 And on the seventh day they rested

  And they bless’d the seventh day, in sick hope:

  And forgot their eternal life

  4. And their thirty cities divided

  In form of a human heart

  No more could they rise at will

  In the infinite void, but bound down

  To earth by their narrowing perceptions

  PLATE 28

  They lived a period of years

  Then left a noisom body

  To the jaws of devouring darkness

  5. And their children wept, & built

  Tombs in the desolate places,

  And form’d laws of prudence, and call’d them

  The eternal laws of God

  6. And the thirty cities remaind

  Surrounded by salt floods, now call’d

  10 Africa: its name was then Egypt.

  7. The remaining sons of Urizen

  Beheld their brethren shrink together

  Beneath the Net of Urizen;

  Perswasion was in vain;

  For the ears of the inhabitants

  Were wither’d, & deafen’d, & cold.

  And their eyes could not discern,

  Their brethren of other cities.

  8. So Fuzon call’d all together

  20 The remaining children of Urizen:

  And they left the pendulous earth:

  They called it Egypt, & left it.

  9. And the salt ocean rolled englob’d

  The End of the [first] book of Urizen

  THE BOOK OF AHANIA

  PLATE 2

  AHANIA

  CHAP: Ist

  1: Fuzon, on a chariot iron-wing’d

  On spiked flames rose; his hot visage

  Flam’d furious! sparkles in his hair & beard

  Shot down his wide bosom and shoulders.

  On clouds of smoke rages his chariot

  And his right hand burns red in its cloud

  Moulding into a vast globe, his wrath

  As the thunder-stone is moulded.

  Son of Urizens silent burnings

  10 2: Shall we worship this Demon of smoke,

  Said Fuzon, this abstract non-entity

  This cloudy God seated on waters

  Now seen, now obscur’d, King of sorrow?

  3: So he spoke, in a fiery flame,

  On Urizen frowning indignant,

  The Globe of wrath shaking on high

  Roaring with fury, he threw

  The howling Globe: burning it flew

  Lengthning into a hungry beam. Swiftly

  20 4: Oppos’d to the exulting flam’d beam

  The broad Disk of Urizen upheav’d

  Across the Void many a mile.

/>   5: It was forg’d in mills where the winter

  Beats incessant; ten winters the disk

  Unremitting endur’d the cold hammer.

  6: But the strong arm that sent it, remember’d

  The sounding beam; laughing it tore through

  That beaten mass: keeping its direction

  The cold loins of Urizen dividing.

  30 7: Dire shriek’d his invisible Lust

  Deep groan’d Urizen! stretching his awful hand

  Ahania (so name his parted soul)

  He siez’d on his mountains of Jealousy.

  He groand anguishd & called her Sin,

  Kissing her and weeping over her;

  Then hid her in darkness in silence;

  Jealous tho’ she was invisible.

  8: She fell down a faint shadow wandring

  In chaos and circling dark Urizen,

  40 As the moon anguishd circles the earth;

  Hopeless! abhorrd! a death-shadow,

  Unseen, unbodied, unknown,

  The mother of Pestilence.

  9: But the fiery beam of Fuzon

  Was a pillar of fire to Egypt

  Five hundred years wandring on earth

  Till Los siezd it and beat in a mass

  With the body of the sun.

  PLATE 3

  CHAP: IId

  1: But the forehead of Urizen gathering,

  And his eyes pale with anguish, his lips

  Blue & changing; in tears and bitter

  Contrition he prepar’d his Bow,

  2: Form’d of Ribs: that in his dark solitude

  When obscur’d in his forests fell monsters,

  Arose. For his dire Contemplations

  Rush’d down like floods from his mountains

  In torrents of mud settling thick

  10 With Eggs of unnatural production

  Forthwith hatching; some howl’d on his hills

  Some in vales; some aloft flew in air

  3: Of these: an enormous dread Serpent

  Scaled and poisonous horned

  Approach’d Urizen even to his knees

  As he sat on his dark rooted Oak.

  4: With his horns he push’d furious.

  Great the conflict & great the jealousy

  In cold poisons: but Urizen smote him

  20 5: First he poison’d the rocks with his blood

  Then polish’d his ribs, and his sinews

  Dried; laid them apart till winter;

  Then a Bow black prepar’d: on this Bow,

  A poisoned rock plac’d in silence:

  He utter’d these words to the Bow:

  6: O Bow of the clouds of secresy!

  O nerve of that lust form’d monster!

  Send this rock swift, invisible thro’

  The black clouds, on the bosom of Fuzon

  30 7: So saying, In torment of his wounds,

  He bent the enormous ribs slowly;

  A circle of darkness! then fixed

  The sinew in its rest: then the Rock

  Poisonous source! plac’d with art, lifting difficult

  Its weighty bulk: silent the rock lay.

  8: While Fuzon his tygers unloosing

  Thought Urizen slain by his wrath.

  I am God. said he, eldest of things!

  9: Sudden sings the rock, swift & invisible

  40 On Fuzon flew, enter’d his bosom;

  His beautiful visage, his tresses,

  That gave light to the mornings of heaven

  Were smitten with darkness, deform’d

  And outstretch’d on the edge of the forest

  10: But the rock fell upon the Earth,

  Mount Sinai, in Arabia.

  CHAP: III

  1: The Globe shook; and Urizen seated

  On black clouds his sore wound anointed

  The ointment flow’d down on the void

  50 Mix’d with blood; here the snake gets her poison

  2: With difficulty & great pain; Urizen

  Lifted on high the dead corse:

  On his shoulders he bore it to where

  A Tree hung over the Immensity

  3: For when Urizen shrunk away

  From Eternals, he sat on a rock

  Barren; a rock which himself

  From redounding fancies had petrified

  Many tears fell on the rock,

  60 Many sparks of vegetation;

  Soon shot the painted root

  Of Mystery, under his heel:

  It grew a thick tree; he wrote

  In silence his book of iron:

  Till the horrid plant bending its boughs

  Grew to roots when it felt the earth

  And again sprung to many a tree.

  4: Amaz’d started Urizen! when

  He beheld himself compassed round

  70 And high roofed over with trees

  He arose but the stems stood so thick

  He with difficulty and great pain

  Brought his Books, all but the Book

  PLATE 4

  Of iron, from the dismal shade

  5: The Tree still grows over the Void

  Enrooting itself all around

  An endless labyrinth of woe!

  6: The corse of his first begotten

  On the accursed Tree of MYSTERY:

  On the topmost stem of this Tree

  Urizen nail’d Fuzon’s corse.

  CHAP: IV

  1: Forth flew the arrows of pestilence

  10 Round the pale living Corse on the tree

  2: For in Urizens slumbers of abstraction

  In the infinite ages of Eternity:

  When his Nerves of Joy melted & flow’d

  A white Lake on the dark blue air

  In perturb’d pain and dismal torment

  Now stretching out, now swift conglobing.

  3: Effluvia vapor’d above

  In noxious clouds; these hover’d thick

  Over the disorganiz’d Immortal,

  20 Till petrific pain scurfd o’er the Lakes

  As the bones of man, solid & dark

  4: The clouds of disease hover’d wide

  Around the Immortal in torment

  Perching around the hurtling bones

  Disease on disease, shape on shape,

  Winged screaming in blood & torment.

  5: The Eternal Prophet beat on his anvils

  Enrag’d in the desolate darkness

  He forg’d nets of iron around

  30 And Los threw them around the bones

  6: The shapes screaming flutter’d vain

  Some combin’d into muscles & glands

  Some organs for craving and lust

  Most remain’d on the tormented void:

  Urizens army of horrors.

  7: Round the pale living Corse on the Tree

  Forty years flew the arrows of pestilence

  8: Wailing and terror and woe

  Ran thro’ all his dismal world:

  Forty years all his sons & daughters

  Felt their skulls harden; then Asia

  Arose in the pendulous deep.

  9: They reptilize upon the Earth.

  10: Fuzon groand on the Tree.

  CHAP: V

  1: The lamenting voice of Ahania

  Weeping upon the void.

  And round the Tree of Fuzon:

  Distant in solitary night

  Her voice was heard, but no form

  50 Had she: but her tears from clouds

  Eternal fell round the Tree

  2: And the voice cried: Ah Urizen! Love!

  Flower of morning! I weep on the verge

  Of Non-entity; how wide the Abyss

  Between Ahania and thee!

  3: I lie on the verge of the deep.

  I see thy dark clouds ascend,

  I see thy black forests and floods,

  A horrible waste to my eyes!

  60 4: Weeping I walk over rocks

  Over dens & thro’ valle
ys of death

  Why didst thou despise Ahania

  To cast me from thy bright presence

  Into the World of Loneness

  5: I cannot touch his hand:

  Nor weep on his knees, nor hear

  His voice & bow, nor see his eyes

  And joy, nor hear his footsteps, and

  My heart leap at the lovely sound!

  70 I cannot kiss the place

  Whereon his bright feet have trod,

  PLATE 5

  But I wander on the rocks

  With hard necessity.

  6: Where is my golden palace

  Where my ivory bed

  Where the joy of my morning hour

  Where the sons of eternity, singing

  7: To awake bright Urizen, my king!

  To arise to the mountain sport,

  To the bliss of eternal valleys:

  10 8: To awake my king in the morn!

  To embrace Ahanias joy

  On the bredth of his open bosom:

  From my soft cloud of dew to fall

  In showers of life on his harvests.

  9: When he gave my happy soul

  To the sons of eternal joy:

  When he took the daughters of life.

  Into my chambers of love:

  10: When I found babes of bliss on my beds.

  20 And bosoms of milk in my chambers

  Fill’d with eternal seed

  O! eternal births sung round Ahania,

  In interchange sweet of their joys.

  11: Swell’d with ripeness & fat with fatness

  Bursting on winds my odors,

  My ripe figs and rich pomegranates

  In infant joy at thy feet

  O Urizen, sported and sang;

  12: Then thou with thy lap full of seed

  30 With thy hand full of generous fire

  Walked forth from the clouds of morning

  On the virgins of springing joy,

  On the human soul to cast

  The seed of eternal science.

  13: The sweat poured down thy temples

  To Ahania return’d in evening

  The moisture awoke to birth

  My mothers-joys, sleeping in bliss.

  14: But now alone over rocks, mountains

  40 Cast out from thy lovely bosom:

  Cruel jealousy! selfish fear!

  Self-destroying: how can delight,

  Renew in these chains of darkness

  Where bones of beasts are strown

  On the bleak and snowy mountains

  Where bones from the birth are buried

  Before they see the light.

  FINIS

  THE BOOK OF LOS

  PLATE 3

  LOS

  CHAP: I

  1: Eno aged Mother,

  Who the chariot of Leutha guides,

  Since the day of thunders in old time

  2: Sitting beneath the eternal Oak

  Trembled and shook the stedfast Earth

  And thus her speech broke forth.

  3: O Times remote!