SELECTIONS FROM MILTON
Engraved 1804-1809
Preface
The stolen and perverted writings of Homer and Ovid, of Plato and Cicero, which all men ought to condemn, are set up by artifice against the Sublime of the Bible; but when the New Age is at leisure to pronounce, all will be set right, and those grand works of the more ancient, and consciously and professedly Inspired men will hold their proper rank, and the Daughters of Memory shall become the Daughters of Inspiration. Shakespeare and Milton were both curb'd by the general malady and infection from the silly Greek and Latin slaves of the sword.
Rouse up, O Young Men of the New Age! Set your foreheads against the ignorant hirelings! For we have hirelings in the Camp, the Court, and the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress mental, and prolong corporeal war. Painters! on you I call. Sculptors! Architects! suffer not the fashionable fools to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works, or the expensive advertising boasts that they make of such works: believe Christ and His Apostles that there is a class of men whose whole delight is in destroying. We do not want either Greek or Roman models if we are but just and true to our own Imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live for ever, in Jesus our Lord.
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets
Numbers xi: 29
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!
The Mills of Satan
And the Mills of Satan were separated into a moony Space
Among the rocks of Albion's Temples, and Satan's Druid Sons
Offer the Human Victims throughout all the Earth; and Albion's
Dread Tomb, immortal on his Rock, overshadow'd the whole Earth,
Where Satan, making to himself Laws from his own identity,
Compell'd others to serve him in moral gratitude and submission,
Being call'd God, setting himself above all that is callèd God.
And all the Spectres of the Dead, calling themselves Sons of God,
In his Synagogues worship Satan under the Unutterable Name.
The Sin of Leutha
The Sin was begun in Eternity, and will not rest to Eternity,
Till two Eternities meet together. Ah! lost! lost! lost for ever!
Milton's Journey to Eternal Death
Then Milton rose up from the Heavens of Albion ardorous:
The whole Assembly wept prophetic, seeing in Milton's face
And in his lineaments divine the shades of Death and Ulro;
He took off the robe of the Promise, and 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 sepulchre to see if morning breaks;
I will go down to self-annihilation and Eternal Death;
Lest the Last Judgement come and find me unannihilate,
And I be seiz'd and giv'n into the hands of my own Selfhood.
The Lamb of God is seen thro' mists and shadows, hov'ring
Over the sepulchres, in clouds of Jehovah and winds of Elohim,
A disk of blood, distant; and Heav'ns and Earths roll dark between.
What do I here before the Judgement without my Emanation,
With the Daughters of Memory, and 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.'
And Milton said: `I go to Eternal Death!' Eternity shudder'd;
For he took the outside course, among the graves of the dead,
A mournful Shade. Eternity shudder'd at the image of Eternal Death.
Then on the verge of Beulah he beheld his own Shadow,
A mournful form, double, hermaphroditic, male and female
In one wonderful body, and he enter'd into it
In direful pain; for the dread Shadow, twenty-seven-fold,
Reach'd to the depths of direst Hell, and thence to Albion's land,
Which is this Earth of Vegetation on which now I write.
The Nature of Infinity
The nature of Infinity is this: That every thing has its
Own Vortex; and when once a traveller thro' Eternity
Has pass'd that Vortex, he perceives it roll backward behind
His path, into a Globe itself enfolding, like a sun,
Or like a moon, or like a universe of starry majesty,
While he keeps onwards in his wondrous journey on the Earth,
Or like a human form, a friend with whom he liv'd benevolent.
As the eye of man views both the East and West, encompassing
Its vortex, and the North and South with all their starry host,
Also the rising sun and setting moon he views, surrounding
His corn-fields and his valleys of five hundred acres square.
Thus is the Earth one infinite plane, and not as apparent
To the weak traveller confin'd beneath the moony shade.
Thus is the Heaven a Vortex pass'd already, and the Earth
A Vortex not yet pass'd by the traveller thro' Eternity.
The Sea of Time and Space
First Milton saw Albion upon the Rock of Ages,
Deadly pale, outstretch'd, and snowy cold, storm-cover'd --
A Giant form of perfect beauty, outstretch'd on the Rock
In solemn death: the Sea of Time and Space thunder'd aloud
Against the Rock, which was enwrappèd with the weeds of Death.
Hovering over the cold bosom in its vortex, Milton bent down
To the bosom of Death: what was underneath soon seem'd above,
A cloudy heaven mingled with stormy seas in loudest ruin;
But as a wintry globe descends precipitant, thro' Beulah bursting,
With thunders loud and terrible, so Milton's Shadow fell
Precipitant, loud thund'ring, into the Sea of Time and Space.
The Mundane Shell
The Mundane Shell is a vast Concave Earth, an immense
Harden'd Shadow of all things upon our Vegetated Earth,
Enlarg'd into Dimension and deform'd into indefinite Space,
In Twenty-seven Heavens and all their Hells, with Chaos
And Ancient Night and Purgatory. It is a cavernous Earth
Of labyrinthine intricacy, twenty-seven folds of Opaqueness,
And finishes where the lark mounts.
A River in Eden
There is in Eden a sweet River of milk and liquid pearl
Nam'd Ololon, on whose mild banks dwelt those who Milton drove
Down into Ulro; and they wept in long-resounding song
For seven days of Eternity, and the River's living banks,
The mountains wail'd, and every plant that grew, in solemn sighs, lamented.
Los
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 and 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 and are seen no more,
They vanish not from me and mine; we guard them first and last.
The Generations of Men run on in the tide of Time,
But leave their destin'd lineaments permanent for ever and ever.
Swedenborg
O Swedenborg! strongest of men, the Samson shorn by the Churches;
Showing the Transgressors in Hell, the proud Warriors in Heaven,
Heaven as a Punisher, and Hell as One under Punishment;
With Laws from Plato and his Greeks to renew the Trojan Gods
In Albion, and to deny the value of the Saviour's blood.
Whitefield and Wesley
He sent his two Servants, Whitefield and Wesley: were they Prophets,
Or were they Idiots or Madmen? -- Show us Miracles!
Can you have greater Miracles than these? Men who devote
Their life's whole comfort to entire scorn and injury and death?
Awake! thou sleeper on the Rock of Eternity, Albion, awake!
The trumpet of Judgement hath twice sounded: all Nations are awake,
But thou art still heavy and dull. Awake, Albion, awake!
The Forge of Los
In Bowlahoola Los's Anvils stand and his Furnaces rage;
Thundering the Hammers beat, and the Bellows blow loud,
Living, self-moving, mourning, lamenting, and howling incessantly
Bowlahoola thro' all its porches feels, tho' too fast founded,
Its pillars and porticoes to tremble at the force
Of mortal or immortal arm; and softly lilling flutes,
Accordant with the horrid labours, make sweet melody
The Bellows are the Animal Lungs, the Hammers the Animal Heart,
The Furnaces the Stomach for digestion; terrible their fury!
Thousands and thousands labour, thousands play on instruments,
Stringèd or fluted, to ameliorate the sorrows of slavery.
Loud sport the dancers in the Dance of Death, rejoicing in carnage.
The hard dentant Hammers are lull'd by the flutes' lula lula,
The bellowing Furnaces' blare by the long-sounding clarion,
The double drum drowns howls and groans, the shrill fife shrieks and cries,
The crooked horn mellows the hoarse raving serpent -- terrible but harmonious.
The Wine-Press of Los
But the Wine-press of Los is eastward of Golgonooza, before the Seat
Of Satan: Luvah laid the foundation, and Urizen finish'd it in howling woe.
How red the Sons and Daughters of Luvah! here they tread the grapes,
Laughing and shouting, drunk with odours; many fall, o'erwearièd;
Drown'd in the wine is many a youth and maiden: those around
Lay them on skins of tigers and of the spotted leopard and the wild ass,
Till they revive; or bury them in cool grots, making lamentation.
This Wine-press is call'd War on Earth: it is the Printing-Press
Of Los; and here he lays his words in order above the mortal brain,
As cogs are form'd in a wheel to turn the cogs of the adverse wheel.
Timbrels and violins sport round the Wine-presses; the little Seed,
The sportive Root, the Earth-worm, the Gold-beetle, the wise Emmet
Dance round the Wine-presses of Luvah; the Centipede is there,
The Ground-spider with many eyes, the Mole clothèd in velvet,
The ambitious Spider in his sullen web, the lucky Golden-spinner,
The Earwig arm'd, the tender Maggot, emblem of immortality,
The Flea, Louse, Bug, the Tape-worm; all the Armies of Disease,
Visible or invisible to the slothful, Vegetating Man;
The slow Slug, the Grasshopper, that sings and laughs and drinks --
Winter comes: he folds his slender bones without a murmur.
The cruel Scorpion is there, the Gnat, Wasp, Hornet, and the Honey-bee,
The Toad and venomous Newt, the Serpent cloth'd in gems and gold:
They throw off their gorgeous raiment: they rejoice with loud jubilee,
Around the Wine-presses of Luvah, naked and drunk with wine.
There is the Nettle that stings with soft down, and there
The indignant Thistle, whose bitterness is bred in his milk,
Who feeds on contempt of his neighbour; there all the idle Weeds,
That creep around the obscure places, show their various limbs
Naked in all their beauty, dancing round the Wine-presses.
But in the Wine-presses the Human grapes sing not nor dance!
They howl and writhe in shoals of torment, in fierce flames consuming,
In chains of iron and in dungeons, circled with ceaseless fires,
In pits and dens and shades of death, in shapes of torment and woe --
The plates, and screws, and racks, and saws, and cords, and fires and cisterns,
The cruel joys of Luvah's Daughters, lacerating with knives
And whips their Victims, and the deadly sport of Luvah's Sons.
They dance around the dying, and they drink the howl and groan;
They catch the shrieks in cups of gold, they hand them to one another:
These are the sports of love, and these the sweet delights of amorous play,
Tears of the grape, the death-sweat of the cluster, the last sigh
Of the mild youth who listens to the luring songs of Luvah.
The Building of Time
But others of the Sons of Los build Moments and Minutes and Hours,
And Days and Months and Years, and Ages and 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 carvèd with skill;
And every Day and Night has Walls of brass and Gates of adamant,
Shining like precious stones, and ornamented with appropriate signs;
And every Month a silver-pavèd Terrace, builded high;
And every Year invulnerable Barriers with high Towers;
And every Age is moated deep with Bridges of silver and gold;
And every Seven Ages is encircled with a Flaming Fire.
Now Seven Ages is amounting to Two Hundred Years:
Each has its Guard, each Moment, Minute, Hour, Day, Month and 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 and value to Six Thousand Years;
For in this Period the Poet's Work is done; and all the great
Events of Time start forth and are conceiv'd in such a Period,
Within a Moment, a Pulsation of the Artery.
The Birds and the Flowers
Thou hearest the Nightingale begin the Song of Spring:
The Lark, sitting upon his earthy bed, just as the morn
Appears, listens silent; then, springing from the waving corn-field, loud
He leads the Choir of Day -- trill! trill! trill! trill!
Mounting upon the wings of light into the great Expanse,
Re-echoing against the lovely blue and shining heavenly Shell;
His little throat labours with inspiration; every feather
On throat and breast and wings vibrates with the effluence Divine
All Nature listens silent to him, and the awful Sun
Stands still upon the mountain looking on this little Bird
With eyes of soft humility and wonder, love and awe.
Then loud from their green covert all the Birds begin their song:
The Thrush, the Linnet and the Goldfinch, Robin and the Wren
Awake the Sun from his sweet revery upon the mountain:
The Nightingale again assays his song, and thro' the day
And thro' the night warbles luxuriant; every Bird of song
Attending his loud harmony with admiration and 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 from so small a centre comes such sweet,
Forgetting that within that centre Eternity expands
Its ever-during doors, that Og and Anak fiercely guard.
First, ere 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 and 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 Wallflower, the Carnation.
The Jonquil, the mild Lily opes her heavens; every Tree
And Flower and Herb soon fill the air with an innumerable dance,
Yet all in order sweet and lovely. Men are sick with love!
Such is a Vision of the lamentation of Beulah over Ololon.
Love and Jealousy
And the Divine Voice was heard in the Songs of Beulah, saying:
`When I first married you, I gave you all my whole soul;
I thought that you would love my loves and joy in my delights,
Seeking for pleasures in my pleasures, O Daughter of Babylon!
Then thou wast lovely, mild, and gentle; now thou art terrible
In Jealousy and unlovely in my sight, because thou hast cruelly
Cut off my loves in fury, till I have no Love left for thee.
Thy Love depends on him thou lovest, and on his dear loves
Depend thy pleasures, which thou hast cut off by Jealousy:
Therefore I show my Jealousy, and set before you Death.
Behold Milton, descended to redeem the Female Shade
From Death Eternal! such your lot to be continually redeem'd
By Death and misery of those you love, and by Annihilation.
When the Sixfold Female perceives that Milton annihilates
Himself, that seeing all his loves by her cut off, he leaves
Her also, entirely abstracting himself from Female loves,
She shall relent in fear of death; she shall begin to give
Her maidens to her husband, delighting in his delight.
And then, and then alone, begins the happy Female joy,
As it is done in Beulah; and thou, O Virgin Babylon! Mother of Whoredoms,
Shalt bring Jerusalem in thine arms in the night watches; and
No longer turning her a wandering Harlot in the streets,
Shalt give her into the arms of God, your Lord and Husband.'
Such are the Songs of Beulah, in the Lamentations of Ololon.
Reason and Imagination
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 and annihilated alway.
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 and 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, and Newton from Albion's covering,
To take off his filthy garments and clothe him with Imagination;
To cast aside from Poetry all that is not Inspiration,
That it no longer shall dare to mock with the aspersion of Madness
Cast on the Inspirèd by the tame high finisher of paltry Blots
Indefinite or paltry Rhymes, or paltry Harmonies,
Who creeps into State Government like a caterpillar to destroy;
To cast off the idiot Questioner, who is always questioning,
But never capable of answering; who sits with a sly grin
Silent plotting when to question, like a thief in a cave;
Who publishes Doubt and 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 9d0 Envy
That rages round him like a Wolf, day and night, without rest.
He smiles with condescension; he talks of Benevolence and Virtue,
And those who act with Benevolence and Virtue they murder time on time.
These are the destroyers of Jerusalem! these are the murderers
Of Jesus! who deny the Faith and 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 and Curtains
Which Jesus rent, and now shall wholly purge away with Fire,
Till Generation is swallow'd up in Regeneration.
The Song of the Shadowy Female
My Garments shall be woven of sighs and heart-broken lamentations:
The misery of unhappy Families shall be drawn out into its border,
Wrought with the needle, with dire sufferings, poverty, pain, and woe,
Along the rocky Island and thence throughout the whole Earth.
There shall be the sick Father and his starving Family; there
The Prisoner in the stone Dungeon, and the Slave at the Mill.
I will have writings written all over it in Human words,
That every Infant that is born upon the Earth shall read
And get by rote, as a hard task of a life of sixty years.
I will have Kings inwoven upon it, and Counsellors and Mighty Men:
The Famine shall clasp it together with buckles and clasps,
And the Pestilence shall be its fringe, and the War its girdle;
To divide into Rahab and Tirzah, that Milton may come to our tents.
For I will put on the Human Form, and take the Image of God,
Even Pity and Humanity; but my clothing shall be Cruelty.
And I will put on Holiness as a breastplate and as a helmet.
And all my ornaments shall be of the gold of broken hearts,
And the precious stones of anxiety and care, and desperation and death,
And repentance for sin, and sorrow, and punishment and fear;
To defend me from thy terrors, O Orc! my only belovèd!
Poetry, by William Blake
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SELECTIONS FROM JERUSALEM
Engraved 1804-(?)1820
SHEEP
To the Public
GOATS
After my three years' slumber on the banks of the Ocean, I again display my Giant forms to the Public. My former Giants and Fairies having receiv'd the highest reward possible, the . . . and . . . of those with whom to be connected is to be . . ., I cannot doubt that this more consolidated and extended Work will be as kindly received. The Enthusiasm of the following Poem, the Author hopes . . . I also hope the Reader will be with me wholly one in Jesus our Lord, Who is the God . . . and Lord . . . to Whom the Ancients look'd, and saw His day afar off, with trembling and amazement.
The Spirit of Jesus is continual Forgiveness of Sin: he who waits to be righteous before he enters into the Saviour's Kingdom, the Divine Body, will never enter there. I am perhaps the most sinful of men: I pretend not to holiness; yet I pretend to love, to see, to converse with daily, as man with man, and the more to have an interest in the Friend of Sinners. Therefore . . . Reader . . . what you do not approve, and . . me for this energetic exertion of my talent.
Reader! . . . of books . . . of Heaven,
And of that God from whom . . .
Who in mysterious Sinai's awful cave
To Man the wondrous art of writing gave;
Again He speaks in thunder and in fire,
Thunder of Thought and flames of fierce Desire.
Even from the depths of Hell His voice I hear
Within the unfathom'd caverns of my Ear.
Therefore I print: nor vain my types shall be.
Heaven, Earth, and Hell, henceforth shall live in harmony
Of the Measure in which
the following Poem is written.
We who dwell on Earth can do nothing of ourselves; everything, is conducted by Spirits, no less than Digestion or Sleep. . .
When this Verse was first dictated to me, I consider'd a monotonous cadence like that used by Milton and Shakspeare, and all writers of English Blank Verse, derived from the modern bondage of Riming, to be a necessary and indispensable part of Verse. But I soon found that in the mouth of a true Orator such monotony was not only awkward, but as much a bondage as rime itself. I therefore have produced a variety in every line, both of cadences and number of syllables. Every word and every letter is studied and put into its fit place; the terrific numbers are reserved for the terrific parts, the mild and gentle for the mild and gentle parts, and the prosaic for inferior parts; all are necessary to each other. Poetry fetter'd fetters the Human Race. Nations are destroy'd or flourish, in proportion as their Poetry, Painting, and Music are destroy'd or flourish. The Primeval State of Man was Wisdom, Art, and Science.
Introduction
This theme calls me in sleep night after night, and ev'ry morn
Awakes me at sunrise; then I see the Saviour over me
Spreading His beams of love, and dictating the words of this mild song:
`Awake! Awake! O sleeper of the Land of Shadows, wake! expand!
I am in you, and you in Me, mutual in Love Divine,
Fibres of love from man to man thro' Albion's pleasant land.'
The Reasoning Power
And this is the manner of the Sons of Albion in their strength:
They take the Two Contraries which are call'd Qualities, with which
Every Substance is clothèd; they name them Good and Evil.
From them they make an Abstract, which is a Negation
Not only of the Substance from which it is derivèd,
A murderer of its own Body, but also a murderer
Of every Divine Member. It is the Reasoning Power,
An Abstract objecting power, that negatives everything.
This is the Spectre of Man, the Holy Reasoning Power,
And in its Holiness is closèd the Abomination of Desolation!
The Words of Los
I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's;
I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create.
The Builders of Golgonooza
What are those Golden Builders doing? Where was the burying-place
Of soft Ethinthus? near Tyburn's fatal Tree? Is that
Mild Zion's hill's most ancient promontory, near mournful
Ever-weeping Paddington? Is that Calvary and Golgotha
Becoming a building of Pity and Compassion? Lo!
The stones are Pity, and the bricks well-wrought Affections
Enamell'd with Love and Kindness; and the tiles engraven gold,
Labour of merciful hands; the beams and rafters are Forgiveness,
The mortar and cement of the work, tears of Honesty, the nails
And the screws and iron braces are well-wrought Blandishments
And well-contrivèd words, firm fixing, never forgotten,
Always comforting the remembrance; the floors Humility,
The ceilings Devotion, the hearths Thanksgiving.
Prepare the furniture, O Lambeth, in thy pitying looms!
The curtains, woven tears and sighs, wrought into lovely forms
For Comfort; there the secret furniture of Jerusalem's chamber
Is wrought. Lambeth! the Bride, the Lamb's Wife loveth thee;
Thou art one with her, and knowest not of Self in thy supreme joy.
Go on, Builders in hope! tho' Jerusalem wanders far away
Without the Gate of Los, among the dark Satanic wheels.
A Vision of Albion
I see the Fourfold Man; the Humanity in deadly sleep,
And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and its cruel Shadow.
I see the Past, Present, and Future existing all at once
Before me. O Divine Spirit! sustain me on thy wings,
That I may awake Albion from his long and cold repose;
For Bacon and Newton, sheath'd in dismal steel, their terrors hang
Like iron scourges over Albion. Reasonings like vast Serpents
Enfold around my limbs, bruising my minute articulations.
I turn my eyes to the Schools and Universities of Europe,
And there behold the Loom of Locke, whose Woof rages dire,
Wash'd by the Water-wheels of Newton: black the cloth
In heavy wreaths folds over every Nation: cruel Works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic,
Moving by compulsion each other; not as those in Eden, which,
Wheel within wheel, in freedom revolve, in harmony and peace.
Punishment and Forgiveness
Why should Punishment weave the veil with Iron Wheels of War,
When Forgiveness might it weave with Wings of Cherubim?
The Lament of Albion
O what is Life and what is Man? O what is Death? Wherefore
Are you, my Children, natives in the Grave to where I go?
Or are you born to feed the hungry ravenings of Destruction,
To be the sport of Accident, to waste in Wrath and Love a weary
Life, in brooding cares and anxious labours, that prove but chaff?
O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! I have forsaken thy courts,
Thy pillars of ivory and gold, thy curtains of silk and fine
Linen, thy pavements of precious stones, thy walls of pearl
And gold, thy gates of Thanksgiving, thy windows of Praise,
Thy clouds of Blessing, thy Cherubims of Tender Mercy,
Stretching their Wings sublime over the Little Ones of Albion.
O Human Imagination! O Divine Body, I have crucifièd!
I have turnèd my back upon thee into the Wastes of Moral Law:
There Babylon is builded in the Waste, founded in Human desolation.
O Babylon! thy Watchman stands over thee in the night;
Thy severe Judge all the day long proves thee, O Babylon,
With provings of Destruction, with giving thee thy heart's desire.
But Albion is cast forth to the Potter, his Children to the Builders
To build Babylon, because they have forsaken Jerusalem.
The walls of Babylon are Souls of Men; her gates the Groans
Of Nations; her towers are the Miseries of once happy Families;
Her streets are pavèd with Destruction; her houses built with Death;
Her Palaces with Hell and the Grave; her Synagogues with Torments
Of ever-hardening Despair, squar'd and polish'd with cruel skill.
Jerusalem
Such Visions have appear'd to me,
As I my order'd course have run:
Jerusalem is nam'd Liberty
Among the Sons of Albion.
TO THE JEWS
Jerusalem, the Emanation of the Giant Albion! Can it be? Is it a truth that the learned have explored? Was Britain the primitive seat of the Patriarchal Religion? If it is true, my title page is also true, that Jerusalem was, and is, the Emanation of the Giant Albion. It is true, and cannot be controverted. Ye are united, O ye inhabitants of Earth, in One Religion -- the Religion of Jesus, the most ancient, the Eternal, and the Everlasting Gospel. The Wicked will turn it to Wickedness, the Righteous to Righteousness. Amen! Huzza! Selah!
`All things begin and end in Albion's ancient Druid rocky shore.'
Your Ancestors derived their origin from Abraham, Heber, Shem, and Noah, who were Druids, as the Druid Temples (which are the patriarchal pillars and oak groves) over the whole Earth witness to this day.
You have a tradition that Man anciently contain'd in his mighty limbs all things in Heaven and Earth: this you received from the Druids.
`But now the starry Heavens are fled from the mighty limbs of Albion.'
Albion was the Parent of the Druids, and, in his Chaotic State of Sleep, Satan and Adam and the whole World was created by the Elohim.
The fields from Islington to Marybone,
To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood,
Were builded over with pillars of gold;
And there Jerusalem's pillars stood.
Her Little Ones ran on the fields,
The Lamb of God among them seen,
And fair Jerusalem, His Bride,
Among the little meadows green.
Pancras and Kentish Town repose
Among her golden pillars high,
Among her golden arches which
Shine upon the starry sky.
The Jew's-harp House and the Green Man,
The Ponds where boys to bathe delight,
The fields of cows by William's farm,
Shine in Jerusalem's pleasant sight.
She walks upon our meadows green;
The Lamb of God walks by her side;
And every English child is seen,
Children of Jesus and His Bride;
Forgiving trespasses and sins,
Lest Babylon, with cruel Og,
With Moral and Self-righteous Law,
Should crucify in Satan's Synagogue.
What are those Golden Builders doing
Near mournful ever-weeping Paddington,
Standing above that mighty ruin,
Where Satan the first victory won;
Where Albion slept beneath the fatal Tree,
And the Druid's golden knife
Rioted in human gore,
In offerings of Human Life?
They groan'd aloud on London Stone,
They groan'd aloud on tyburn's Brook:
Albion gave his deadly groan,
And all the Atlantic mountains shook.
Albion's Spectre, from his loins,
Tore forth in all the pomp of War;
Satan his name; in flames of fire
He stretch'd his Druid pillars far.
Jerusalem fell from Lambeth's vale,
Down thro' Poplar and Old Bow,
Thro' Malden, and across the sea,
In war and howling, death and woe.
The Rhine was red with human blood;
The Danube roll'd a purple tide;
On the Euphrates Satan stood,
And over Asia stretch'd his pride.
He wither'd up sweet Zion's hill
From every nation of the Earth;
He wither'd up Jerusalem's Gates,
And in a dark land gave her birth.
He wither'd up the Human Form
By laws of sacrifice for Sin,
Till it became a Mortal Worm,
But O! translucent all within.
The Divine Vision still was seen,
Still was the Human Form Divine;
Weeping, in weak and mortal clay,
O Jesus! still the Form was Thine!
And Thine the Human Face; and Thine
The Human Hands, and Feet, and Breath,
Entering thro' the Gates of Birth,
And passing thro' the Gates of Death.
And O Thou Lamb of God! whom I
Slew in my dark self-righteous pride,
Art Thou return'd to Albion's land,
And is Jerusalem Thy Bride?
Come to my arms, and nevermore
Depart; but dwell for ever here;
Create my spirit to Thy love;
Subdue my Spectre to Thy fear.
Spectre of Albion! warlike Fiend!
In clouds of blood and ruin roll'd,
I here reclaim thee as my own,
My Selfhood -- Satan arm'd in gold!
Is this thy soft Family-love,
Thy cruel patriarchal pride;
Planting thy Family alone,
Destroying all the World beside?
A man's worst Enemies are those
Of his own House and Family;
And he who makes his Law a curse,
By his own Law shall surely die!
In my Exchanges every land
Shall walk; and mine in every land,
Mutual shall build Jerusalem,
Both heart in heart and hand in hand.
If Humility is Christianity, you, O Jews! are the true Christians. If your tradition that Man contained in his limbs all animals is true, and they were separated from him by cruel sacrifices, and when compulsory cruel sacrifices had brought Humanity into a Feminine Tabernacle in the loins of Abraham and David, the Lamb of God, the Saviour, became apparent on Earth as the Prophets had foretold! The return of Israel is a return to mental sacrifice and war. Take up the Cross, O Israel! and follow Jesus.
A Female Will
What may Man be? who can tell? But what may Woman be,
To have power over Man from Cradle to corruptible Grave?
There is a Throne in every Man: it is the Throne of God.
This, Woman has claim'd as her own; and Man is no more:
Albion is the Tabernacle of Vala and her Temple,
And not the Tabernacle and Temple of the Most High.
O Albion! why wilt thou create a Female Will,
To hide the most evident God in a hidden covert, even
In the shadows of a Woman and a secluded Holy Place,
That we may pry after him as after a stolen treasure,
Hidden among the Dead and murèd up from the paths of Life?
The Universal Family
Our Wars are wars of life, and wounds of love,
With intellectual spears, and long wingèd arrows of thought.
Mutual in one another's love and wrath all renewing,
We live as One Man: for, contracting our Infinite senses,
We behold multitude; or, expanding, we behold as One,
As One Man all the Universal Family; and that One Man
We call Jesus the Christ. And He in us, and we in Him,
Live in perfect harmony in Eden, the land of Life,
Giving, receiving, and forgiving each other's trespasses.
He is the Good Shepherd, He is the Lord and Master;
He is the Shepherd of Albion, He is all in all,
In Eden, in the garden of God, and in heavenly Jerusalem.
If we have offended, forgive us! take not vengeance against us!
Man's Spectre
Each Man is in his Spectre's power
Until the arrival of that hour,
When his Humanity awake,
And cast his Spectre into the Lake.
Pretences
A pretence of Art to destroy Art; a pretence of Liberty
To destroy Liberty; a pretence of Religion to destroy Religion.
Fourfold and Twofold Vision
The Visions of Eternity, by reason of narrowèd perceptions,
Are become weak Visions of Time and Space, fix'd into furrows of Death;
Till deep dissimulation is the only defence an honest man has left.
The Remembrance of Sin
Come, O thou Lamb of God, and take away the remembrance of Sin!
To sin, and to hide the Sin in sweet deceit, is lovely:
To sin in the open face of day is cruel and pitiless; but
To record the Sin for a reproach, to let the Sun go down
In a remembrance of the Sin, is a woe and a horror,
A brooder of an Evil Day, and a Sun rising in blood.
Come then, O Lamb of God, and take away the remembrance of Sin!
Rahab is an Eternal State.
TO THE DEISTS
The Spiritual States of
the Soul are all Eternal.
Distinguish between the
Man and his present State.
He never can be a friend to the Human Race who is the preacher of Natural Morality or Natural Religion; he is a flatterer who means to betray, to perpetuate tyrant Pride and the Laws of that Babylon which, he foresees, shall shortly be destroyed with the Spiritual and not the Natural Sword. He is in the State named Rahab; which State must be put off before he can be the Friend of Man.
You, O Deists! profess yourselves the enemies of Christianity, and you are so: you are also the enemies of the Human Race and of Universal Nature. Man is born a Spectre, or Satan, and is altogether an Evil, and requires a new Selfhood continually, and must continually be changed into his direct Contrary. But your Greek Philosophy, which is a remnant of Druidism, teaches that Man is righteous in his Vegetated Spectre -- an opinion of fatal and accursed consequence to Man, as the Ancients saw plainly by Revelation, to the entire abrogation of Experimental Theory; and many believed what they saw, and prophesied of Jesus.
Man must and will have some religion; if he has not the religion of Jesus, he will have the religion of Satan, and will erect the synagogue of Satan, calling the Prince of this World `God', and destroying all who do not worship Satan under the name of God. Will any one say: `Where are those who worship Satan under the name of God?' Where are they? Listen! Every religion that preaches Vengeance for Sin is the religion of the Enemy and Avenger, and not of the Forgiver of Sin, and their God is Satan, named by the Divine Name. Your Religion, O Deists! Deism is the worship of the God of this World by the means of what you call Natural Religion and Natural Philosophy, and of Natural Morality or Self-Righteousness, the selfish virtues of the Natural Heart. This was the religion of the Pharisees who murdered Jesus. Deism is the same, and ends in the same.
Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, Hume charge the spiritually Religious with hypocrisy; but how a Monk, or a Methodist either, can be a hypocrite, I cannot conceive. We are Men of like passions with others, and pretend not to be holier than others; therefore, when a Religious Man falls into sin, he ought not to be call'd a hypocrite: this title is more properly to be given to a player who falls into sin, whose profession is virtue and morality, and the making men self-righteous. Foote, in calling Whitefield hypocrite, was himself one; for Whitefield pretended not to be holier than others, but confessed his sins before all the world. Voltaire! Rousseau! you cannot escape my charge that you are Pharisees and hypocrites; for you are constantly talking of the virtues of the human heart, and particularly of your own; that you may accuse others, and especially the Religious, whose errors you, by this display of pretended virtue, chiefly design to expose. Rousseau thought Men good by nature: he found them evil, and found no friend. Friendship cannot exist without Forgiveness of Sins continually. The book written by Rousseau, call'd his Confessions, is an apology and cloak for his sin, and not a confession.
But you also charge the poor Monks and Religious with being the causes of war, while you acquit and flatter the Alexanders and Caesars, the Louises and Fredericks, who alone are its causes and its actors. But the Religion of Jesus, Forgiveness of Sin, can never be the cause of a war, nor of a single martyrdom.
Those who martyr others, or who cause war, are Deists, but never can be Forgivers of Sin. The glory of Christianity is to conquer by Forgiveness. All the destruction, therefore, in Christian Europe has arisen from Deism, which is Natural Religion.
I saw a Monk of Charlemaine
Arise before my sight:
I talk'd with the Grey Monk as we stood
In beams of infernal light.
Gibbon arose with a lash of steel,
And Voltaire with a racking wheel;
The Schools, in clouds of learning roll'd,
Arose with War in iron and gold.
`Thou lazy Monk!' they sound afar,
`In vain condemning glorious War;
And in your cell you shall ever dwell:
Rise, War, and bind him in his cell!'
The blood red ran from the Grey Monk's side,
His hands and feet were wounded wide,
His body bent, his arms and knees
Like to the roots of ancient trees.
When Satan first the black bow bent
And the Moral Law from the Gospel rent,
He forg'd the Law into a sword,
And spill'd the blood of Mercy's Lord.
Titus! Constantine! Charlemaine!
O Voltaire! Rousseau! Gibbon! Vain
Your Grecian mocks and Roman sword
Against this image of his Lord;
For a Tear is an Intellectual thing;
And a Sigh is the sword of an angel king;
And the bitter groan of a Martyr's woe
Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow.
Albion's Spectre
But the Spectre, like a hoar-frost and a mildew, rose over Albion,
Saying: `I am God, O Sons of Men! I am your Rational Power!
Am I not Bacon and Newton and Locke, who teach Humility to Man,
Who teach Doubt and Experiment? and my two wings, Voltaire, Rousseau?
Where is that Friend of Sinners, that Rebel against my Laws,
Who teaches Belief to the Nations and an unknown Eternal Life?
Come hither into the desert and turn these stones to bread!
Vain, foolish Man! wilt thou believe without Experiment,
And build a World of Phantasy upon my great Abyss,
A World of Shapes in craving lust and devouring appetite?'
The Holiness of Minute Particulars
And many conversèd on these things as they labour'd at the furrow,
Saying `It is better to prevent misery than to release from misery;
It is better to prevent error than to forgive the criminal.
Labour well the Minute Particulars: attend to the Little Ones,
And those who are in misery cannot remain so long,
If we do but our duty: labour well the teeming Earth. . .
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer;
For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars,
And not in generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational Power:
The Infinite alone resides in Definite and Determinate Identity.
Establishment of Truth depends on destruction of Falsehood continually,
On Circumcision, not on Virginity, O Reasoners of Albion!
A Vision of Joseph and Mary
Behold! in the Visions of Elohim Jehovah, behold Joseph and Mary!
And be comforted, O Jerusalem! in the Visions of Jehovah Elohim.
She lookèd and saw Joseph the Carpenter in Nazareth, and Mary,
His espousèd Wife. And Mary said: `If thou put me away from thee
Dost thou not murder me?' Joseph spoke in anger and fury: `Should I
Marry a harlot and an adulteress?' Mary answer'd: `Art thou more pure
Than thy Maker, Who forgiveth Sins and calls again her that is lost?
Tho' she hates, He calls her again in love. I love my dear Joseph,
But he driveth me away from his presence; yet I hear the voice of God
In the voice of my husband: tho' he is angry for a moment he will not
Utterly cast me away: if I were pure, never could I taste the sweets
Of the Forgiveness of Sins; if I were holy, I never could behold the tears
Of love, of him who loves me in the midst of his anger in furnace of fire.'
`Ah, my Mary,' said Joseph, weeping over and embracing her closely in
His arms, `doth He forgive Jerusalem and not exact Purity from her who is
Polluted? I heard His voice in my sleep and His Angel in my dream,
Saying: "Doth Jehovah forgive a Debt only on condition that it shall
Be payèd? Doth He forgive Pollution only on conditions of Purity?
That Debt is not forgiven! That Pollution is not forgiven!
Such is the Forgiveness of the Gods, the Moral Virtues of the
Heathen, whose tender Mercies are Cruelty. But Jehovah's Salvation
Is without Money and without Price, in the Continual Forgiveness of Sins,
In the Perpetual Mutual Sacrifice in Great Eternity. For behold!
There is none that liveth and sinneth not! And this is the Covenant
Of Jehovah: `If you forgive one another, so shall Jehovah forgive you;
That He Himself may dwell among you.' Fear not then to take
To thee Mary, thy Wife, for she is with Child by the Holy Ghost."'
Then Mary burst forth into a song! she flowèd like a river of
Many streams in the arms of Joseph, and gave forth her tears of joy
Like many waters, and emanating into gardens and palaces upon
Euphrates, and to forests and floods and animals, wild and tame, from
Gihon to Hiddekel, and to corn-fields and villages, and inhabitants
Upon Pison and Arnon and Jordan. And I heard the voice among
The Reapers, saying: `Am I Jerusalem, the lost Adulteress? or am I
Babylon come up to Jerusalem?' And another voice answer'd, saying:
`Does the voice of my Lord call me again? am I pure thro' his Mercy
And Pity? Am I become lovely as a Virgin in his sight, who am
Indeed a Harlot drunken with the Sacrifice of Idols? Does He
Call her pure, as he did in the days of her Infancy, when she
Was cast out to the loathing of her person? The Chaldean took
Me from my cradle; the Amalekite stole me away upon his camels
Before I had ever beheld with love the face of Jehovah, or known
That there was a God of Mercy. O Mercy! O Divine Humanity!
O Forgiveness and Pity and Compassion! If I were pure I should never
Have known Thee: if I were unpolluted I should never have
Glorifièd Thy Holiness, or rejoicèd in thy great Salvation.'
Mary leanèd her side against Jerusalem: Jerusalem receivèd
The Infant into her hands in the Visions of Jehovah. Times passèd on.
Jerusalem fainted over the Cross and Sepulchre. She heard the voice:--
`Wilt thou make Rome thy Patriarch Druid, and the Kings of Europe his
Horsemen? Man in the Resurrection changes his Sexual Garments at will:
Every Harlot was once a Virgin, every Criminal an infant Love.'
Tirzah
`O thou poor Human Form!' said she. `O thou poor child of woe!
Why wilt thou wander away from Tirzah, why me compel to bind thee?
If thou dost go away from me, I shall consume upon these Rocks.
These fibres of thine eyes, that usèd to beam in distant heavens
Away from me, I have bound down with a hot iron:
These nostrils, that expanded with delight in morning skies,
I have bent downward with lead, melted in my roaring furnaces
Of affliction, of love, of sweet despair, of torment unendurable.
My soul is seven furnaces, incessant roars the bellows
Upon my terribly flaming heart; the molten metal runs
In channels thro' my fiery limbs -- O love! O pity! O fear!
O pain! O the pangs, the bitter pangs of love forsaken!'
The Warrior and the Daughter of Albion
Look! the beautiful Daughter of Albion sits naked upon the Stone,
Her panting Victim beside her; her heart is drunk with blood,
Tho' her brain is not drunk with wine; she goes forth from Albion
In pride of beauty, in cruelty of holiness, in the brightness
Of her tabernacle, and her ark and secret place. The beautiful Daughter
Of Albion delights the eyes of the Kings; their hearts and the
Hearts of their Warriors glow hot before Thor and Friga. O Moloch!
O Chemosh! O Bacchus! O Venus! O Double God of Generation!
The Heavens are cut like a mantle around from the Cliffs of Albion,
Across Europe, across Africa, in howlings and deadly War.
A sheet and veil and curtain of blood is let down from Heaven
Across the hills of Ephraim, and down Mount Olivet to
The Valley of the Jebusite . . .
O beautiful Daughter of Albion, cruelty is thy delight!
O Virgin of terrible eyes, who dwellest by Valleys of springs
Beneath the Mountains of Lebanon, in the City of Rehob in Hamath,
Taught to touch the harp, to dance in the circle of Warriors
Before the Kings of Canaan, to cut the flesh from the Victim,
To roast the flesh in fire, to examine the Infant's limbs
In cruelties of holiness, to refuse the joys of love, to bring
The Spies from Egypt to raise jealousy in the bosoms of the twelve
Kings of Cannan; then to let the Spies depart to Meribah Kadesh,
To the place of the Amalekite. I am drunk with unsatiated love;
I must rush again to War, for the Virgin has frown'd and refus'd.
Sometimes I curse, and sometimes bless thy fascinating beauty.
Once Man was occupièd in intellectual pleasures and energies;
But now my Soul is harrow'd with grief and fear, and love and desire,
And now I hate, and now I love, and Intellect is no more:
There is no time for anything but the torments of love and desire:
The Feminine and Masculine Shadows, soft, mild, and ever varying
In beauty, are Shadows now no more, but Rocks in Horeb.
Men and States
As the Pilgrim passes while the Country permanent remains,
So Men pass on, but States remain permanent for ever.
TO THE CHRISTIANS
Devils are False Religions.
Saul! Saul! why persecutest thou me?
I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,
Built in Jerusalem's wall.
We are told to abstain from fleshly desires that we may lose no time from the Work of the Lord. Every moment lost is a moment that cannot be redeemed: every pleasure that intermingles with the duty of our station is a folly unredeemable, and is planted like the seed of a wild flower among our wheat. All the tortures of repentance are tortures of self-reproach on account of our leaving the Divine Harvest to the Enemy, the struggles of entanglement with incoherent roots. I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination -- Imagination, the real and Eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow, and in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more. The Apostles knew of no other Gospel. What were all their spiritual gifts? What is the Divine Spirit? Is the Holy Ghost any other than an Intellectual Fountain? What is the harvest of the Gospel and its labours? What is that talent which it is a curse to hide? What are the treasures of Heaven which we are to lay up for ourselves? Are they any other than mental studies and performances? What are all the gifts of the Gospel? Are they not all mental gifts? Is God a Spirit who must be worshipped in spirit and in truth? And are not the gifts of the Spirit everything to Man? O ye Religious, discountenance every one among you who shall pretend to despise Art and Science! I call upon you in the name of Jesus! What is the life of Man but Art and Science? Is it meat and drink? Is not the Body more than raiment? What is Mortality but the things relating to the Body, which dies? What is Immortality but the things relating to the Spirit, which lives eternally? What is the Joy of Heaven but improvement in the things of the Spirit? What are the Pains of Hell but Ignorance, Bodily Lust, Idleness, and devastation of the things of the Spirit? Answer this to yourselves, and expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art and Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel. Is not this plain and manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, and not pronounce heartily: that to labour in knowledge is to build up Jerusalem; and to despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem and her Builders. And remember: He who despises and mocks a mental gift in another, calling it pride and selfishness and sin, mocks Jesus, the giver of every mental gift, which always appear to the ignorance-loving hypocrite as sins; but that which is a sin in the sight of cruel Man, is not so in the sight of our kind God. Let every Christian, as much as in him lies, engage himself openly and publicly, before all the World, in some mental pursuit for the Building up of Jerusalem.
I stood among my valleys of the south,
And saw a flame of fire, even as a Wheel
Of fire surrounding all the heavens: it went
From west to east against the current of
Creation, and devour'd all things in its loud
Fury and thundering course round Heaven and Earth
By it the Sun was roll'd into an orb;
By it the Moon faded into a globe,
Travelling thro' the night; for from its dire
And restless fury Man himself shrunk up
Into a little root a fathom long.
And I askèd a Watcher and a Holy One
Its name. He answer'd: `It is the Wheel of Religion.'
I wept and said: `Is this the law of Jesus,
This terrible devouring sword turning every way?'
He answer'd: `Jesus died because He strove
Against the current of this Wheel: its name
Is Caiaphas, the dark Preacher of Death,
Of sin, of sorrow, and of punishment,
Opposing Nature. It is Natural Religion.
But Jesus is the bright Preacher of Life,
Creating Nature from this fiery Law
By self-denial and Forgiveness of Sin.
Go, therefore, cast out devils in Christ's name,
Heal thou the sick of spiritual disease,
Pity the evil; for thou art not sent
To smite with terror and with punishments
Those that are sick, like to the Pharisees,
Crucifying, and encompassing sea and land,
For proselytes to tyranny and wrath.
But to the Publicans and Harlots go:
Teach them true happiness, but let no curse
Go forth out of thy mouth to blight their peace.
For Hell is open'd to Heaven; thine eyes beheld
The dungeons burst, and the prisoners set free.'
England! awake! awake! awake!
Jerusalem thy sister calls!
Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death,
And close her from thy ancient walls?
Thy hills and valleys felt her feet
Gently upon their bosoms move:
Thy gates beheld sweet Zion's ways;
Then was a time of joy and love.
And now the time returns again:
Our souls exult, and London's towers
Receive the Lamb of God to dwell
In England's green and pleasant bowers.
A Vision of Jerusalem
I see thy Form, O lovely, mild Jerusalem! Wing'd with Six Wings
In the opacous Bosom of the Sleeper, lovely, threefold
In Head and Heart and Reins, three Universes of love and beauty.
Thy forehead bright, Holiness to the Lord! with gates of pearl
Reflects Eternity beneath thy azure wings of feathery down,
Ribb'd, delicate, and cloth'd with feather'd gold and azure and purple,
From thy white shoulders shadowing purity in holiness;
Thence, feather'd with soft crimson of the ruby, bright as fire,
Spreading into the azure wings which, like a canopy,
Bends over thy immortal Head in which Eternity dwells,
Albion! belovèd Land, I see thy mountains and thy hills
And valleys, and thy pleasant Cities, Holiness to the Lord!
I see the Spectres of thy Dead, O Emanation of Albion!
Thy Bosom white, translucent, cover'd with immortal gems,
A sublime ornament not obscurring the outlines of beauty,
Terrible to behold, for thy extreme beauty and perfection:
Twelvefold here all the Tribes of Israel I behold
Upon the Holy Land: I see the River of Life and Tree of Life
I see the New Jerusalem descending out of Heaven
Between thy Wings of gold and silver, feather'd immortal,
Clear as the rainbow, as the cloud of the Sun's tabernacle.
Thy Reins cover'd with Wings translucent, sometimes covering
And sometimes spread abroad, reveal the flames of holiness
Which like a robe covers, and like a Veil of Seraphim
In flaming fire unceasing burns from Eternity to Eternity.
Twelvefold I there behold Israel in her Tents;
A Pillar of a Cloud by day, a Pillar of Fire by night
Guides them; there I behold Moab and Ammon and Amalek,
There Bells of silver round thy knees, living, articulate
Comforting sounds of love and harmony; and on thy feet
Sandals of gold and pearl; and Egypt and Assyria before me,
The Isles of Javan, Philistia, Tyre, and Lebanon.
The Worship of God
It is easier to forgive an Enemy than to forgive a Friend.
The man who permits you to injure him deserves your vengeance;
He also will receive it. Go, Spectre! obey my most secret desire,
Which thou knowest without my speaking. Go to these Fiends of Righteousness,
Tell them to obey their Humanities, and not pretend Holiness,
When they are murderers. As far as my Hammer and Anvil permit,
Go tell them that the Worship of God is honouring His gifts
In other men, and loving the greatest men best, each according
To his Genius, which is the Holy Ghost in Man: there is no other
God than that God who is the intellectual fountain of Humanity.
He who envies or calumniates, which is murder and cruelty,
Murders the Holy One. Go tell them this, and overthrow their cup,
Their bread, their altar-table, their incense, and their oath,
Their marriage and their baptism, their burial and consecration.
I have tried to make friends by corporeal gifts, but have only
Made enemies; I never made friends but by spiritual gifts,
By severe contentions of friendship, and the burning fire of thought.
He who would see the Divinity must see Him in His Children,
One first in friendship and love, then a Divine Family, and in the midst
Jesus will appear. So he who wishes to see a Vision, a perfect Whole,
Must see it in its Minute Particulars, organized; and not as thou,
O Fiend of Righteousness, pretendest! thine is a disorganized
And snowy cloud, brooder of tempests and destructive War.
You smile with pomp and rigour, you talk of benevolence and virtue;
I act with benevolence and virtue, and get murder'd time after time;
You accumulate Particulars, and murder by analysing, that you
May take the aggregate, and you call the aggregate Moral Law;
And you call that swell'd and bloated Form a Minute Particular.
But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars; and every
Particular is a Man, a Divine Member of the Divine Jesus.
The Cry of Los
I care not whether a man is Good or Evil; all that I care
Is whether he is a Wise man or a Fool. Go! put off Holiness,
And put on Intellect; or my thund'rous hammer shall drive thee
To wrath, which thou condemnest, till thou obey my voice.
Albion upon the Rock
Albion cold lays on his Rock; storms and snows beat round him,
Beneath the Furnaces and the Starry Wheels and the Immortal Tomb;
Howling winds cover him; roaring seas dash furious against him;
In the deep darkness broad lightnings glare, long thunders roll.
The weeds of Death enwrap his hands and feet, blown incessant,
And wash'd incessant by the for-ever restless sea-waves, foaming abroad
Upon the white Rock. England, a Female Shadow, as deadly damps
ba5 Of the Mines of Cornwall and Derbyshire, lays upon his bosom heavy,
Movèd by the wind in volumes of thick cloud returning, folding round
His loins and bosom, unremovable by swelling storms and loud rending
Of enragèd thunders. Around them the Starry Wheels of their Giant Sons
Revolve, and over them the Furnaces of Los and the Immortal Tomb, around,
Erin sitting in the Tomb, to watch them unceasing night and day:
And the Body of Albion was closèd apart from all Nations.
Over them the famish'd Eagle screams on bony wings, and around
Them howls the Wolf of famine; deep heaves the Ocean, black, thundering
Around the wormy Garments of Albion, then pausing in deathlike silence.
Time was Finishèd!
The Wrath of God
The Breath Divine went forth over the morning hills. Albion rose
In anger, the wrath of God, breaking bright, flaming on all sides around
His awful limbs: into the Heavens he walkèd, clothèd in flames,
Loud thund'ring, with broad flashes of flaming lightning and pillars
Of fire, speaking the Words of Eternity in Human Forms, in direful
Revolutions of Action and Passion, thro' the Four Elements on all sides
Surrounding his awful Members. Thou seest the Sun in heavy clouds
Struggling to rise above the Mountains; in his burning hand
He takes his Bow, then chooses out his arrows of flaming gold;
Murmuring, the Bowstring breathes with ardour; clouds roll round the
Horns of the wide Bow; loud sounding winds sport on the mountain brows,
Compelling Urizen to his Furrow, and Tharmas to his Sheepfold,
And Luvah to his Loom.
The Divine Image
Jesus said: `Wouldest thou love one who never died
For thee, or ever die for one who had not died for thee?
And if God dieth not for Man, and giveth not Himself
Eternally for Man, Man could not exist; for Man is Love,
As God is Love: every kindness to another is a little Death
In the Divine Image; nor can Man exist but by Brotherhood.'
The End of the Song of Jerusalem
All Human Forms identifièd, even Tree, Metal, Earth, and Stone; all
Human Forms identifièd, living, going forth and returning wearied
Into the Planetary lives of Years, Months, Days and Hours; reposing,
And then awaking into His bosom in the Life of Immortality.
And I heard the Name of their Emanations: they are namèd Jerusalem.
Engraved 1804-(?)1820
SHEEP
To the Public
GOATS
After my three years' slumber on the banks of the Ocean, I again display my Giant forms to the Public. My former Giants and Fairies having receiv'd the highest reward possible, the . . . and . . . of those with whom to be connected is to be . . ., I cannot doubt that this more consolidated and extended Work will be as kindly received. The Enthusiasm of the following Poem, the Author hopes . . . I also hope the Reader will be with me wholly one in Jesus our Lord, Who is the God . . . and Lord . . . to Whom the Ancients look'd, and saw His day afar off, with trembling and amazement.
The Spirit of Jesus is continual Forgiveness of Sin: he who waits to be righteous before he enters into the Saviour's Kingdom, the Divine Body, will never enter there. I am perhaps the most sinful of men: I pretend not to holiness; yet I pretend to love, to see, to converse with daily, as man with man, and the more to have an interest in the Friend of Sinners. Therefore . . . Reader . . . what you do not approve, and . . me for this energetic exertion of my talent.
Reader! . . . of books . . . of Heaven,
And of that God from whom . . .
Who in mysterious Sinai's awful cave
To Man the wondrous art of writing gave;
Again He speaks in thunder and in fire,
Thunder of Thought and flames of fierce Desire.
Even from the depths of Hell His voice I hear
Within the unfathom'd caverns of my Ear.
Therefore I print: nor vain my types shall be.
Heaven, Earth, and Hell, henceforth shall live in harmony
Of the Measure in which
the following Poem is written.
We who dwell on Earth can do nothing of ourselves; everything, is conducted by Spirits, no less than Digestion or Sleep. . .
When this Verse was first dictated to me, I consider'd a monotonous cadence like that used by Milton and Shakspeare, and all writers of English Blank Verse, derived from the modern bondage of Riming, to be a necessary and indispensable part of Verse. But I soon found that in the mouth of a true Orator such monotony was not only awkward, but as much a bondage as rime itself. I therefore have produced a variety in every line, both of cadences and number of syllables. Every word and every letter is studied and put into its fit place; the terrific numbers are reserved for the terrific parts, the mild and gentle for the mild and gentle parts, and the prosaic for inferior parts; all are necessary to each other. Poetry fetter'd fetters the Human Race. Nations are destroy'd or flourish, in proportion as their Poetry, Painting, and Music are destroy'd or flourish. The Primeval State of Man was Wisdom, Art, and Science.
Introduction
This theme calls me in sleep night after night, and ev'ry morn
Awakes me at sunrise; then I see the Saviour over me
Spreading His beams of love, and dictating the words of this mild song:
`Awake! Awake! O sleeper of the Land of Shadows, wake! expand!
I am in you, and you in Me, mutual in Love Divine,
Fibres of love from man to man thro' Albion's pleasant land.'
The Reasoning Power
And this is the manner of the Sons of Albion in their strength:
They take the Two Contraries which are call'd Qualities, with which
Every Substance is clothèd; they name them Good and Evil.
From them they make an Abstract, which is a Negation
Not only of the Substance from which it is derivèd,
A murderer of its own Body, but also a murderer
Of every Divine Member. It is the Reasoning Power,
An Abstract objecting power, that negatives everything.
This is the Spectre of Man, the Holy Reasoning Power,
And in its Holiness is closèd the Abomination of Desolation!
The Words of Los
I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's;
I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create.
The Builders of Golgonooza
What are those Golden Builders doing? Where was the burying-place
Of soft Ethinthus? near Tyburn's fatal Tree? Is that
Mild Zion's hill's most ancient promontory, near mournful
Ever-weeping Paddington? Is that Calvary and Golgotha
Becoming a building of Pity and Compassion? Lo!
The stones are Pity, and the bricks well-wrought Affections
Enamell'd with Love and Kindness; and the tiles engraven gold,
Labour of merciful hands; the beams and rafters are Forgiveness,
The mortar and cement of the work, tears of Honesty, the nails
And the screws and iron braces are well-wrought Blandishments
And well-contrivèd words, firm fixing, never forgotten,
Always comforting the remembrance; the floors Humility,
The ceilings Devotion, the hearths Thanksgiving.
Prepare the furniture, O Lambeth, in thy pitying looms!
The curtains, woven tears and sighs, wrought into lovely forms
For Comfort; there the secret furniture of Jerusalem's chamber
Is wrought. Lambeth! the Bride, the Lamb's Wife loveth thee;
Thou art one with her, and knowest not of Self in thy supreme joy.
Go on, Builders in hope! tho' Jerusalem wanders far away
Without the Gate of Los, among the dark Satanic wheels.
A Vision of Albion
I see the Fourfold Man; the Humanity in deadly sleep,
And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and its cruel Shadow.
I see the Past, Present, and Future existing all at once
Before me. O Divine Spirit! sustain me on thy wings,
That I may awake Albion from his long and cold repose;
For Bacon and Newton, sheath'd in dismal steel, their terrors hang
Like iron scourges over Albion. Reasonings like vast Serpents
Enfold around my limbs, bruising my minute articulations.
I turn my eyes to the Schools and Universities of Europe,
And there behold the Loom of Locke, whose Woof rages dire,
Wash'd by the Water-wheels of Newton: black the cloth
In heavy wreaths folds over every Nation: cruel Works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic,
Moving by compulsion each other; not as those in Eden, which,
Wheel within wheel, in freedom revolve, in harmony and peace.
Punishment and Forgiveness
Why should Punishment weave the veil with Iron Wheels of War,
When Forgiveness might it weave with Wings of Cherubim?
The Lament of Albion
O what is Life and what is Man? O what is Death? Wherefore
Are you, my Children, natives in the Grave to where I go?
Or are you born to feed the hungry ravenings of Destruction,
To be the sport of Accident, to waste in Wrath and Love a weary
Life, in brooding cares and anxious labours, that prove but chaff?
O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! I have forsaken thy courts,
Thy pillars of ivory and gold, thy curtains of silk and fine
Linen, thy pavements of precious stones, thy walls of pearl
And gold, thy gates of Thanksgiving, thy windows of Praise,
Thy clouds of Blessing, thy Cherubims of Tender Mercy,
Stretching their Wings sublime over the Little Ones of Albion.
O Human Imagination! O Divine Body, I have crucifièd!
I have turnèd my back upon thee into the Wastes of Moral Law:
There Babylon is builded in the Waste, founded in Human desolation.
O Babylon! thy Watchman stands over thee in the night;
Thy severe Judge all the day long proves thee, O Babylon,
With provings of Destruction, with giving thee thy heart's desire.
But Albion is cast forth to the Potter, his Children to the Builders
To build Babylon, because they have forsaken Jerusalem.
The walls of Babylon are Souls of Men; her gates the Groans
Of Nations; her towers are the Miseries of once happy Families;
Her streets are pavèd with Destruction; her houses built with Death;
Her Palaces with Hell and the Grave; her Synagogues with Torments
Of ever-hardening Despair, squar'd and polish'd with cruel skill.
Jerusalem
Such Visions have appear'd to me,
As I my order'd course have run:
Jerusalem is nam'd Liberty
Among the Sons of Albion.
TO THE JEWS
Jerusalem, the Emanation of the Giant Albion! Can it be? Is it a truth that the learned have explored? Was Britain the primitive seat of the Patriarchal Religion? If it is true, my title page is also true, that Jerusalem was, and is, the Emanation of the Giant Albion. It is true, and cannot be controverted. Ye are united, O ye inhabitants of Earth, in One Religion -- the Religion of Jesus, the most ancient, the Eternal, and the Everlasting Gospel. The Wicked will turn it to Wickedness, the Righteous to Righteousness. Amen! Huzza! Selah!
`All things begin and end in Albion's ancient Druid rocky shore.'
Your Ancestors derived their origin from Abraham, Heber, Shem, and Noah, who were Druids, as the Druid Temples (which are the patriarchal pillars and oak groves) over the whole Earth witness to this day.
You have a tradition that Man anciently contain'd in his mighty limbs all things in Heaven and Earth: this you received from the Druids.
`But now the starry Heavens are fled from the mighty limbs of Albion.'
Albion was the Parent of the Druids, and, in his Chaotic State of Sleep, Satan and Adam and the whole World was created by the Elohim.
The fields from Islington to Marybone,
To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood,
Were builded over with pillars of gold;
And there Jerusalem's pillars stood.
Her Little Ones ran on the fields,
The Lamb of God among them seen,
And fair Jerusalem, His Bride,
Among the little meadows green.
Pancras and Kentish Town repose
Among her golden pillars high,
Among her golden arches which
Shine upon the starry sky.
The Jew's-harp House and the Green Man,
The Ponds where boys to bathe delight,
The fields of cows by William's farm,
Shine in Jerusalem's pleasant sight.
She walks upon our meadows green;
The Lamb of God walks by her side;
And every English child is seen,
Children of Jesus and His Bride;
Forgiving trespasses and sins,
Lest Babylon, with cruel Og,
With Moral and Self-righteous Law,
Should crucify in Satan's Synagogue.
What are those Golden Builders doing
Near mournful ever-weeping Paddington,
Standing above that mighty ruin,
Where Satan the first victory won;
Where Albion slept beneath the fatal Tree,
And the Druid's golden knife
Rioted in human gore,
In offerings of Human Life?
They groan'd aloud on London Stone,
They groan'd aloud on tyburn's Brook:
Albion gave his deadly groan,
And all the Atlantic mountains shook.
Albion's Spectre, from his loins,
Tore forth in all the pomp of War;
Satan his name; in flames of fire
He stretch'd his Druid pillars far.
Jerusalem fell from Lambeth's vale,
Down thro' Poplar and Old Bow,
Thro' Malden, and across the sea,
In war and howling, death and woe.
The Rhine was red with human blood;
The Danube roll'd a purple tide;
On the Euphrates Satan stood,
And over Asia stretch'd his pride.
He wither'd up sweet Zion's hill
From every nation of the Earth;
He wither'd up Jerusalem's Gates,
And in a dark land gave her birth.
He wither'd up the Human Form
By laws of sacrifice for Sin,
Till it became a Mortal Worm,
But O! translucent all within.
The Divine Vision still was seen,
Still was the Human Form Divine;
Weeping, in weak and mortal clay,
O Jesus! still the Form was Thine!
And Thine the Human Face; and Thine
The Human Hands, and Feet, and Breath,
Entering thro' the Gates of Birth,
And passing thro' the Gates of Death.
And O Thou Lamb of God! whom I
Slew in my dark self-righteous pride,
Art Thou return'd to Albion's land,
And is Jerusalem Thy Bride?
Come to my arms, and nevermore
Depart; but dwell for ever here;
Create my spirit to Thy love;
Subdue my Spectre to Thy fear.
Spectre of Albion! warlike Fiend!
In clouds of blood and ruin roll'd,
I here reclaim thee as my own,
My Selfhood -- Satan arm'd in gold!
Is this thy soft Family-love,
Thy cruel patriarchal pride;
Planting thy Family alone,
Destroying all the World beside?
A man's worst Enemies are those
Of his own House and Family;
And he who makes his Law a curse,
By his own Law shall surely die!
In my Exchanges every land
Shall walk; and mine in every land,
Mutual shall build Jerusalem,
Both heart in heart and hand in hand.
If Humility is Christianity, you, O Jews! are the true Christians. If your tradition that Man contained in his limbs all animals is true, and they were separated from him by cruel sacrifices, and when compulsory cruel sacrifices had brought Humanity into a Feminine Tabernacle in the loins of Abraham and David, the Lamb of God, the Saviour, became apparent on Earth as the Prophets had foretold! The return of Israel is a return to mental sacrifice and war. Take up the Cross, O Israel! and follow Jesus.
A Female Will
What may Man be? who can tell? But what may Woman be,
To have power over Man from Cradle to corruptible Grave?
There is a Throne in every Man: it is the Throne of God.
This, Woman has claim'd as her own; and Man is no more:
Albion is the Tabernacle of Vala and her Temple,
And not the Tabernacle and Temple of the Most High.
O Albion! why wilt thou create a Female Will,
To hide the most evident God in a hidden covert, even
In the shadows of a Woman and a secluded Holy Place,
That we may pry after him as after a stolen treasure,
Hidden among the Dead and murèd up from the paths of Life?
The Universal Family
Our Wars are wars of life, and wounds of love,
With intellectual spears, and long wingèd arrows of thought.
Mutual in one another's love and wrath all renewing,
We live as One Man: for, contracting our Infinite senses,
We behold multitude; or, expanding, we behold as One,
As One Man all the Universal Family; and that One Man
We call Jesus the Christ. And He in us, and we in Him,
Live in perfect harmony in Eden, the land of Life,
Giving, receiving, and forgiving each other's trespasses.
He is the Good Shepherd, He is the Lord and Master;
He is the Shepherd of Albion, He is all in all,
In Eden, in the garden of God, and in heavenly Jerusalem.
If we have offended, forgive us! take not vengeance against us!
Man's Spectre
Each Man is in his Spectre's power
Until the arrival of that hour,
When his Humanity awake,
And cast his Spectre into the Lake.
Pretences
A pretence of Art to destroy Art; a pretence of Liberty
To destroy Liberty; a pretence of Religion to destroy Religion.
Fourfold and Twofold Vision
The Visions of Eternity, by reason of narrowèd perceptions,
Are become weak Visions of Time and Space, fix'd into furrows of Death;
Till deep dissimulation is the only defence an honest man has left.
The Remembrance of Sin
Come, O thou Lamb of God, and take away the remembrance of Sin!
To sin, and to hide the Sin in sweet deceit, is lovely:
To sin in the open face of day is cruel and pitiless; but
To record the Sin for a reproach, to let the Sun go down
In a remembrance of the Sin, is a woe and a horror,
A brooder of an Evil Day, and a Sun rising in blood.
Come then, O Lamb of God, and take away the remembrance of Sin!
Rahab is an Eternal State.
TO THE DEISTS
The Spiritual States of
the Soul are all Eternal.
Distinguish between the
Man and his present State.
He never can be a friend to the Human Race who is the preacher of Natural Morality or Natural Religion; he is a flatterer who means to betray, to perpetuate tyrant Pride and the Laws of that Babylon which, he foresees, shall shortly be destroyed with the Spiritual and not the Natural Sword. He is in the State named Rahab; which State must be put off before he can be the Friend of Man.
You, O Deists! profess yourselves the enemies of Christianity, and you are so: you are also the enemies of the Human Race and of Universal Nature. Man is born a Spectre, or Satan, and is altogether an Evil, and requires a new Selfhood continually, and must continually be changed into his direct Contrary. But your Greek Philosophy, which is a remnant of Druidism, teaches that Man is righteous in his Vegetated Spectre -- an opinion of fatal and accursed consequence to Man, as the Ancients saw plainly by Revelation, to the entire abrogation of Experimental Theory; and many believed what they saw, and prophesied of Jesus.
Man must and will have some religion; if he has not the religion of Jesus, he will have the religion of Satan, and will erect the synagogue of Satan, calling the Prince of this World `God', and destroying all who do not worship Satan under the name of God. Will any one say: `Where are those who worship Satan under the name of God?' Where are they? Listen! Every religion that preaches Vengeance for Sin is the religion of the Enemy and Avenger, and not of the Forgiver of Sin, and their God is Satan, named by the Divine Name. Your Religion, O Deists! Deism is the worship of the God of this World by the means of what you call Natural Religion and Natural Philosophy, and of Natural Morality or Self-Righteousness, the selfish virtues of the Natural Heart. This was the religion of the Pharisees who murdered Jesus. Deism is the same, and ends in the same.
Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, Hume charge the spiritually Religious with hypocrisy; but how a Monk, or a Methodist either, can be a hypocrite, I cannot conceive. We are Men of like passions with others, and pretend not to be holier than others; therefore, when a Religious Man falls into sin, he ought not to be call'd a hypocrite: this title is more properly to be given to a player who falls into sin, whose profession is virtue and morality, and the making men self-righteous. Foote, in calling Whitefield hypocrite, was himself one; for Whitefield pretended not to be holier than others, but confessed his sins before all the world. Voltaire! Rousseau! you cannot escape my charge that you are Pharisees and hypocrites; for you are constantly talking of the virtues of the human heart, and particularly of your own; that you may accuse others, and especially the Religious, whose errors you, by this display of pretended virtue, chiefly design to expose. Rousseau thought Men good by nature: he found them evil, and found no friend. Friendship cannot exist without Forgiveness of Sins continually. The book written by Rousseau, call'd his Confessions, is an apology and cloak for his sin, and not a confession.
But you also charge the poor Monks and Religious with being the causes of war, while you acquit and flatter the Alexanders and Caesars, the Louises and Fredericks, who alone are its causes and its actors. But the Religion of Jesus, Forgiveness of Sin, can never be the cause of a war, nor of a single martyrdom.
Those who martyr others, or who cause war, are Deists, but never can be Forgivers of Sin. The glory of Christianity is to conquer by Forgiveness. All the destruction, therefore, in Christian Europe has arisen from Deism, which is Natural Religion.
I saw a Monk of Charlemaine
Arise before my sight:
I talk'd with the Grey Monk as we stood
In beams of infernal light.
Gibbon arose with a lash of steel,
And Voltaire with a racking wheel;
The Schools, in clouds of learning roll'd,
Arose with War in iron and gold.
`Thou lazy Monk!' they sound afar,
`In vain condemning glorious War;
And in your cell you shall ever dwell:
Rise, War, and bind him in his cell!'
The blood red ran from the Grey Monk's side,
His hands and feet were wounded wide,
His body bent, his arms and knees
Like to the roots of ancient trees.
When Satan first the black bow bent
And the Moral Law from the Gospel rent,
He forg'd the Law into a sword,
And spill'd the blood of Mercy's Lord.
Titus! Constantine! Charlemaine!
O Voltaire! Rousseau! Gibbon! Vain
Your Grecian mocks and Roman sword
Against this image of his Lord;
For a Tear is an Intellectual thing;
And a Sigh is the sword of an angel king;
And the bitter groan of a Martyr's woe
Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow.
Albion's Spectre
But the Spectre, like a hoar-frost and a mildew, rose over Albion,
Saying: `I am God, O Sons of Men! I am your Rational Power!
Am I not Bacon and Newton and Locke, who teach Humility to Man,
Who teach Doubt and Experiment? and my two wings, Voltaire, Rousseau?
Where is that Friend of Sinners, that Rebel against my Laws,
Who teaches Belief to the Nations and an unknown Eternal Life?
Come hither into the desert and turn these stones to bread!
Vain, foolish Man! wilt thou believe without Experiment,
And build a World of Phantasy upon my great Abyss,
A World of Shapes in craving lust and devouring appetite?'
The Holiness of Minute Particulars
And many conversèd on these things as they labour'd at the furrow,
Saying `It is better to prevent misery than to release from misery;
It is better to prevent error than to forgive the criminal.
Labour well the Minute Particulars: attend to the Little Ones,
And those who are in misery cannot remain so long,
If we do but our duty: labour well the teeming Earth. . .
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer;
For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars,
And not in generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational Power:
The Infinite alone resides in Definite and Determinate Identity.
Establishment of Truth depends on destruction of Falsehood continually,
On Circumcision, not on Virginity, O Reasoners of Albion!
A Vision of Joseph and Mary
Behold! in the Visions of Elohim Jehovah, behold Joseph and Mary!
And be comforted, O Jerusalem! in the Visions of Jehovah Elohim.
She lookèd and saw Joseph the Carpenter in Nazareth, and Mary,
His espousèd Wife. And Mary said: `If thou put me away from thee
Dost thou not murder me?' Joseph spoke in anger and fury: `Should I
Marry a harlot and an adulteress?' Mary answer'd: `Art thou more pure
Than thy Maker, Who forgiveth Sins and calls again her that is lost?
Tho' she hates, He calls her again in love. I love my dear Joseph,
But he driveth me away from his presence; yet I hear the voice of God
In the voice of my husband: tho' he is angry for a moment he will not
Utterly cast me away: if I were pure, never could I taste the sweets
Of the Forgiveness of Sins; if I were holy, I never could behold the tears
Of love, of him who loves me in the midst of his anger in furnace of fire.'
`Ah, my Mary,' said Joseph, weeping over and embracing her closely in
His arms, `doth He forgive Jerusalem and not exact Purity from her who is
Polluted? I heard His voice in my sleep and His Angel in my dream,
Saying: "Doth Jehovah forgive a Debt only on condition that it shall
Be payèd? Doth He forgive Pollution only on conditions of Purity?
That Debt is not forgiven! That Pollution is not forgiven!
Such is the Forgiveness of the Gods, the Moral Virtues of the
Heathen, whose tender Mercies are Cruelty. But Jehovah's Salvation
Is without Money and without Price, in the Continual Forgiveness of Sins,
In the Perpetual Mutual Sacrifice in Great Eternity. For behold!
There is none that liveth and sinneth not! And this is the Covenant
Of Jehovah: `If you forgive one another, so shall Jehovah forgive you;
That He Himself may dwell among you.' Fear not then to take
To thee Mary, thy Wife, for she is with Child by the Holy Ghost."'
Then Mary burst forth into a song! she flowèd like a river of
Many streams in the arms of Joseph, and gave forth her tears of joy
Like many waters, and emanating into gardens and palaces upon
Euphrates, and to forests and floods and animals, wild and tame, from
Gihon to Hiddekel, and to corn-fields and villages, and inhabitants
Upon Pison and Arnon and Jordan. And I heard the voice among
The Reapers, saying: `Am I Jerusalem, the lost Adulteress? or am I
Babylon come up to Jerusalem?' And another voice answer'd, saying:
`Does the voice of my Lord call me again? am I pure thro' his Mercy
And Pity? Am I become lovely as a Virgin in his sight, who am
Indeed a Harlot drunken with the Sacrifice of Idols? Does He
Call her pure, as he did in the days of her Infancy, when she
Was cast out to the loathing of her person? The Chaldean took
Me from my cradle; the Amalekite stole me away upon his camels
Before I had ever beheld with love the face of Jehovah, or known
That there was a God of Mercy. O Mercy! O Divine Humanity!
O Forgiveness and Pity and Compassion! If I were pure I should never
Have known Thee: if I were unpolluted I should never have
Glorifièd Thy Holiness, or rejoicèd in thy great Salvation.'
Mary leanèd her side against Jerusalem: Jerusalem receivèd
The Infant into her hands in the Visions of Jehovah. Times passèd on.
Jerusalem fainted over the Cross and Sepulchre. She heard the voice:--
`Wilt thou make Rome thy Patriarch Druid, and the Kings of Europe his
Horsemen? Man in the Resurrection changes his Sexual Garments at will:
Every Harlot was once a Virgin, every Criminal an infant Love.'
Tirzah
`O thou poor Human Form!' said she. `O thou poor child of woe!
Why wilt thou wander away from Tirzah, why me compel to bind thee?
If thou dost go away from me, I shall consume upon these Rocks.
These fibres of thine eyes, that usèd to beam in distant heavens
Away from me, I have bound down with a hot iron:
These nostrils, that expanded with delight in morning skies,
I have bent downward with lead, melted in my roaring furnaces
Of affliction, of love, of sweet despair, of torment unendurable.
My soul is seven furnaces, incessant roars the bellows
Upon my terribly flaming heart; the molten metal runs
In channels thro' my fiery limbs -- O love! O pity! O fear!
O pain! O the pangs, the bitter pangs of love forsaken!'
The Warrior and the Daughter of Albion
Look! the beautiful Daughter of Albion sits naked upon the Stone,
Her panting Victim beside her; her heart is drunk with blood,
Tho' her brain is not drunk with wine; she goes forth from Albion
In pride of beauty, in cruelty of holiness, in the brightness
Of her tabernacle, and her ark and secret place. The beautiful Daughter
Of Albion delights the eyes of the Kings; their hearts and the
Hearts of their Warriors glow hot before Thor and Friga. O Moloch!
O Chemosh! O Bacchus! O Venus! O Double God of Generation!
The Heavens are cut like a mantle around from the Cliffs of Albion,
Across Europe, across Africa, in howlings and deadly War.
A sheet and veil and curtain of blood is let down from Heaven
Across the hills of Ephraim, and down Mount Olivet to
The Valley of the Jebusite . . .
O beautiful Daughter of Albion, cruelty is thy delight!
O Virgin of terrible eyes, who dwellest by Valleys of springs
Beneath the Mountains of Lebanon, in the City of Rehob in Hamath,
Taught to touch the harp, to dance in the circle of Warriors
Before the Kings of Canaan, to cut the flesh from the Victim,
To roast the flesh in fire, to examine the Infant's limbs
In cruelties of holiness, to refuse the joys of love, to bring
The Spies from Egypt to raise jealousy in the bosoms of the twelve
Kings of Cannan; then to let the Spies depart to Meribah Kadesh,
To the place of the Amalekite. I am drunk with unsatiated love;
I must rush again to War, for the Virgin has frown'd and refus'd.
Sometimes I curse, and sometimes bless thy fascinating beauty.
Once Man was occupièd in intellectual pleasures and energies;
But now my Soul is harrow'd with grief and fear, and love and desire,
And now I hate, and now I love, and Intellect is no more:
There is no time for anything but the torments of love and desire:
The Feminine and Masculine Shadows, soft, mild, and ever varying
In beauty, are Shadows now no more, but Rocks in Horeb.
Men and States
As the Pilgrim passes while the Country permanent remains,
So Men pass on, but States remain permanent for ever.
TO THE CHRISTIANS
Devils are False Religions.
Saul! Saul! why persecutest thou me?
I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,
Built in Jerusalem's wall.
We are told to abstain from fleshly desires that we may lose no time from the Work of the Lord. Every moment lost is a moment that cannot be redeemed: every pleasure that intermingles with the duty of our station is a folly unredeemable, and is planted like the seed of a wild flower among our wheat. All the tortures of repentance are tortures of self-reproach on account of our leaving the Divine Harvest to the Enemy, the struggles of entanglement with incoherent roots. I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination -- Imagination, the real and Eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow, and in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more. The Apostles knew of no other Gospel. What were all their spiritual gifts? What is the Divine Spirit? Is the Holy Ghost any other than an Intellectual Fountain? What is the harvest of the Gospel and its labours? What is that talent which it is a curse to hide? What are the treasures of Heaven which we are to lay up for ourselves? Are they any other than mental studies and performances? What are all the gifts of the Gospel? Are they not all mental gifts? Is God a Spirit who must be worshipped in spirit and in truth? And are not the gifts of the Spirit everything to Man? O ye Religious, discountenance every one among you who shall pretend to despise Art and Science! I call upon you in the name of Jesus! What is the life of Man but Art and Science? Is it meat and drink? Is not the Body more than raiment? What is Mortality but the things relating to the Body, which dies? What is Immortality but the things relating to the Spirit, which lives eternally? What is the Joy of Heaven but improvement in the things of the Spirit? What are the Pains of Hell but Ignorance, Bodily Lust, Idleness, and devastation of the things of the Spirit? Answer this to yourselves, and expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art and Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel. Is not this plain and manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, and not pronounce heartily: that to labour in knowledge is to build up Jerusalem; and to despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem and her Builders. And remember: He who despises and mocks a mental gift in another, calling it pride and selfishness and sin, mocks Jesus, the giver of every mental gift, which always appear to the ignorance-loving hypocrite as sins; but that which is a sin in the sight of cruel Man, is not so in the sight of our kind God. Let every Christian, as much as in him lies, engage himself openly and publicly, before all the World, in some mental pursuit for the Building up of Jerusalem.
I stood among my valleys of the south,
And saw a flame of fire, even as a Wheel
Of fire surrounding all the heavens: it went
From west to east against the current of
Creation, and devour'd all things in its loud
Fury and thundering course round Heaven and Earth
By it the Sun was roll'd into an orb;
By it the Moon faded into a globe,
Travelling thro' the night; for from its dire
And restless fury Man himself shrunk up
Into a little root a fathom long.
And I askèd a Watcher and a Holy One
Its name. He answer'd: `It is the Wheel of Religion.'
I wept and said: `Is this the law of Jesus,
This terrible devouring sword turning every way?'
He answer'd: `Jesus died because He strove
Against the current of this Wheel: its name
Is Caiaphas, the dark Preacher of Death,
Of sin, of sorrow, and of punishment,
Opposing Nature. It is Natural Religion.
But Jesus is the bright Preacher of Life,
Creating Nature from this fiery Law
By self-denial and Forgiveness of Sin.
Go, therefore, cast out devils in Christ's name,
Heal thou the sick of spiritual disease,
Pity the evil; for thou art not sent
To smite with terror and with punishments
Those that are sick, like to the Pharisees,
Crucifying, and encompassing sea and land,
For proselytes to tyranny and wrath.
But to the Publicans and Harlots go:
Teach them true happiness, but let no curse
Go forth out of thy mouth to blight their peace.
For Hell is open'd to Heaven; thine eyes beheld
The dungeons burst, and the prisoners set free.'
England! awake! awake! awake!
Jerusalem thy sister calls!
Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death,
And close her from thy ancient walls?
Thy hills and valleys felt her feet
Gently upon their bosoms move:
Thy gates beheld sweet Zion's ways;
Then was a time of joy and love.
And now the time returns again:
Our souls exult, and London's towers
Receive the Lamb of God to dwell
In England's green and pleasant bowers.
A Vision of Jerusalem
I see thy Form, O lovely, mild Jerusalem! Wing'd with Six Wings
In the opacous Bosom of the Sleeper, lovely, threefold
In Head and Heart and Reins, three Universes of love and beauty.
Thy forehead bright, Holiness to the Lord! with gates of pearl
Reflects Eternity beneath thy azure wings of feathery down,
Ribb'd, delicate, and cloth'd with feather'd gold and azure and purple,
From thy white shoulders shadowing purity in holiness;
Thence, feather'd with soft crimson of the ruby, bright as fire,
Spreading into the azure wings which, like a canopy,
Bends over thy immortal Head in which Eternity dwells,
Albion! belovèd Land, I see thy mountains and thy hills
And valleys, and thy pleasant Cities, Holiness to the Lord!
I see the Spectres of thy Dead, O Emanation of Albion!
Thy Bosom white, translucent, cover'd with immortal gems,
A sublime ornament not obscurring the outlines of beauty,
Terrible to behold, for thy extreme beauty and perfection:
Twelvefold here all the Tribes of Israel I behold
Upon the Holy Land: I see the River of Life and Tree of Life
I see the New Jerusalem descending out of Heaven
Between thy Wings of gold and silver, feather'd immortal,
Clear as the rainbow, as the cloud of the Sun's tabernacle.
Thy Reins cover'd with Wings translucent, sometimes covering
And sometimes spread abroad, reveal the flames of holiness
Which like a robe covers, and like a Veil of Seraphim
In flaming fire unceasing burns from Eternity to Eternity.
Twelvefold I there behold Israel in her Tents;
A Pillar of a Cloud by day, a Pillar of Fire by night
Guides them; there I behold Moab and Ammon and Amalek,
There Bells of silver round thy knees, living, articulate
Comforting sounds of love and harmony; and on thy feet
Sandals of gold and pearl; and Egypt and Assyria before me,
The Isles of Javan, Philistia, Tyre, and Lebanon.
The Worship of God
It is easier to forgive an Enemy than to forgive a Friend.
The man who permits you to injure him deserves your vengeance;
He also will receive it. Go, Spectre! obey my most secret desire,
Which thou knowest without my speaking. Go to these Fiends of Righteousness,
Tell them to obey their Humanities, and not pretend Holiness,
When they are murderers. As far as my Hammer and Anvil permit,
Go tell them that the Worship of God is honouring His gifts
In other men, and loving the greatest men best, each according
To his Genius, which is the Holy Ghost in Man: there is no other
God than that God who is the intellectual fountain of Humanity.
He who envies or calumniates, which is murder and cruelty,
Murders the Holy One. Go tell them this, and overthrow their cup,
Their bread, their altar-table, their incense, and their oath,
Their marriage and their baptism, their burial and consecration.
I have tried to make friends by corporeal gifts, but have only
Made enemies; I never made friends but by spiritual gifts,
By severe contentions of friendship, and the burning fire of thought.
He who would see the Divinity must see Him in His Children,
One first in friendship and love, then a Divine Family, and in the midst
Jesus will appear. So he who wishes to see a Vision, a perfect Whole,
Must see it in its Minute Particulars, organized; and not as thou,
O Fiend of Righteousness, pretendest! thine is a disorganized
And snowy cloud, brooder of tempests and destructive War.
You smile with pomp and rigour, you talk of benevolence and virtue;
I act with benevolence and virtue, and get murder'd time after time;
You accumulate Particulars, and murder by analysing, that you
May take the aggregate, and you call the aggregate Moral Law;
And you call that swell'd and bloated Form a Minute Particular.
But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars; and every
Particular is a Man, a Divine Member of the Divine Jesus.
The Cry of Los
I care not whether a man is Good or Evil; all that I care
Is whether he is a Wise man or a Fool. Go! put off Holiness,
And put on Intellect; or my thund'rous hammer shall drive thee
To wrath, which thou condemnest, till thou obey my voice.
Albion upon the Rock
Albion cold lays on his Rock; storms and snows beat round him,
Beneath the Furnaces and the Starry Wheels and the Immortal Tomb;
Howling winds cover him; roaring seas dash furious against him;
In the deep darkness broad lightnings glare, long thunders roll.
The weeds of Death enwrap his hands and feet, blown incessant,
And wash'd incessant by the for-ever restless sea-waves, foaming abroad
Upon the white Rock. England, a Female Shadow, as deadly damps
ba5 Of the Mines of Cornwall and Derbyshire, lays upon his bosom heavy,
Movèd by the wind in volumes of thick cloud returning, folding round
His loins and bosom, unremovable by swelling storms and loud rending
Of enragèd thunders. Around them the Starry Wheels of their Giant Sons
Revolve, and over them the Furnaces of Los and the Immortal Tomb, around,
Erin sitting in the Tomb, to watch them unceasing night and day:
And the Body of Albion was closèd apart from all Nations.
Over them the famish'd Eagle screams on bony wings, and around
Them howls the Wolf of famine; deep heaves the Ocean, black, thundering
Around the wormy Garments of Albion, then pausing in deathlike silence.
Time was Finishèd!
The Wrath of God
The Breath Divine went forth over the morning hills. Albion rose
In anger, the wrath of God, breaking bright, flaming on all sides around
His awful limbs: into the Heavens he walkèd, clothèd in flames,
Loud thund'ring, with broad flashes of flaming lightning and pillars
Of fire, speaking the Words of Eternity in Human Forms, in direful
Revolutions of Action and Passion, thro' the Four Elements on all sides
Surrounding his awful Members. Thou seest the Sun in heavy clouds
Struggling to rise above the Mountains; in his burning hand
He takes his Bow, then chooses out his arrows of flaming gold;
Murmuring, the Bowstring breathes with ardour; clouds roll round the
Horns of the wide Bow; loud sounding winds sport on the mountain brows,
Compelling Urizen to his Furrow, and Tharmas to his Sheepfold,
And Luvah to his Loom.
The Divine Image
Jesus said: `Wouldest thou love one who never died
For thee, or ever die for one who had not died for thee?
And if God dieth not for Man, and giveth not Himself
Eternally for Man, Man could not exist; for Man is Love,
As God is Love: every kindness to another is a little Death
In the Divine Image; nor can Man exist but by Brotherhood.'
The End of the Song of Jerusalem
All Human Forms identifièd, even Tree, Metal, Earth, and Stone; all
Human Forms identifièd, living, going forth and returning wearied
Into the Planetary lives of Years, Months, Days and Hours; reposing,
And then awaking into His bosom in the Life of Immortality.
And I heard the Name of their Emanations: they are namèd Jerusalem.
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Re: Poetry, by William Blake
by admin » Tue Sep 01, 2020 8:10 am
THE GATES OF PARADISE
Circa 1810
Prologue
Mutual Forgiveness of each vice,
Such are the Gates of Paradise,
Against the Accuser's chief desire,
Who walk'd among the stones of fire.
Jehovah's Finger wrote the Law;
Then wept; then rose in zeal and awe,
And the dead corpse, from Sinai's heat,
Buried beneath His Mercy-seat.
O Christians! Christians! tell me why
You rear it on your altars high?
The Keys
The Caterpillar on the leaf
Reminds thee of thy Mother's grief
Of the Gates
1. My Eternal Man set in repose,
The Female from his darkness rose;
And she found me beneath a Tree,
A Mandrake, and in her Veil hid me.
Serpent Reasonings us entice
Of good and evil, virtue and vice,
2. Doubt self-jealous, Watery folly;
3. Struggling thro' Earth's melancholy;
4. Naked in Air, in shame and fear;
5. Blind in Fire, with shield and spear;
Two-horn'd Reasoning, cloven fiction,
In doubt, which is self-contradiction,
A dark Hermaphrodite we stood --
Rational truth, root of evil and good.
Round me flew the Flaming Sword;
Round her snowy Whirlwinds roar'd,
Freezing her Veil, the Mundane Shell.
6. 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.
7. One dies! Alas! the Living and Dead!
One is slain! and One is fled!
8. In Vain-glory hatcht and nurst,
By double Spectres, self-accurst.
My Son! my Son! thou treatest me
But as I have instructed thee.
9. On the shadows of the Moon,
Climbing thro' Night's highest noon;
10. In Time's Ocean falling, drown'd;
11 In Aged Ignorance profound,
Holy and cold, I clipp'd the wings
Of all sublunary things,
12. And in depths of my dungeons
Closed the Father and the Sons.
13. But when once I did descry
The Immortal Man that cannot die,
14. Thro' evening shades I haste away
To close the labours of my day.
15. The Door of Death I open found,
And the Worm weaving in the ground:
16. 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.
Epilogue
To the Accuser who is The God of this World
Truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce,
And dost not know the garment from the man;
Every harlot was a virgin once,
Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan.
Tho' thou art worship'd by the names divine
Of Jesus and Jehovah, thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Night's decline,
The lost traveller's dream under the hill.
Circa 1810
Prologue
Mutual Forgiveness of each vice,
Such are the Gates of Paradise,
Against the Accuser's chief desire,
Who walk'd among the stones of fire.
Jehovah's Finger wrote the Law;
Then wept; then rose in zeal and awe,
And the dead corpse, from Sinai's heat,
Buried beneath His Mercy-seat.
O Christians! Christians! tell me why
You rear it on your altars high?
The Keys
The Caterpillar on the leaf
Reminds thee of thy Mother's grief
Of the Gates
1. My Eternal Man set in repose,
The Female from his darkness rose;
And she found me beneath a Tree,
A Mandrake, and in her Veil hid me.
Serpent Reasonings us entice
Of good and evil, virtue and vice,
2. Doubt self-jealous, Watery folly;
3. Struggling thro' Earth's melancholy;
4. Naked in Air, in shame and fear;
5. Blind in Fire, with shield and spear;
Two-horn'd Reasoning, cloven fiction,
In doubt, which is self-contradiction,
A dark Hermaphrodite we stood --
Rational truth, root of evil and good.
Round me flew the Flaming Sword;
Round her snowy Whirlwinds roar'd,
Freezing her Veil, the Mundane Shell.
6. 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.
7. One dies! Alas! the Living and Dead!
One is slain! and One is fled!
8. In Vain-glory hatcht and nurst,
By double Spectres, self-accurst.
My Son! my Son! thou treatest me
But as I have instructed thee.
9. On the shadows of the Moon,
Climbing thro' Night's highest noon;
10. In Time's Ocean falling, drown'd;
11 In Aged Ignorance profound,
Holy and cold, I clipp'd the wings
Of all sublunary things,
12. And in depths of my dungeons
Closed the Father and the Sons.
13. But when once I did descry
The Immortal Man that cannot die,
14. Thro' evening shades I haste away
To close the labours of my day.
15. The Door of Death I open found,
And the Worm weaving in the ground:
16. 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.
Epilogue
To the Accuser who is The God of this World
Truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce,
And dost not know the garment from the man;
Every harlot was a virgin once,
Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan.
Tho' thou art worship'd by the names divine
Of Jesus and Jehovah, thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Night's decline,
The lost traveller's dream under the hill.
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Re: Poetry, by William Blake
by admin » Tue Sep 01, 2020 8:11 am
THE GHOST OF ABEL
Engraved 1822
A REVELATION IN THE VISIONS OF JEHOVAH SEEN BY WILLIAM BLAKE
To Lord Byron in the Wilderness:
What doest thou here, Elijah? Can a Poet doubt the Visions of Jehovah? Nature has no Outline, But Imagination has. Nature has no Tune, but Imagination has. Nature has no Supernatural, and dissolves: Imagination is eternity.
SCENE -- A rocky Country. EVE, fainted, over the dead body of ABEL, which lays near a Grave. ADAM kneels by her. JEHOVAH stands above.
Jehovah. Adam!
Adam. I will not hear Thee more, Thou Spiritual Voice Is this Death?
Jehovah. Adam!
Adam. It is in vain: I will not hear Thee Henceforth. Is this Thy Promise, that the Woman's seed Should bruise the Serpent's head? Is this the Serpent? Ah! Seven times, O Eve! thou hast fainted over the Dead. Ah! Ah!
EVE revives.
Eve. Is this the Promise of Jehovah? O! it is all a vain delusion, This Death, and this Life, and this Jehovah!
Jehovah. Woman, lift thine eyes!
A Voice is heard coming on.
Voice. O Earth, cover not thou my blood! cover not thou my blood!
Enter the Ghost of ABEL.
Eve. Thou visionary Phantasm, thou art not the real Abel.
Abel. Among the Elohim, a Human Victim I wander: I am their House.
Prince of the Air, and our dimensions compass Zenith and Nadir.
Vain is Thy Covenant, O Jehovah! I am the Accuser and Avenger
Of Blood. O Earth! cover not thou the blood of Abel.
Jehovah. What Vengeance dost thou require?
Abel. Life for Life! Life for Life!
Jehovah. He who shall take Cain's life must also die, O Abel! And who is he? Adam, wilt thou, or Eve, thou do this?
Adam. It is all a vain delusion of the all-creative Imagination. Eve, come away, and let us not believe these vain delusions. Abel is dead, and Cain slew him. We shall also die a death, And then -- what then? be, as poor Abel, a Thought; or as This? O! what shall I call Thee, Form Divine, Father of Mercies,
That appearest to my Spiritual Vision? Eve, seest thou also?
Eve. I see Him plainly with my Mind's Eye. I see also Abel living, Tho' terribly afflicted, as we also are; yet Jehovah sees him Alive and not dead. Were it not better to believe Vision With all our might and strength, tho' we are fallen and lost?
Adam. Eve, thou hast spoken truly; let us kneel before His feet.
They kneel before JEHOVAH.
Abel. Are these the sacrifices of Eternity, O Jehovah -- a broken spirit
And a contrite heart? O! I cannot forgive: the Accuser hath Enter'd into me as into his house, and I loathe Thy Tabernacles.
As Thou hast said, so is it come to pass. My desire is unto Cain,
And he doth rule over m 92f e; therefore my soul in fumes of blood
Cries for Vengeance, Sacrifice on Sacrifice, Blood on Blood!
Jehovah. Lo! I have given you a Lamb for an Atonement, instead Of the transgressor, or no Flesh or Spirit could ever live.
Abel.Compellèd I cry, O Earth! cover not the blood of Abel.
ABEL. sinks down into the Grave, from which arises SATAN, armed in glittering scales, with a Crown and a Spear.
Satan. I will have Human blood, and not the blood of bulls or goats,
And no Atonement, O Jehovah! The Elohim live on Sacrifice Of Men: hence I am God of Men! Thou human, O Jehovah!
By the rock and oak of the Druid, creeping mistletoe, and thorn,
Cain's city built with human blood, not blood of bulls and goats,
Thou shalt Thyself be sacrificed to Me, thy God! on Calvary.
Jehovah. Such is My Will -- (Thunders) -- that thou thyself go to Eternal Death.
In Self-Annihilation, even till Satan, self-subdu'd, put off Satan
Into the Bottomless Abyss, whose torment arises for ever and ever.
On each side a chorus of Angels, entering, sing the following:-
The Elohim of the Heathen swore Vengeance for Sin! Then Thou stood'st
Forth, O Elohim Jehovah! in the midst of the darkness of the Oath, all clothèd
In Thy Covenant of the Forgiveness of Sins. Death, O Holy! Is this Brotherhood?
The Elohim saw their Oath Eternal Fire: they rollèd apart, trembling, over the
Mercy-seat, each in his station fixt in the firmament by Peace Brotherhood, and Love.
The Curtain falls.
Engraved 1822
A REVELATION IN THE VISIONS OF JEHOVAH SEEN BY WILLIAM BLAKE
To Lord Byron in the Wilderness:
What doest thou here, Elijah? Can a Poet doubt the Visions of Jehovah? Nature has no Outline, But Imagination has. Nature has no Tune, but Imagination has. Nature has no Supernatural, and dissolves: Imagination is eternity.
SCENE -- A rocky Country. EVE, fainted, over the dead body of ABEL, which lays near a Grave. ADAM kneels by her. JEHOVAH stands above.
Jehovah. Adam!
Adam. I will not hear Thee more, Thou Spiritual Voice Is this Death?
Jehovah. Adam!
Adam. It is in vain: I will not hear Thee Henceforth. Is this Thy Promise, that the Woman's seed Should bruise the Serpent's head? Is this the Serpent? Ah! Seven times, O Eve! thou hast fainted over the Dead. Ah! Ah!
EVE revives.
Eve. Is this the Promise of Jehovah? O! it is all a vain delusion, This Death, and this Life, and this Jehovah!
Jehovah. Woman, lift thine eyes!
A Voice is heard coming on.
Voice. O Earth, cover not thou my blood! cover not thou my blood!
Enter the Ghost of ABEL.
Eve. Thou visionary Phantasm, thou art not the real Abel.
Abel. Among the Elohim, a Human Victim I wander: I am their House.
Prince of the Air, and our dimensions compass Zenith and Nadir.
Vain is Thy Covenant, O Jehovah! I am the Accuser and Avenger
Of Blood. O Earth! cover not thou the blood of Abel.
Jehovah. What Vengeance dost thou require?
Abel. Life for Life! Life for Life!
Jehovah. He who shall take Cain's life must also die, O Abel! And who is he? Adam, wilt thou, or Eve, thou do this?
Adam. It is all a vain delusion of the all-creative Imagination. Eve, come away, and let us not believe these vain delusions. Abel is dead, and Cain slew him. We shall also die a death, And then -- what then? be, as poor Abel, a Thought; or as This? O! what shall I call Thee, Form Divine, Father of Mercies,
That appearest to my Spiritual Vision? Eve, seest thou also?
Eve. I see Him plainly with my Mind's Eye. I see also Abel living, Tho' terribly afflicted, as we also are; yet Jehovah sees him Alive and not dead. Were it not better to believe Vision With all our might and strength, tho' we are fallen and lost?
Adam. Eve, thou hast spoken truly; let us kneel before His feet.
They kneel before JEHOVAH.
Abel. Are these the sacrifices of Eternity, O Jehovah -- a broken spirit
And a contrite heart? O! I cannot forgive: the Accuser hath Enter'd into me as into his house, and I loathe Thy Tabernacles.
As Thou hast said, so is it come to pass. My desire is unto Cain,
And he doth rule over m 92f e; therefore my soul in fumes of blood
Cries for Vengeance, Sacrifice on Sacrifice, Blood on Blood!
Jehovah. Lo! I have given you a Lamb for an Atonement, instead Of the transgressor, or no Flesh or Spirit could ever live.
Abel.Compellèd I cry, O Earth! cover not the blood of Abel.
ABEL. sinks down into the Grave, from which arises SATAN, armed in glittering scales, with a Crown and a Spear.
Satan. I will have Human blood, and not the blood of bulls or goats,
And no Atonement, O Jehovah! The Elohim live on Sacrifice Of Men: hence I am God of Men! Thou human, O Jehovah!
By the rock and oak of the Druid, creeping mistletoe, and thorn,
Cain's city built with human blood, not blood of bulls and goats,
Thou shalt Thyself be sacrificed to Me, thy God! on Calvary.
Jehovah. Such is My Will -- (Thunders) -- that thou thyself go to Eternal Death.
In Self-Annihilation, even till Satan, self-subdu'd, put off Satan
Into the Bottomless Abyss, whose torment arises for ever and ever.
On each side a chorus of Angels, entering, sing the following:-
The Elohim of the Heathen swore Vengeance for Sin! Then Thou stood'st
Forth, O Elohim Jehovah! in the midst of the darkness of the Oath, all clothèd
In Thy Covenant of the Forgiveness of Sins. Death, O Holy! Is this Brotherhood?
The Elohim saw their Oath Eternal Fire: they rollèd apart, trembling, over the
Mercy-seat, each in his station fixt in the firmament by Peace Brotherhood, and Love.
The Curtain falls.
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