The Digital Blake Text Project
Department of English
University of Georgia
electronic edition of
THE COMPLETE
POETRY AND PROSE OF
WILLIAM BLAKE
NEWLY REVISED EDITION, 1988
EDITED BY
David V. Erdman
eE /beta -- this release offered for proof-reading
please report errors to
blaketxt@virtual.park.uga.edu/
In a letter signed March 14, 1995, David V. Erdman and Virginia
B. Erdman convey David V. Erdman's permission to make freely
available a digital version of his edition of The Complete
Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Such unselfish generosity is
characteristic of David Erdman's political and intellectual
commitment throughout a life spent building up Jerusalem and
making Blake more accessible to all. As we read at - 700 - below:
Go on Go on. such works as yours Nature & Providence
the Eternal Parents demand from their children how few
produce them in such perfection how Nature smiles on them.
how Providence rewards them. How all your Brethren say,
The sound of his harp & his flute heard from his secret
forest chears us to the labours of life.
This file, the electronic Erdman (eE), makes a fitting new form
for a work which began over thirty years ago in the preparation
of a text for the printed Concordance to the poetry and prose
of William Blake and which now will serve as the basis for an
even more useful electronic version.
For assistance with this digital edition, I am grateful to the
University of Georgia Research Foundation and to University of
Georgia Department of English, especially its research assistants
William Cole, Margaret Crumpton, Patrick Darden, and Beth-Ann
Neighbors. Alexander S. Gourlay gave extensive help and valuable
advice on several occasions. Also offering assistance were Elisa
E. Beshero, Gregg A. Hecimovich, Thomas A. Vogler, and Paul
Yoder. Thanks also to Mark Trevor Smith and Joseph Viscomi as
the first to spot needed corrections, and to Alexander Gourlay,
again, for many, many more.
This "beta" release of eE offers an ascii version of the 1988
Erdman text, with a line length of 65 characters. The commentary
and most references to it are not included. Line numbers and
headers have been deleted, and the superscript placement of
letters and numbers is not noted, but italics are indicated with
the markup tags . Textual notes are indicated by a
lower-case "t" in the right margin or, rarely, in a tag (<t>) in
the midst of prose (the notes will be linked to the text in a
later release). Longer passages of writing not by Blake (as in
the extracts which supply context for the marginalia and some of
the textual notes) are set off by the tags <!WB></!WB>. The
Erdman page numbers are at the bottom of each page of text,
surrounded by hyphen and space (- xxx -). A very few
typographical errors in the printed text have been silently
corrected, and soft hyphenations have been eliminated.
Presently in preparation are an SGML version of this file, under
the auspices of the Blake Archive, and an online concordance.
Corrections, suggestions, and comments are most welcome.
Nelson Hilton
3 September 1996
Digital Blake Text Project
blaketxt@english.uga.edu
#################################################################
<!WB>
THE COMPLETE
POETRY AND PROSE OF
William Blake
NEWLY REVISED EDITION
EDITED BY
David V. Erdman
COMMENTARY BY
Harold Bloom <not included in this file>
ANCHOR BOOKS
DOUBLEDAY
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND
AN ANCHOR BOOK
PUBLISHED BY DOUBLEDAY
a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036
ANCHOR BOOKS, DOUBLEDAY, and the portrayal of an
anchor are trademarks of Doubleday, a division of Bantam
Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
Newly Revised Edition, 1988
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Blake, William 1757-1827.
The complete poetry and prose of William Blake.
First published in 1965 under title: Poetry and prose of William
Blake.
I. Erdman, David V. II. Bloom Harold. III. Title.
PR4141.E7 1981 821'7
ISBN: 0-385-15213-2
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 79-7196
COPYRIGHT *C 1965, 1982 BY DAVID V. ERDMAN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
9 8 7 6
- IV -
Acknowledgments
1965
This new text of Blake's writings is in large part an outgrowth
of six years of labor over perfecting a text for the Cornell
University Concordance to the poetry and prose of William
Blake (published in 1967). The editor is particularly
indebted to his collaborators in this project, G. E. Bentley, Jr,
Palmer Brown, Robert F. Gleckner, George M. Harper, Karl Kiralis,
Martin K. Nurmi, Richard J. Wolfe, and Paul M. Zall, to the
general editor of the concordance series, Stephen M. Parrish, and
to the presiding spirit over all Blake textual study, Geoffrey
Keynes.
For generous help and encouragement both of us are grateful
to Ruth Aldrich, F. W. Bateson, John Beer, Morchard Bishop,
Anthony Blunt, Edward E. Bostetter, Fredson Bowers, Martin
Butlin, S. Foster Damon, Robert Carl Elliott, William Elton,
Martha Winburn England, Wendy Erdman, Alvin Feinman, the late
Peter F. Fisher, John Fleming, Anne Freedgood, Northrop Frye,
George Goyder, John E. Grant, Jean Hagstrum, Geoffrey Hartman,
Robert Hewetson, Desiree Hirst, John Hollander, Arthur Hudd, Anne
T. Kostelanetz, Margot Kriel, Lewis and Heidi Lichterman, Paul
Miner, Kerrison Preston, Martin Price, David H. Stam, W. H.
Stevenson, Irene Tayler, Craig Thompson, Michael J. Tolley,
Willis Van Devanter, and Lucyle Werkmeister; also to Marcia
Allentuck, Margaret Manners, Ellie Thompson, Marvin Sadick, and
William Coakley.
For their cooperation and courtesy in allowing original
manuscripts or illuminated works to be consulted and photographed
we are greatly obliged to the owners and curators indicated in
the notes on sources, in particular Frederick B. Adams, Jr., Lady
Cunliffe and the late Lord Rolf Cunliffe, David Foxon, John D.
Gordan, Esther Harvey, the late William A. Jackson, Geoffrey
Keynes, William H. McCarthy, Paul Mellon, Kerrison Preston, Mrs.
Landon K. Thorne, Charles J. Rosenbloom, Lessing J. Rosenwald,
Lord Rothschild, T. C. Skeat, Lewis M. Stark, Willis Van
Devanter, and Marjorie Wynne.
1982
For particular assistance and general encouragement in the
preparation of this enlarged edition we are grateful to many of
the persons named above, in particular Marcia Allentuck, G. E.
Bentley, Jr, Martin Butlin, William Coakley, John E. Grant, Sir
Geoffrey Keynes, Irene Tayler, and Michael J. Tolley--and in
addition: David Bindman, Clive E. Driver, Irene Chayes, Robert N.
Essick, Everett C. Frost, Robert F. Gleckner, William F.
Halloran, Mary Lynn Johnson, Maurice Johnson, John Kilgore,
Robert Kolker, Mark Lefebvre, Zulema R. Levine, Andrew Lincoln,
Marilan Lund, John McLean, Francis Wood Metcalf, Donald K. Moore,
Alicia Ostriker, Michael J. Phillips, Dennis Read, Richard J.
Shroyer, William Strachan, and Joanne Witke.
We are grateful to the National Gallery of Art, Washington,
for enabling us to use in this edition, in illustration of "A
Vision of the Last Judgment", the Rosenwald version
- V -
of The Last Judgment (B-11,082), the painting that has details
closest to those of the manuscript text.
And finally, after these words are set in type, they must
convey a special gratitude to the volunteer proofreaders Robert
Essick, John and Mary Lynn Grant, and E. B. Murray.
We are all grateful to Tim McGinnis, our Doubleday editor,
and to the patient and precise compositors Diane Schlater, Nancy
Nolte, and Sherry Eddy.
_____________________________________________
The Modern Language Association Committee on Scholarly
Editions has voted to award this revised edition its emblem of
approval. According to the CSE chairman, Don L. Cook of Indiana
University, this is the first time that a volume that can be
expected to receive immediate acceptance both as a standard
scholarly edition and a classroom text has received the CSE
emblem. "We are particularly pleased to have been able to
cooperate in this wedding of scholarly and practical publishing".
The advice and inspection by the committee have inspired the
editor to reconsider and improve the exactness of the several
kinds of editorial treatment required by the diversity of textual
sources. "By award of this emblem the CSE signifies that this
volume is based on a thorough study of the variant forms, is
prepared through consistent application of explicit editorial
principles, records all emendations to the copy-text introduced
by the editors, and has been scrupulously and repeatedly
proofread to prevent unintentional alterations".
- VI -
Preface
________________________________________________
This edition of William Blake seeks to supply a sounder and more
uncluttered text for reading than has been heretofore available,
with a full apparatus of variant and deleted passages for study.
Many of these deleted passages are printed here for the first
time and allow us a comprehensive view of Blake as a reviser of
his own poetry. Readers and students of Blake, with this text
before them, confront an accurate and well-nigh complete
collection--some erasures continue to defy transcription--of the
writings of one of the greatest of English poets, and certainly
one of the most original, and most relevant to us now.
The writings Blake issued in etched Illuminated Printing are
given first, as the major canon of his Songs, Prophecies, and
Tractates. The unpublished long poems follow, and then the
lesser works, predominantly in verse, from Poetical
Sketches to The Everlasting Gospel. Lyrics that
were omitted from the illuminated canon are brought together as
"Songs and Ballads", with a further group of "Satiric Verses and
Epigrams". The late prose treatises are followed by the
marginalia, other miscellaneous prose, and all of the letters.
Verses occurring in the Reynolds marginalia and in the letters
have not been disturbed.
Within these groups a rough chronology is observed, but only
when thematic or generic relations fail to offer more meaningful
groupings. A definitive chronological sequence of Blake's
writings is impossible from present knowledge.
Lines in the longer poems are here numbered by relatively
small units, usually page or plate, since no standard numbering
that suits a diplomatic text has been established. The numbering
of plates for Jerusalem, which varies in Chapter II, is
that of the British Museum, Rinder, and Morgan copies. The
problem of there being two sections in the manuscript of The
Four Zoas titled "Night the Seventh" has been resolved with
the least injustice to the claims of narrative and the manuscript
evidence by conflating them into one Night VII.
The Textual Notes at the end of the book are exhaustive for
the poetry, and the designation of first, second, and later
readings will permit reconstruction of first and subsequent
drafts. For the prose, however, deletions and insertions of any
substance have been retained in the body of the text,
- XXIII -
distinguished by appropriate bracketing; less significant
deletions and mendings are given in the notes; mended letters in
the prose are generally ignored.
Sources of the text are indicated at the head of each group
or subdivision of the notes, and problems of dating are
discussed. For a more detailed account of editorial aims and
procedures, see the introductory section of the Textual Notes.
<paragraph on Harold Bloom's critical Commentary omitted>
SYMBOLS
Superior letters call attention to textual notes *t <<in eE,
these are usually found at the right margin>> ... . Italics
within square brackets [thus] indicate words or letters
deleted or erased or written over. Matter in Roman type within
square brackets [thus] is supplied by the editor. Angle brackets
<thus> enclose words or letters written to replace deletions, or
as additions, not including words written immediately following
and in the same ink or pencil as deleted matter. For the poetry,
however, all these details are relegated to the Textual Notes
except for the few emendations necessary to avoid lacunae.
- XXIV -
THE NATURE OF THIS
COMPLETE EDITION
Each (after the first) of the five printings of the 1965 edition
of The Poetry and Prose contained several minor and some
major corrections. This revised and complete edition has
involved a thorough correction of every section of the text and
an extensive revision of the Textual Notes. Seventy letters
added to section XV, making it now Complete, constitute the bulk
of the new matter, though several small items have been added to
sections XIII (Inscriptions) and XIV (Miscellaneous Prose). Most
of the corrections of text have been small, corrections of
spelling and capitalization and of editorial bracketing or
spacing. Blake's eloquent use of different colors in his
hand-lettering of the Proverbs of Hell in copy H has been
interpreted by differences in spacing the groups of proverbs.
But a device impossible to reproduce and explain simultaneously
is Blake's etching of delete signs fitted to the tops of certain
letters in a line in The Ghost of Abel, inviting the
reader to read the line and immediately revise it. See the
textual note.
In the printings since 1965 there have been many corrections
of readings of words; there are more here, such as "mossy"
corrected to "massy", "garden" to "gardens", "neatly" to "nobly",
"I heard" to "Heavd". Several mistakes in the deciphering of
deleted passages have been corrected, the most striking being the
correction, in the Jerusalem preface, of "entrusted
their love to their Writing" to "acknowledge their love to their
Deities" and, toward the end of the Lavater marginalia, of "they
converse with the spirit of God" to "these are either Good or
Evil". The most important revisions are the rearranging of the
early tractates, in accord with Geoffrey Keynes's new evidence,
including the moving of the "Conclusion" from one tract to
another; the improved transcripts of "My Spectre" and "Sir Joshua
Praises Michael Angelo" and extensive revision of the apparatus
of ms revisions of lines related to "Infant Sorrow"; a
rearrangement of Blake's Thornton marginalia, because of Robert
N. Essick's discovery of the correct sequence of the loose pages
of the Thornton book; and, of greatest importance, the drastic
revision of the text of pages 5, 6, and 7 of The Four
Zoas and the conflation of what were previously treated as
separate Nights VIIa and VIIb into a single Night the Seventh.
Of considerable importance is the recognition that the "Joseph of
Arimathea" couplets
- XXV -
in the Notebook belong to "The Everlasting Gospel". And evidence
supplied by E. B. Murray and Mary Lynn Johnson has corrected the
dating and identification of the letters here numbered 20 and 24.
It was the collaboration with Donald K. Moore on the 1973
and 1977 editions of the facsimile Notebook, based on
infrared photographs, that led to many improvements in the
apparatus of all the Notebook poems and prose, with Moore giving
special attention to the text of "Infant Sorrow." For the
revisions of Night I of The Four Zoas I have to thank
Andrew Lincoln, who discovered that certain blocks of poetry
assumed to have been deleted had actually been marked by Blake
for restoration--also that the treatment of page 143 as a
revision of page 7 was an editorial mistake. More recently three
scholars, Andrew Lincoln and Mark Lefebvre and John Kilgore,
working independently and then drawing me into a fresh study of
the thorny textual problem of the harmonizing of the two Seventh
Nights of The Four Zoas, have made impressive
clarifications of the problem. Blake simply left no
instructions--to himself or to posterity--for their arrangement
(we do not even know what order they were in when he gave the ms
to John Linnell). Editors are left with the problem of choosing
a sequence which will work best, in the context of the whole
poem. Neither traditional arrangement, the relegating of VIIb to
a postscript (as in the previous Doubleday edition) or the
printing of VIIa and VIIb in tandem (as in the Longman edition),
is an adequate response to the manuscript or to the reader's
appreciation of an inclusive yet coherent narrative or thematic
sequence or structure. The Textual Notes may be consulted for an
explanation of the new arrangement and for the other sequences
suggested. As for the work of recovering the numerous and
extensive palimpsest passages in that ms, the technology that may
make that possible is emerging and hence the somewhat distant
promise of a still more complete text. Meanwhile, of course,
this new printing will have its own fresh errors, which readers
are urged to call to our attention.
The design on our cover, constructed upon plate 64 of the
Mellon copy of Jerusalem, was inspired by our editorial
respect for the Committee on Scholarly Editions (CSE). The
proofreader at the bottom with knuckles on text represents the
five of us who, as required by the Committee "to prevent
recontamination of the text," will have been "scrupulously and
repeatedly" proofreading during the course of this book's
production. Why that left hand held to shield the text from the
light shining from the inspired (but nodding) author, with quill
on scroll beautifully unfolding to constitute a New Heaven? Our
attention must be upon what the author wrote, not upon our vision
of his vision, even though we keep watching. That greater
liberty is the reader's privilege.
- XXVI -
I
THE WORKS IN ILLUMINATED PRINTING t
________________________________________________________________
</!WB>
ALL RELIGIONS are ONE t
The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness
The Argument As the true method of knowledge is experiment
the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which
experiences. This faculty I treat of.
PRINCIPLE 1st That the Poetic Genius is the true Man. and that
the body or outward form of Man is derived from the Poetic
Genius. Likewise that the forms of all things are derived from
their Genius. which by the Ancients was call'd an Angel & Spirit
& Demon.
PRINCIPLE 2d As all men are alike in outward form, So (and
with the same infinite variety) all are alike in the Poetic
Genius
PRINCIPLE 3d No man can think write or speak from his heart,
but he must intend truth. Thus all sects of Philosophy are from
the Poetic Genius adapted to the weaknesses of every
individual
PRINCIPLE 4. As none by traveling over known lands can find out
the unknown. So from already acquired knowledge Man could not
acquire more. therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists
PRINCIPLE. 5. The Religions of all Nations are derived from
each Nations different reception of the Poetic Genius which is
every where call'd the Spirit of Prophecy.
PRINCIPLE 6 The Jewish & Christian Testaments are An original
derivation from the Poetic Genius. this is necessary from the
confined nature of bodily sensation
- 1 -
PRINCIPLE 7th As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various) So
all Religions & as all similars have one source
The true Man is the source he being the Poetic Genius
THERE is NO NATURAL RELIGION
The Author & Printer W Blake
[a]
The Argument Man has no notion of moral fitness but from
Education. Naturally he is only a natural organ subject to
Sense.
I Man cannot naturally Percieve, but through his natural or
bodily organs
II Man by his reasoning power. can only compare & judge of
what he has already perciev'd.
III From a perception of only 3 senses or 3 elements none
could deduce a fourth or fifth
IV None could have other than natural or organic thoughts if
he had none but organic perceptions
V Mans desires are limited by his perceptions. none can desire
what he has not perciev'd
VI The desires & perceptions of man untaught by any thing but
organs of sense, must be limited to objects of sense.
THERE is NO NATURAL RELIGION
[b]
I Mans perceptions are not bounded by organs of perception. he
percieves more than sense (tho' ever so acute) can discover.
II Reason or the ratio of all we have already known. is not
the same that it shall be when we know more.
[III lacking]
IV The bounded is loathed by its possessor. The same dull
round even of a univer[s]e would soon become a mill with
complicated wheels.
V If the many become the same as the few, when possess'd,
More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul, less than All cannot
satisfy Man.
VI If any could desire what he is incapable of possessing,
despair must be his eternal lot.
- 2 -
VII The desire of Man being Infinite the possession is Infinite
& himself Infinite
Conclusion, If it were not for the Poetic or Prophetic
character. the Philosophic & Experimental would soon be at the
ratio of all things & stand still, unable to do other than repeat
the same dull round over again
Application. He who sees the Infinite in all things sees
God. He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only.
Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is
THE BOOK of THEL
The Author & Printer Willm Blake, 1789.
PLATE i
THEL'S Motto,
Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?
Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:
Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?
Or Love in a golden bowl?
PLATE 1
THEL
I
The daughters of Mne Seraphim led round their sunny flocks. t
All but the youngest; she in paleness sought the secret air.
To fade away like morning beauty from her mortal day:
Down by the river of Adona her soft voice is heard:
And thus her gentle lamentation falls like morning dew.
O life of this our spring! why fades the lotus of the water?
Why fade these children of the spring? born but to smile & fall.
Ah! Thel is like a watry bow. and like a parting cloud.
Like a reflection in a glass. like shadows in the water.
Like dreams of infants. like a smile upon an infants face,
Like the doves voice, like transient day, like music in the air;
Ah! gentle may I lay me down, and gentle rest my head.
And gentle sleep the sleep of death. and gentle hear the voice t
Of him that walketh in the garden in the evening time.
- 3 -
The Lilly of the valley breathing in the humble grass
Answer'd the lovely maid and said; I am a watry weed,
And I am very small, and love to dwell in lowly vales;
So weak, the gilded butterfly scarce perches on my head.
Yet I am visited from heaven and he that smiles on all.
Walks in the valley. and each morn over me spreads his hand
Saying, rejoice thou humble grass, thou new-born lilly flower,
Thou gentle maid of silent valleys. and of modest brooks;
For thou shalt be clothed in light, and fed with morning manna:
Till summers heat melts thee beside the fountains and the springs
To flourish in eternal vales: then why should Thel complain,
PLATE 2
Why should the mistress of the vales of Har, utter a sigh.
She ceasd & smild in tears, then sat down in her silver shrine.
Thel answerd. O thou little virgin of the peaceful valley.
Giving to those that cannot crave, the voiceless, the
o'ertired. t
Thy breath doth nourish the innocent lamb, he smells thy milky
garments,
He crops thy flowers. while thou sittest smiling in his face,
Wiping his mild and meekin mouth from all contagious taints.
Thy wine doth purify the golden honey, thy perfume,
Which thou dost scatter on every little blade of grass that
springs
Revives the milked cow, & tames the fire-breathing steed.
But Thel is like a faint cloud kindled at the rising sun:
I vanish from my pearly throne, and who shall find my place.
Queen of the vales the Lilly answerd, ask the tender cloud,
And it shall tell thee why it glitters in the morning sky,
And why it scatters its bright beauty thro' the humid air.
Descend O little cloud & hover before the eyes of Thel.
The Cloud descended, and the Lilly bowd her modest head:
And went to mind her numerous charge among the verdant grass.
PLATE 3
II.
O little Cloud the virgin said, I charge thee tell to me,
Why thou complainest not when in one hour thou fade away:
Then we shall seek thee but not find; ah Thel is like to thee.
I pass away. yet I complain, and no one hears my voice.
The Cloud then shew'd his golden bead & his bright form emerg'd,
Hovering and glittering on the air before the face of Thel.
O virgin know'st thou not. our steeds drink of the golden springs
Where Luvah doth renew his horses: look'st thou on my youth,
- 4 -
And fearest thou because I vanish and am seen no more.
Nothing remains; O maid I tell thee, when I pass away,
It is to tenfold life, to love, to peace, and raptures holy:
Unseen descending, weigh my light wings upon balmy flowers;
And court the fair eyed dew. to take me to her shining tent;
The weeping virgin, trembling kneels before the risen sun,
Till we arise link'd in a golden band, and never part;
But walk united, bearing food to all our tender flowers
Dost thou O little Cloud? I fear that I am not like thee;
For I walk through the vales of Har. and smell the sweetest
flowers;
But I feed not the little flowers: I hear the warbling birds,
But I feed not the warbling birds. they fly and seek their food;
But Thel delights in these no more because I fade away,
And all shall say, without a use this shining woman liv'd,
Or did she only live. to be at death the food of worms.
The Cloud reclind upon his airy throne and answer'd thus.
Then if thou art the food of worms. O virgin of the skies,
How great thy use. how great thy blessing; every thing that
lives,
Lives not alone, nor for itself: fear not and I will call
The weak worm from its lowly bed, and thou shalt hear its voice.
Come forth worm of the silent valley, to thy pensive queen.
The helpless worm arose, and sat upon the Lillys leaf,
And the bright Cloud saild on, to find his partner in the vale.
PLATE 4
Then Thel astonish'd view'd the Worm upon its dewy bed.
Art thou a Worm? image of weakness. art thou but a Worm?
I see thee like an infant wrapped in the Lillys leaf:
Ah weep not little voice, thou can'st not speak. but thou can'st
weep;
Is this a Worm? I see thee lay helpless & naked: weeping,
And none to answer, none to cherish thee with mothers smiles.
The Clod of Clay heard the Worms voice, & raisd her pitying head;
She bowd over the weeping infant, and her life exhal'd
In milky fondness, then on Thel she fix'd her humble eyes.
O beauty of the vales of Har. we live not for ourselves,
Thou seest me the meanest thing, and so I am indeed;
My bosom of itself is cold. and of itself is dark,
PLATE 5
But he that loves the lowly, pours his oil upon my head.
And kisses me, and binds his nuptial bands around my breast.
- 5 -
And says; Thou mother of my children, I have loved thee.
And I have given thee a crown that none can take away
But how this is sweet maid, I know not, and I cannot know,
I ponder, and I cannot ponder; yet I live and love.
The daughter of beauty wip'd her pitying tears with her white
veil,
And said. Alas! I knew not this, and therefore did I weep:
That God would love a Worm I knew, and punish the evil foot
That wilful, bruis'd its helpless form: but that he cherish'd it
With milk and oil, I never knew; and therefore did I weep,
And I complaind in the mild air, because I fade away,
And lay me down in thy cold bed, and leave my shining lot.
Queen of the vales, the matron Clay answerd; I heard thy sighs.
And all thy moans flew o'er my roof. but I have call'd them down:
Wilt thou O Queen enter my house. 'tis given thee to enter,
And to return; fear nothing. enter with thy virgin feet.
PLATE 6
IV.
The eternal gates terrific porter lifted the northern bar:
Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown;
She saw the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous roots
Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists:
A land of sorrows & of tears where never smile was seen.
She wanderd in the land of clouds thro' valleys dark, listning
Dolours & lamentations: waiting oft beside a dewy grave
She stood in silence. listning to the voices of the ground,
Till to her own grave plot she came, & there she sat down.
And heard this voice of sorrow breathed from the hollow pit.
Why cannot the Ear be closed to its own destruction?
Or the glistning Eye to the poison of a smile!
Why are Eyelids stord with arrows ready drawn,
Where a thousand fighting men in ambush lie?
Or an Eye of gifts & graces, show'ring fruits & coined gold!
Why a Tongue impress'd with honey from every wind?
Why an Ear, a whirlpool fierce to draw creations in?
Why a Nostril wide inhaling terror trembling & affright.
Why a tender curb upon the youthful burning boy!
Why a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire?
The Virgin started from her seat, & with a shriek.
Fled back unhinderd till she came into the vales of Har
The End
-6-
SONGS Of INNOCENCE and Of EXPERIENCE
Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul t
SONGS of INNOCENCE
1789
The Author & Printer W Blake
SONGS 4
Introduction
Piping down the valleys wild
Piping songs of pleasant glee
On a cloud I saw a child.
And he laughing said to me.
Pipe a song about a Lamb;
So I piped with merry chear,
Piper pipe that song again--
So I piped, he wept to hear.
Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear,
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear
Piper sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read--
So he vanish'd from my sight.
And I pluck'd a hollow reed.
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear
SONGS 5
The Shepherd.
How sweet is the Shepherds sweet lot,
From the morn to the evening he strays:
He shall follow his sheep all the day
And his tongue shall be filled with praise.
For he hears the lambs innocent call,
And he hears the ewes tender reply,
He is watchful while they are in peace,
For they know when their Shepherd is nigh.
- 7 -
SONGS 6
The Ecchoing Green
The Sun does arise,
And make happy the skies.
The merry bells ring
To welcome the Spring.
The sky-lark and thrush,
The birds of the bush,
Sing louder around,
To the bells chearful sound.
While our sports shall be seen
On the Ecchoing Green.
Old John with white hair
Does laugh away care,
Sitting under the oak,
Among the old folk,
SONGS 7
They laugh at our play,
And soon they all say.
Such such were the joys.
When we all girls & boys,
In our youth-time were seen,
On the Ecchoing Green.
Till the little ones weary
No more can be merry
The sun does descend,
And our sports have an end:
Round the laps of their mothers,
Many sisters and brothers,
Like birds in their nest,
Are ready for rest;
And sport no more seen,
On the darkening Green.
SONGS 8
The Lamb
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
Little Lamb who made thee
Dost thou know who made thee
- 8 -
Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
Little Lamb God bless thee.
SONGS 9
The Little Black Boy.
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav'd of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree
And sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east began to say.
Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away.
And flowers and trees and beasts and men recieve
Comfort in morning joy in the noon day.
And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
SONGS 10
For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.
Thus did my mother say and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy;
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:
Ill shade him from the heat till lie can bear,
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me.
- 9 -
SONGS 11
The Blossom.
Merry Merry Sparrow
Under leaves so green
A happy Blossom
Sees you swift as arrow
Seek your cradle narrow
Near my Bosom. t
Pretty Pretty Robin
Under leaves so green
A happy Blossom
Hears you sobbing sobbing
Pretty Pretty Robin
Near my Bosom.
SONGS 12
The Chimney Sweeper
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue,
Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep. t
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep,
Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head
That curl'd like a lambs back, was shav'd, so I said.
Hush Tom never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair.
And so he was quiet, & that very night,
As Tom was a sleeping he had such a sight,
That thousands of sweepers Dick, Joe, Ned & Jack
Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black,
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he open'd the coffins & set them all free.
Then down a green plain leaping laughing they run
And wash in a river and shine in the Sun.
Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds, and sport in the wind.
And the Angel told Tom if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy.
And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm,
So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm.
- 10 -
SONGS 13
The Little Boy lost t
Father, father, where are you going
O do not walk so fast.
Speak father, speak to your little boy
Or else I shall be lost,
The night was dark no father was there
The child was wet with dew,
The mire was deep, & the child did weep
And away the vapour flew.
SONGS 14
The Little Boy Found
The little boy lost in the lonely fen,
Led by the wand'ring light,
Began to cry, but God ever nigh,
Appeard like his father in white.
He kissed the child & by the hand led
And to his mother brought,
Who in sorrow pale, thro' the lonely dale
Her little boy weeping sought.
SONGS 15
Laughing Song, t
When the green woods laugh, with the voice of joy t
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by,
When the air does laugh with our merry wit, t
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.
When the meadows laugh with lively green
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,
When Mary and Susan and Emily, t
With their sweet round mouths sing Ha, Ha, He.
When the painted birds laugh in the shade
Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread
Come live & be merry and join with me,
To sing the sweet chorus of Ha, Ha, He.
SONGS 16
A CRADLE SONG
Sweet dreams form a shade,
O'er my lovely infants head.
Sweet dreams of pleasant streams,
By happy silent moony beams.
- 11 -
Sweet sleep with soft down,
Weave thy brows an infant crown.
Sweet sleep Angel mild,
Hover o'er my happy child.
Sweet smiles in the night,
Hover over my delight.
Sweet smiles Mothers smiles
All the livelong night beguiles.
Sweet moans, dovelike sighs,
Chase not slumber from thy eyes.
Sweet moans, sweeter smiles,
All the dovelike moans beguiles.
Sleep sleep happy child.
All creation slept and smil'd.
Sleep sleep, happy sleep,
While o'er thee thy mother weep.
Sweet babe in thy face,
Holy image I can trace.
Sweet babe once like thee,
Thy maker lay and wept for me
SONGS 17
Wept for me for thee for all,
When he was an infant small.
Thou his image ever see,
Heavenly face that smiles on thee.
Smiles on thee on me on all,
Who became an infant small,
Infant smiles are his own smiles. t
Heaven & earth to peace beguiles. t
SONGS 18
The Divine Image. t
To Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
All pray in their distress:
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.
For Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
Is God our father dear:
And Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
Is Man his child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
- 12 -
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine
Love Mercy Pity Peace.
And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk or jew.
Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too
SONGS 19
HOLY THURSDAY t
Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean
The children walking two & two in red & blue & green
Grey headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow
Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow
O what a multitude they seemd these flowers of London town
Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own
The hum of multitudes was there but multitudes of lambs
Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among
Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door
SONGS 20
Night
The sun descending in the west.
The evening star does shine.
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine,
The moon like a flower,
In heavens high bower;
With silent delight,
Sits and smiles on the night.
Farewell green fields and happy groves,
Where flocks have took delight;
Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves
The feet of angels bright;
Unseen they pour blessing,
And joy without ceasing,
- 13 -
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.
They look in every thoughtless nest,
Where birds are coverd warm;
They visit caves of every beast,
To keep them all from harm;
If they see any weeping,
That should have been sleeping
They pour sleep on their head
And sit down by their bed.
SONGS 21
When wolves and tygers howl for prey
They pitying stand and weep;
Seeking to drive their thirst away,
And keep them from the sheep.
But if they rush dreadful;
The angels most heedful,
Recieve each mild spirit,
New worlds to inherit.
And there the lions ruddy eyes,
Shall flow with tears of gold:
And pitying the tender cries,
And walking round the fold:
Saying: wrath by his meekness
And by his health, sickness,
Is driven away,
From our immortal day.
And now beside thee bleating lamb,
I can lie down and sleep;
Or think on him who bore thy name,
Graze after thee and weep. t
For wash'd in lifes river,
My bright mane for ever,
Shall shine like the gold,
As I guard o'er the fold. t
SONGS 22
Spring
Sound the Flute!
Now it's mute.
Birds delight
Day and Night.
Nightingale
In the dale
- 14 -
Lark in Sky
Merrily
Merrily Merrily to welcome in the Year
Little Boy
Full of joy.
SONGS 23
Little Girl
Sweet and small,
Cock does crow
So do you.
Merry voice
Infant noise
Merrily Merrily to welcome in the Year
Little Lamb
Here I am,
Come and lick
My white neck.
Let me pull
Your soft Wool.
Let me kiss
Your soft face.
Merrily Merrily we welcome in the Year
SONGS 24
Nurse's Song t
When the voices of children are heard on the green t
And laughing is heard on the hill, t
My heart is at rest within my breast
And every thing else is still
Then come home my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise
Come come leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies
No no let us play, for it is yet day
And we cannot go to sleep t
Besides in the sky, the little birds fly t
And the hills are all coverd with sheep
Well well go & play till the light fades away
And then go home to bed
The little ones leaped & shouted & laugh'd
And all the hills ecchoed
- 15 -
SONGS 25
Infant Joy
I have no name
I am but two days old.--
What shall I call thee?
I happy am
Joy is my name,--
Sweet joy befall thee!
Pretty joy!
Sweet joy but two days old,
Sweet joy I call thee;
Thou dost smile.
I sing the while
Sweet joy befall thee.
SONGS 26
A Dream
Once a dream did weave a shade,
O'er my Angel-guarded bed,
That an Emmet lost it's way
Where on grass methought I lay.
Troubled wilderd and folorn
Dark benighted travel-worn,
Over many a tangled spray
All heart-broke I heard her say.
O my children! do they cry
Do they hear their father sigh.
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me.
Pitying I drop'd a tear:
But I saw a glow-worm near:
Who replied. What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night.
I am set to light the ground,
While the beetle goes his round:
Follow now the beetles hum,
Little wanderer hie thee home.
- 16 -
SONGS 27
On Anothers Sorrow t
Can I see anothers woe,
And not be in sorrow too.
Can I see anothers grief,
And not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrows share,
Can a father see his child,
Weep, nor be with sorrow fill'd.
Can a mother sit and hear,
An infant groan an infant fear--
No no never can it be.
Never never can it be.
And can he who smiles on all
Hear the wren with sorrows small,
Hear the small birds grief & care
Hear the woes that infants bear--
And not sit beside the nest
Pouring pity in their breast,
And not sit the cradle near
Weeping tear on infants tear.
And not sit both night & day,
Wiping all our tears away.
O! no never can it be.
Never never can it be.
He doth give his joy to all.
He becomes an infant small.
He becomes a man of woe
He doth feel the sorrow too.
Think not, thou canst sigh a sigh,
And thy maker is not by.
Think not, thou canst weep a tear,
And thy maker is not near.
O! he gives to us his joy,
That our grief he may destroy
Till our grief is fled & gone
He doth sit by us and moan
- 17 -
SONGS of EXPERIENCE t
1794
The Author & Printer W Blake
SONGS 30
Introduction.
Hear the voice of the Bard!
Who Present, Past, & Future sees
Whose ears have heard,
The Holy Word,
That walk'd among the ancient trees.
Calling the lapsed Soul
And weeping in the evening dew:
That might controll,
The starry pole;
And fallen fallen light renew!
O Earth O Earth return!
Arise from out the dewy grass;
Night is worn,
And the morn
Rises from the slumberous mass,
Turn away no more:
Why wilt thou turn away
The starry floor
The watry shore
Is giv'n thee till the break of day.
SONGS 31
EARTH'S Answer. t
Earth rais'd up her head,
From the darkness dread & drear.
Her light fled: t
Stony dread!
And her locks cover'd with grey despair.
Prison'd on watry shore
Starry jealousy does keep my tent
Cold and hoar
Weeping o'er
I hear the Father of the ancient men t
Selfish father of men
Cruel jealous selfish fear
Can delight
- 18 -
Chain'd in night t
The virgins of youth and morning bear.
Does spring hide its joy t
When buds and blossoms grow?
Does the sower? t
Sow by night?
Or the plowman in darkness plow?
Break this heavy chain,
That does freeze my bones around
Selfish! vain!
Eternal bane! t
That free Love with bondage bound.
SONGS 32
The CLOD & the PEBBLE t
Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.
So sang a little Clod of Clay, t
Trodden with the cattles feet:
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet.
Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight:
Joys in anothers loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.
SONGS 33
HOLY THURSDAY
Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!
And their sun does never shine.
And their fields are bleak & bare.
And their ways are fill'd with thorns.
It is eternal winter there.
- 19 -
For where-e'er the sun does shine,
And where-e'er the rain does fall:
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.
SONGS 34
The Little Girl Lost t
In futurity
I prophetic see,
That the earth from sleep,
(Grave the sentence deep)
Shall arise and seek
For her maker meek:
And the desart wild
Become a garden mild.
___________________
In the southern clime,
Where the summers prime,
Never fades away;
Lovely Lyca lay.
Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told,
She had wanderd long,
Hearing wild birds song.
Sweet sleep come to me
Underneath this tree;
Do father, mother weep.--
Where can Lyca sleep.
Lost in desart wild
Is your little child.
How can Lyca sleep,
If her mother weep.
If her heart does ake,
Then let Lyca wake;
If my mother sleep,
Lyca shall not weep.
Frowning frowning night,
O'er this desart bright,
Let thy moon arise,
While I close my eyes.
Sleeping Lyca lay;
While the beasts of prey,
- 20 -
Come from caverns deep,
View'd the maid asleep
The kingly lion stood
And the virgin view'd,
Then he gambold round
O'er the hallowd ground;
SONGS 35
Leopards, tygers play,
Round her as she lay;
While the lion old,
Bow'd his mane of gold.
And her bosom lick,
And upon her neck,
From his eyes of flame,
Ruby tears there came;
While the lioness,
Loos'd her slender dress,
And naked they convey'd
To caves the sleeping maid.
The Little Girl Found
All the night in woe,
Lyca's parents go:
Over vallies deep,
While the desarts weep.
Tired and woe-begone,
Hoarse with making moan:
Arm in arm seven days,
They trac'd the desart ways.
Seven nights they sleep,
Among shadows deep:
And dream they see their child
Starv'd in desart wild.
Pale thro' pathless ways
The fancied image strays,
SONGS 36
Famish'd, weeping, weak
With hollow piteous shriek
Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman prest,
With feet of weary woe;
She could no further go.
- 21 -
In his arms he bore,
Her arm'd with sorrow sore;
Till before their way,
A couching lion lay.
Turning back was vain,
Soon his heavy mane,
Bore them to the ground;
Then he stalk'd around,
Smelling to his prey.
But their fears allay,
When he licks their hands;
And silent by them stands.
They look upon his eyes
Fill'd with deep surprise:
And wondering behold,
A spirit arm'd in gold.
On his head a crown
On his shoulders down,
Flow'd his golden hair.
Gone was all their care.
Follow me he said,
Weep not for the maid;
In my palace deep,
Lyca lies asleep.
Then they followed,
Where the vision led:
And saw their sleeping child,
Among tygers wild.
To this day they dwell
In a lonely dell
Nor fear the wolvish howl,
Nor the lions growl.
SONGS 37
THE Chimney Sweeper t
A little black thing among the snow:
Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe! t
Where are thy father & mother? say?
They are both gone up to the church to pray.
Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smil'd among the winter's snow: t
- 22 -
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe.
And because I am happy, & dance & sing,
They think they have done me no injury:
And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King
Who make up a heaven of our misery. t
SONGS 38
NURSES Song t
When the voices of children, are heard on the green
And whisprings are in the dale:
The days of my youth rise fresh in my mind, t
My face turns green and pale.
Then come home my children, the sun is gone down
And the dews of night arise
Your spring & your day, are wasted in play
And your winter and night in disguise.
SONGS 39
The SICK ROSE t
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed t
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
SONGS 40
THE FLY. t
Little Fly
Thy summers play, t
My thoughtless hand t
Has brush'd away. t
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink & sing:
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
- 23 -
If thought is life t
And strength & breath:
And the want t
Of thought is death;
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.
SONGS 41
The Angel t
I Dreamt a Dream! what can it mean?
And that I was a maiden Queen:
Guarded by an Angel mild:
Witless woe, was ne'er beguil'd!
And I wept both night and day
And he wip'd my tears away
And I wept both day and night
And hid from him my hearts delight
So he took his wings and fled:
Then the morn blush'd rosy red:
I dried my tears & armed my fears,
With ten thousand shields and spears,
Soon my Angel came again;
I was arm'd, he came in vain:
For the time of youth was fled t
And grey hairs were on my head.
SONGS 42
The Tyger. t
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye, t
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? t
In what distant deeps or skies. t
Burnt the fire of thine eyes? t
On what wings dare he aspire? t
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet? t
- 24 -
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp, t
Dare its deadly terrors clasp! t
When the stars threw down their spears t
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see? t
Did he who made the Lamb make thee? t
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night: t
What immortal hand or eye, t
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? t
SONGS 43
My Pretty ROSE TREE t
A flower was offerd to me;
Such a flower as May never bore.
But I said I've a Pretty Rose-tree:
And I passed the sweet flower o'er.
Then I went to my Pretty Rose-tree;
To tend her by day and by night. t
But my Rose turnd away with jealousy:
And her thorns were my only delight.
AH! SUN-FLOWER
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the travellers journey is done.
Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
THE LILLY t
The modest Rose puts forth a thorn: t
The humble Sheep, a threatning horn: t
While the Lilly white, shall in Love delight,
Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright. t
- 25 -
SONGS 44
The GARDEN of LOVE t
I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen: t
A Chapel was built in the midst, t
Where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this Chapel were shut, t
And Thou shalt not. writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, t
That so many sweet flowers bore.
And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
SONGS 45
The Little Vagabond
Dear Mother, dear Mother, the Church is cold, t
But the Ale-house is healthy & pleasant & warm;
Besides I can tell where I am use'd well, t
Such usage in heaven will never do well. t
[45:4 Original reading: Such usage in heaven makes
all go to hell. See textual note]
But if at the Church they would give us some Ale.
And a pleasant fire, our souls to regale;
We'd sing and we'd pray, all the live-long day;
Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray,
Then the Parson might preach & drink & sing.
And we'd be as happy as birds in the spring:
And modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church,
Would not have bandy children nor fasting nor birch.
And God like a father rejoicing to see, t
His children as pleasant and happy as he:
Would have no more quarrel with the Devil or the Barrel
But kiss him & give him both drink and apparel. t
SONGS 46
LONDON t
I wander thro' each charter'd street, t
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow. t
And mark in every face I meet t
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
- 26 -
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear, t
In every voice: in every ban, t
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear t
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls, t
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
SONGS 47
The Human Abstract. t
Pity would be no more, t
If we did not make somebody Poor: t
And Mercy no more could be,
If all were as happy as we;
And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care. t
He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.
Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Catterpiller and Fly,
Feed on the Mystery.
And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat;
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.
The Gods of the earth and sea,
Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain t
- 27 -
SONGS 48
INFANT SORROW t
My mother groand! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I leapt:
Helpless, naked, piping loud;
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
Struggling in my fathers bands:
Striving against my swadling bands:
Bound and weary I thought best
To sulk upon my mothers breast.
SONGS 49
A POISON TREE. t
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.
SONGS 50
A Little BOY Lost t
Nought loves another as itself
Nor venerates another so.
Nor is it possible to Thought
A greater than itself to know:
And Father, how can I love you, t
Or any of my brothers more? t
I love you like the little bird t
That picks up crumbs around the door.
The Priest sat by and heard the child.
In trembling zeal he siez'd his hair: t
He led him by his little coat: t
And all admir'd the Priestly care. t
- 28 -
And standing on the altar high, t
Lo what a fiend is here! said he:
One who sets reason up for judge
Of our most holy Mystery.
The weeping child could not be heard.
The weeping parents wept in vain:
They strip'd him to his little shirt. t
And bound him in an iron chain. t
And burn'd him in a holy place, t
Where many had been burn'd before:
The weeping parents wept in vain.
Are such things done on Albions shore. t
SONGS 51
A Little GIRL Lost
Children of the future Age,
Reading this indignant page;
Know that in a former time.
Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime.
In the Age of Gold,
Free from winters cold:
Youth and maiden bright,
To the holy light,
Naked in the sunny beams delight.
Once a youthful pair
Fill'd with softest care:
Met in garden bright,
Where the holy light,
Had just removd the curtains of the night.
There in rising day,
On the grass they play:
Parents were afar:
Strangers came not near:
And the maiden soon forgot her fear.
Tired with kisses sweet
They agree to meet,
When the silent sleep
Waves o'er heavens deep;
And the weary tired wanderers weep.
To her father white
Came the maiden bright:
But his loving look,
Like the holy book,
All her tender limbs with terror shook.
- 29 -
Ona! pale and weak!
To thy father speak:
O the trembling fear!
O the dismal care!
That shakes the blossoms of my hoary hair
SONGS 52
To Tirzah t
Whate'er is Born of Mortal Birth,
Must be consumed with the Earth
To rise from Generation free;
Then what have I to do with thee?
The Sexes sprung from Shame & Pride
Blow'd in the morn: in evening died
But Mercy changd Death into Sleep;
The Sexes rose to work & weep.
Thou Mother of my Mortal part.
With cruelty didst mould my Heart.
And with false self-decieving tears,
Didst bind my Nostrils Eyes & Ears.
Didst close my Tongue in senseless clay
And me to Mortal Life betray:
The Death of Jesus set me free,
Then what have I to do with thee?
[text on illustration: It is Raised a Spiritual Body]
- 30 -
SONGS 53
The School Boy t
I love to rise in a summer morn,
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the sky-lark sings with me.
O! what sweet company.
But to go to school in a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day,
In sighing and dismay.
Ah! then at times I drooping sit,
And spend many an anxious hour.
Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learnings bower,
Worn thro' with the dreary shower.
How can the bird that is born for joy,
Sit in a cage and sing.
How can a child when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring.
O! father & mother, if buds are nip'd,
And blossoms blown away,
And if the tender plants are strip'd
Of their joy in the springing day,
By sorrow and cares dismay,
How shall the summer arise in joy.
Or the summer fruits appear,
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy
Or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear.
SONGS 54
The Voice of the Ancient Bard. t
Youth of delight come hither:
And see the opening morn,
Image of truth new born.
Doubt is fled & clouds of reason.
Dark disputes & artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze,
Tangled roots perplex her ways,
- 31 -
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead,
And feel they know not what but care
And wish to lead others, when they should be led.
SONGS 55
A DIVINE IMAGE
[An early Song of Experience included in one late copy] t
Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face
Terror, the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy, the Human Dress
The Human Dress, is forged Iron
The Human Form, a fiery Forge.
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.
For Children
THE GATES of PARADISE
1793
Published by W Blake No 13 Hercules Buildings Lambeth
and J. Johnson St Pauls' Church Yard
Frontispiece What is Man!
1 I found him beneath a Tree
2 Water
3 Earth
4 Air
5 Fire.
6 At length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell
7 Alas!
8 My Son! my Son!
9 I want! I want!
10 Help! Help!
11 Aged Ignorance
- 32 -
12 Does thy God O Priest take such vengeance as this? t
13 Fear & Hope are--Vision t
14 The traveller hasteth in the Evening t
15 Death's Door t
16 I have said to the Worm, Thou art my mother & my sister t
THE MARRIAGE of HEAVEN and HELL t
PLATE 2
The Argument.
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep
Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees.
Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.
Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.
Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
____________________________________________
- 33 -
PLATE 3
As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years
since its advent: the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is
the Angel sitting at the tomb; his writings are the linen clothes
folded up. Now is the dominion of Edom, & the return of Adam into
Paradise; see Isaiah XXXIV & XXXV Chap:
Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to
Human existence.
From these contraries spring what the religious call Good &
Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason[.] Evil is the active
springing from Energy.
Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.
PLATE 4
The voice of the Devil
All Bibles or sacred codes. have been the causes of the
following Errors.
1. That Man has two real existing principles Viz: a Body & a
Soul.
2. That Energy. calld Evil. is alone from the Body. & that
Reason. calld Good. is alone from the Soul.
3. That God will torment Man in Eternity for following his
Energies.
But the following Contraries to these are True
1 Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that calld Body is
a portion of Soul discernd by the five Senses. the chief inlets
of Soul in this age
2. Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is
the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
3 Energy is Eternal Delight
_______________________________________
PLATE 5
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough
to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place &
governs the unwilling.
And being restraind it by degrees becomes passive till it is
only the shadow of desire.
The history of this is written in Paradise Lost. & the Governor
or Reason is call'd Messiah.
And the original Archangel or possessor of the command of the
heavenly host, is calld the Devil or Satan and his children are
call'd Sin & Death
But in the Book of Job Miltons Messiah is call'd Satan.
For this history has been adopted by both parties
It indeed appear'd to Reason as if Desire was cast out. but the
- 34 -
Devils account is, that the Messi[PL 6]ah fell. & formed a heaven
of what he stole from the Abyss
This is shewn in the Gospel, where he prays to the Father to
send the comforter or Desire that Reason may have Ideas to build
on, the Jehovah of the Bible being no other than he, who dwells
in flaming fire. t
Know that after Christs death, he became Jehovah.
But in Milton; the Father is Destiny, the Son, a Ratio of the
five senses. & the Holy-ghost, Vacuum!
Note. The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of
Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he
was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it
A Memorable Fancy.
As I was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the
enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and
insanity. I collected some of their Proverbs: thinking that as
the sayings used in a nation, mark its character, so the Proverbs
of Hell, shew the nature of Infernal wisdom better than any
description of buildings or garments.
When I came home; on the abyss of the five senses, where a
flat sided steep frowns over the present world. I saw a mighty
Devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock,
with cor[PL 7]roding fires he wrote the following sentence now
percieved by the minds of men, & read by them on earth. t
How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,
Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?
Proverbs of Hell. t
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
- 35 -
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no
clock can measure.
All wholsom food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high. if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body. revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise
Folly is the cloke of knavery.
Shame is Prides cloke.
PLATE 8
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of
Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the
stormy sea, and the destructive sword. are portions of
eternity too great for the eye of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
Let man wear the fell of the lion. woman the fleece of the sheep.
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
The selfish smiling fool. & the sullen frowning fool. shall be
both thought wise. that they may be a rod.
What is now proved was once, only imagin'd.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbet; watch the roots, the
lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant, watch the fruits.
The cistern contains: the fountain overflows
One thought. fills immensity.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid
you.
- 36 -
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn
of the crow.
PLATE 9
The fox provides for himself. but God provides for the lion.
Think in the morning, Act in the noon, Eat in the evening, Sleep
in the night.
He who has sufferd you to impose on him knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than
enough.
Listen to the fools reproach! it is a kingly title!
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the
beard of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the
lion. the horse; how he shall take his prey.
The thankful reciever bears a plentiful harvest.
If others bad not been foolish. we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight. can never be defil'd,
When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius. lift up
thy head!
As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs
on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn. braces: Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest. the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!
PLATE 10
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the
hands & feet Proportion.
- 37 -
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the
contemptible.
The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl, that every thing
was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox. he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without
Improvement, are roads of Genius. t
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires
Where man is not nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be
believ'd.
Enough! or Too much
PLATE 11
The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or
Geniuses calling them by the names and adorning them with the
properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations,
and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve.
And particularly they studied the genius of each city &
country. placing it under its mental deity.
Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of &
enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the
mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood.
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
And at length they pronounced that the Gods had orderd such
things.
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.
PLATE 12
A Memorable Fancy.
The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked
them how they dared so roundly to assert. that God spake to them;
and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be
misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.
Isaiah answer'd. I saw no God. nor heard any, in a finite
organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in
every thing, and as I was then perswaded. & remain confirm'd;
that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared
not for consequences but wrote.
Then I asked: does a firm perswasion that a thing is so, make
it so?
He replied. All poets believe that it does, & in ages of
imagination
- 38 -
this firm perswasion removed mountains; but many are not capable
of a firm perswasion of any thing.
Then Ezekiel said. The philosophy of the east taught the first
principles of human perception some nations held one
principle for the origin & some another, we of Israel taught
that the Poetic Genius (as you now call it) was the first
principle and all the others merely derivative, which was the
cause of our despising the Priests & Philosophers of other
countries, and prophecying that all Gods [PL 13] would at last be
proved. to originate in ours & to be the tributaries of the
Poetic Genius, it was this. that our great poet King David
desired so fervently & invokes so patheticly, saying by this he
conquers enemies & governs kingdoms; and we so loved our God.
that we cursed in his name all the deities of surrounding
nations, and asserted that they had rebelled; from these opinions
the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be
subject to the jews.
This said he, like all firm perswasions, is come to pass, for
all
nations believe the jews code and worship the jews god, and what
greater subjection can be
I heard this with some wonder, & must confess my own
conviction. After dinner I ask'd Isaiah to favour the world with
his lost works, he said none of equal value was lost. Ezekiel
said the same of his.
I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three
years? he answerd, the same that made our friend Diogenes the
Grecian.
I then asked Ezekiel. why he eat dung, & lay so long on his
right & left side? he answerd. the desire of raising other men
into a perception of the infinite this the North American tribes
practise. & is he honest who resists his genius or conscience.
only for the sake of present ease or gratification?
_______________________________________________
PLATE 14
The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire
at the end of six thousand years is true. as I have heard from
Hell.
For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to
leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole
creation will be consumed, and appear infinite. and holy whereas
it now appears finite & corrupt.
This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.
But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his
soul, is to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the
infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and
medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the
infinite which was hid.
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would
appear to man as it is: infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro'
narrow chinks of his cavern.
- 39 -
PLATE 15
A Memorable Fancy
I was in a Printing house in Hell & saw the method in which
knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.
In the first chamber was a Dragon-Man, clearing away the
rubbish from a caves mouth; within, a number of Dragons were
hollowing the cave,
In the second chamber was a Viper folding round the rock & the
cave, and others adorning it with gold silver and precious
stones.
In the third chamber was an Eagle with wings and feathers of
air,
he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite, around were
numbers of Eagle like men, who built palaces in the immense
cliffs.
In the fourth chamber were Lions of flaming fire raging around
& melting the metals into living fluids.
In the fifth chamber were Unnam'd forms, which cast the metals
into the expanse.
There they were reciev'd by Men who occupied the sixth
chamber, and took the forms of books & were arranged in
libraries.
____________________________________________________
PLATE 16
The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence
and now seem to live in it in chains; are in truth. the causes
of its life & the sources of all activity, but the chains are,
the cunning of weak and tame minds. which have power to resist
energy. according to the proverb, the weak in courage is strong
in cunning.
Thus one portion of being, is the Prolific. the other, the
Devouring: to the devourer it seems as if the producer was in
his chains, but it is not so, he only takes portions of existence
and fancies that the whole.
But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific unless the
Devourer as a sea recieved the excess of his delights.
Some will say, Is not God alone the Prolific? I answer, God
only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men.
These two classes of men are always upon earth, & they should
be enemies; whoever tries [PL 17] to reconcile them seeks to
destroy existence.
Religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two.
Note. Jesus Christ did not wish to unite but to seperate
them, as in the Parable of sheep and goats! & he says I came not
to send Peace but a Sword.
Messiah or Satan or Tempter was formerly thought to be one of
the Antediluvians who are our Energies.
- 40 -
A Memorable Fancy
An Angel came to me and said. O pitiable foolish young man!
O horrible! O dreadful state! consider the hot burning dungeon
thou art preparing for thyself to all eternity, to which thou art
going in such career.
I said. perhaps you will be willing to shew me my eternal
lot & we will contemplate together upon it and see whether your
lot or mine is most desirable
So he took me thro' a stable & thro' a church & down into
the church vault at the end of which was a mill: thro' the mill
we went, and came to a cave. down the winding cavern we groped
our tedious way till a void boundless as a nether sky appeard
beneath us & we held by the roots of trees and hung over this
immensity; but I said, if you please we will commit ourselves
to this void, and see whether providence is here also, if you
will not I will? but he answerd. do not presume O young-man but
as we here remain behold thy lot which will soon appear when the
darkness passes away
So I remaind with him sitting in the twisted [PL 18] root of
an oak. he was suspended in a fungus which hung with the head
downward into the deep:
By degrees we beheld the infinite Abyss, fiery as the smoke
of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun,
black but shining[;] round it were fiery tracks on which revolv'd
vast spiders, crawling after their prey; which flew or rather
swum in the infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals
sprung from corruption. & the air was full of them, & seemd
composed of them; these are Devils. and are called Powers of the
air, I now asked my companion which was my eternal lot? he said,
between the black & white spiders
But now, from between the black & white spiders a cloud and
fire burst and rolled thro the deep blackning all beneath, so
that the nether deep grew black as a sea & rolled with a terrible
noise: beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest,
till looking east between the clouds & the waves, we saw a
cataract of blood mixed with fire and not many stones throw from
us appeard and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent.
at last to the east, distant about three degrees appeard a fiery
crest above the waves slowly it reared like a ridge of golden
rocks till we discoverd two globes of crimson fire. from which
the sea fled away in clouds of smoke, and now we saw, it was the
head of Leviathan. his forehead was divided into streaks of green
& purple like those on a tygers forehead: soon we saw his mouth &
red gills hang just above the raging foam tinging the black deep
with beams of blood, advancing toward [PL 19] us with all the
fury of a spiritual existence.
My friend the Angel climb'd up from his station into the mill;
I remain'd alone, & then this appearance was no more, but I found
- 41 -
myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moon light
hearing a harper who sung to the harp. & his theme was, The man
who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds
reptiles of the mind.
But I arose, and sought for the mill, & there I found my
Angel, who surprised asked me, how I escaped?
I answerd. All that we saw was owing to your metaphysics: for
when you ran away, I found myself on a bank by moonlight hearing
a harper, But now we have seen my eternal lot, shall I shew you
yours? he laughd at my proposal: but I by force suddenly caught
him in my arms, & flew westerly thro' the night, till we were
elevated above the earths shadow: then I flung myself with him
directly into the body of the sun, here I clothed myself in
white, & taking in my hand Swedenborgs volumes sunk from the
glorious clime, and passed all the planets till we came to
saturn, here I staid to rest & then leap'd into the void, between
saturn & the fixed stars.
Here said I! is your lot, in this space, if space it may be
calld, Soon we saw the stable and the church, & I took him to the
altar and open'd the Bible, and lo! it was a deep pit, into which
I descended driving the Angel before me, soon we saw seven houses
of brick, one we enterd; in it were a [PL 20] number of monkeys,
baboons, & all of that species chaind by the middle, grinning and
snatching at one another, but witheld by the shortness of their
chains: however I saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then
the weak were caught by the strong and with a grinning aspect,
first coupled with & then devourd, by plucking off first one limb
and then another till the body was left a helpless trunk. this
after grinning & kissing it with seeming fondness they devourd
too; and here & there I saw one savourily picking the flesh off
of his own tail; as the stench terribly annoyd us both we went
into the mill, & I in my hand brought the skeleton of a body,
which in the mill was Aristotles Analytics.
So the Angel said: thy phantasy has imposed upon me & thou
oughtest to be ashamed.
I answerd: we impose on one another, & it is but lost time
to converse with you whose works are only Analytics.
Opposition is true Friendship.
PLATE 21
I have always found that Angels have the vanity to speak of
themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident
insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning:
Thus Swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new; tho' it
is only the Contents or Index of already publish'd books
A man carried a monkey about for a shew, & because he was a
little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conciev'd himself as
much
- 42 -
wiser than seven men. It is so with Swedenborg; he shews the
folly of churches & exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all
are religious. & himself the single [PL 22] One on earth that
ever broke a net.
Now hear a plain fact: Swedenborg has not written one new
truth: Now hear another: he has written all the old falshoods.
And now hear the reason. He conversed with Angels who are
all religious, & conversed not with Devils who all hate religion,
for he was incapable thro' his conceited notions.
Thus Swedenborgs writings are a recapitulation of all
superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no
further.
Have now another plain fact: Any man of mechanical talents
may from the writings of Paracelsus or Jacob Behmen, produce ten
thousand volumes of equal value with Swedenborg's.
and from those of Dante or Shakespear, an infinite number.
But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows
better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.
A Memorable Fancy
Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire. who arose before an
Angel that sat on a cloud. and the Devil utterd these words.
The worship of God is. Honouring his gifts in other men
each according to his genius. and loving the [PL 23] greatest men
best, those who envy or calumniate great men hate God, for there
is no other God.
The Angel hearing this became almost blue but mastering
himself he grew yellow, & at last white pink & smiling, and then
replied,
Thou Idolater, is not God One? & is not he visible in Jesus
Christ? and has not Jesus Christ given his sanction to the law of
ten commandments and are not all other men fools, sinners, &
nothings?
The Devil answer'd; bray a fool in a morter with wheat. yet
shall not his folly be beaten out of him: if Jesus Christ is the
greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now
hear how he has given his sanction to the law of ten
commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the
sabbaths God? murder those who were murderd because of him? turn
away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labor of
others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making
a defence before Pilate? covet when he pray'd for his disciples,
and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against
such as refused to lodge them? I tell you, no virtue can exist
without breaking these ten commandments: Jesus was all virtue,
and acted from im[PL 24]pulse: not from rules.
When he had so spoken: I beheld the Angel who stretched out
his arms embracing the flame of fire & he was consumed and arose
as Elijah.
- 43 -
Note. This Angel, who is now become a Devil, is my
particular friend: we often read the Bible together in its
infernal or diabolical sense which the world shall have if they
behave well
I have also: The Bible of Hell: which the world shall have
whether they will or no.
One Law for the Lion & Ox is Oppression
PLATE 25
A Song of Liberty
1. The Eternal Female groand! it was heard over all the Earth:
2. Albions coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!
3 Shadows of Prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers
and mutter across the ocean! France rend down thy dungeon; t
4. Golden Spain burst the barriers of old Rome;
5. Cast thy keys O Rome into the deep down falling, even to
eternity down falling,
6. And weep! t
7. In her trembling hands she took the new, born terror howling;
8. On those infinite mountains of light now barr'd out by the
atlantic sea, the new born fire stood before the starry king!
9. Flag'd with grey brow'd snows and thunderous visages the
jealous wings wav'd over the deep.
10. The speary hand burned aloft, unbuckled was the shield,
forth went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair, and
[PL 26] hurl'd the new born wonder thro' the starry night.
11. The fire, the fire, is falling!
12. Look up! look up! O citizen of London. enlarge thy
countenance; O Jew, leave counting gold! return to thy oil and
wine; O African! black African! (go. winged thought widen his
forehead.)
13. The fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun
into the western sea.
14. Wak'd from his eternal sleep, the hoary, element roaring
fled away:
15. Down rushd beating his wings in vain the jealous king: his
grey brow'd councellors, thunderous warriors, curl'd veterans,
among helms, and shields, and chariots horses, elephants:
banners, castles, slings and rocks,
16. Falling, rushing, ruining! buried in the ruins, on Urthona's
dens.
17. All night beneath the ruins, then their sullen flames faded
emerge round the gloomy king,
18. With thunder and fire: leading his starry hosts thro' the
waste wilderness [PL 27] he promulgates his ten commands,
glancing his beamy eyelids over the deep in dark dismay,
- 44 -
19. Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the
morning plumes her golden breast,
20. Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony
law to dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night,
crying
Empire is no more! and now the lion & wolf shall cease.
Chorus
Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn, no longer in deadly
black, with hoarse note curse the sons of joy. Nor his accepted
brethren whom, tyrant, he calls free; lay the bound or build the
roof. Nor pale religious letchery call that virginity, that
wishes but acts not!
For every thing that lives is Holy
VISIONS of the Daughters of Albion t
The Eye sees more than the Heart knows.
Printed by Will:m Blake: 1793.
PLATE iii
The Argument
I loved Theotormon
And I was not ashamed
I trembled in my virgin fears
And I hid in Leutha's vale!
I plucked Leutha's flower,
And I rose up from the vale;
But the terrible thunders tore
My virgin mantle in twain.
PLATE 1
Visions
ENSLAV'D, the Daughters of Albion weep: a trembling lamentation
Upon their mountains; in their valleys. sighs toward America.
For the soft soul of America, Oothoon wanderd in woe,
Along the vales of Leutha seeking flowers to comfort her;
And thus she spoke to the bright Marygold of Leutha's vale
- 45 -
Art thou a flower! art thou a nymph! I see thee now a flower;
Now a nymph! I dare not pluck thee from thy dewy bed!
The Golden nymph replied; pluck thou my flower Oothoon the
mild
Another flower shall spring, because the soul of sweet delight
Can never pass away. she ceas'd & closd her golden shrine.
Then Oothoon pluck'd the flower saying, I pluck thee from thy bed
Sweet flower. and put thee here to glow between my breasts
And thus I turn my face to where my whole soul seeks.
Over the waves she went in wing'd exulting swift delight;
And over Theotormons reign, took her impetuous course.
Bromion rent her with his thunders. on his stormy bed
Lay the faint maid, and soon her woes appalld his thunders hoarse
Bromion spoke. behold this harlot here on Bromions bed,
And let the jealous dolphins sport around the lovely maid;
Thy soft American plains are mine, and mine thy north & south:
Stampt with my signet are the swarthy children of the sun:
They are obedient, they resist not, they obey the scourge:
Their daughters worship terrors and obey the violent:
PLATE 2
Now thou maist marry Bromions harlot, and protect the child
Of Bromions rage, that Oothoon shall put forth in nine moons time
Then storms rent Theotormons limbs; he rolld his waves around.
And folded his black jealous waters round the adulterate pair
Bound back to back in Bromions caves terror & meekness dwell
At entrance Theotormon sits wearing the threshold hard
With secret tears; beneath him sound like waves on a desart shore
The voice of slaves beneath the sun, and children bought with
money.
That shiver in religious caves beneath the burning fires
Of lust, that belch incessant from the summits of the earth
Oothoon weeps not: she cannot weep! her tears are locked up;
But she can howl incessant writhing her soft snowy limbs.
And calling Theotormons Eagles to prey upon her flesh.
I call with holy voice! kings of the sounding air,
Rend away this defiled bosom that I may reflect.
The image of Theotormon on my pure transparent breast.
The Eagles at her call descend & rend their bleeding prey;
Theotormon severely smiles. her soul reflects the smile;
As the clear spring mudded with feet of beasts grows pure &
smiles.
The Daughters of Albion hear her woes. & eccho back her sighs.
- 46 -
Why does my Theotormon sit weeping upon the threshold;
And Oothoon hovers by his side, perswading him in vain:
I cry arise O Theotormon for the village dog
Barks at the breaking day. the nightingale has done lamenting.
The lark does rustle in the ripe corn, and the Eagle returns
From nightly prey, and lifts his golden beak to the pure east;
Shaking the dust from his immortal pinions to awake
The sun that sleeps too long. Arise my Theotormon I am pure.
Because the night is gone that clos'd me in its deadly black.
They told me that the night & day were all that I could see;
They told me that I had five senses to inclose me up.
And they inclos'd my infinite brain into a narrow circle,
And sunk my heart into the Abyss, a red round globe hot burning
Till all from life I was obliterated and erased.
Instead of morn arises a bright shadow, like an eye
In the eastern cloud: instead of night a sickly charnel house;
That Theotormon hears me not! to him the night and morn
Are both alike: a night of sighs, a morning of fresh tears;
PLATE 3
And none but Bromion can hear my lamentations.
With what sense is it that the chicken shuns the ravenous hawk?
With what sense does the tame pigeon measure out the expanse?
With what sense does the bee form cells? have not the mouse &
frog
Eyes and ears and sense of touch? yet are their habitations.
And their pursuits, as different as their forms and as their
joys:
Ask the wild ass why he refuses burdens: and the meek camel
Why he loves man: is it because of eye ear mouth or skin
Or breathing nostrils? No. for these the wolf and tyger have.
Ask the blind worm the secrets of the grave, and why her spires
Love to curl round the bones of death; and ask the rav'nous snake
Where she gets poison: & the wing'd eagle why he loves the sun
And then tell me the thoughts of man, that have been hid of old.
Silent I hover all the night, and all day could be silent.
If Theotormon once would turn his loved eyes upon me;
How can I be defild when I reflect thy image pure?
Sweetest the fruit that the worm feeds on. & the soul prey'd on
by woe
The new wash'd lamb ting'd with the village smoke & the bright
swan
By the red earth of our immortal river: I bathe my wings.
And I am white and pure to hover round Theotormons breast.
Then Theotormon broke his silence. and he answered.
Tell me what is the night or day to one o'erflowd with woe?
Tell me what is a thought? & of what substance is it made?
Tell me what is a joy? & in what gardens do joys grow?
And in what rivers swim the sorrows? and upon what mountains
- 47 -
PLATE 4
Wave shadows of discontent? and in what houses dwell the wretched
Drunken with woe forgotten. and shut up from cold despair.
Tell me where dwell the thoughts forgotten till thou call them
forth
Tell me where dwell the joys of old! & where the ancient loves?
And when will they renew again & the night of oblivion past? t
That I might traverse times & spaces far remote and bring
Comforts into a present sorrow and a night of pain
Where goest thou O thought? to what remote land is thy flight?
If thou returnest to the present moment of affliction
Wilt thou bring comforts on thy wings. and dews and honey and
balm;
Or poison from the desart wilds, from the eyes of the envier.
Then Bromion said: and shook the cavern with his lamentation
Thou knowest that the ancient trees seen by thine eyes have
fruit;
But knowest thou that trees and fruits flourish upon the earth
To gratify senses unknown? trees beasts and birds unknown:
Unknown, not unpercievd, spread in the infinite microscope,
In places yet unvisited by the voyager. and in worlds
Over another kind of seas, and in atmospheres unknown:
Ah! are there other wars, beside the wars of sword and fire!
And are there other sorrows, beside the sorrows of poverty!
And are there other joys, beside the joys of riches and ease?
And is there not one law for both the lion and the ox?
And is there not eternal fire, and eternal chains?
To bind the phantoms of existence from eternal life?
Then Oothoon waited silent all the day. and all the night,
PLATE 5
But when the morn arose, her lamentation renewd,
The Daughters of Albion hear her woes, & eccho back her sighs.
O Urizen! Creator of men! Mistaken Demon of heaven:
Thy joys are tears! thy labour vain, to form men to thine image.
How can one joy absorb another? are not different joys
Holy, eternal, infinite! and each joy is a Love.
Does not the great mouth laugh at a gift? & the narrow eyelids
mock
At the labour that is above payment, and wilt thou take the ape
For thy councellor? or the dog, for a schoolmaster to thy
children?
Does he who contemns poverty, and he who turns with abhorrence
From usury: feel the same passion or are they moved alike?
How can the giver of gifts experience the delights of the
merchant?
How the industrious citizen the pains of the husbandman.
How different far the fat fed hireling with hollow drum;
Who buys whole corn fields into wastes, and sings upon the heath:
- 48 -
How different their eye and ear! how different the world to them!
With what sense does the parson claim the labour of the farmer?
What are his nets & gins & traps. & how does he surround him
With cold floods of abstraction, and with forests of solitude,
To build him castles and high spires. where kings & priests may
dwell.
Till she who burns with youth. and knows no fixed lot; is bound
In spells of law to one she loaths: and must she drag the chain
Of life, in weary lust! must chilling murderous thoughts. obscure
The clear heaven of her eternal spring? to bear the wintry rage
Of a harsh terror driv'n to madness, bound to hold a rod
Over her shrinking shoulders all the day; & all the night
To turn the wheel of false desire: and longings that wake her
womb
To the abhorred birth of cherubs in the human form
That live a pestilence & die a meteor & are no more.
Till the child dwell with one he hates. and do the deed he loaths
And the impure scourge force his seed into its unripe birth
E'er yet his eyelids can behold the arrows of the day.
Does the whale worship at thy footsteps as the hungry dog?
Or does he scent the mountain prey, because his nostrils wide
Draw in the ocean? does his eye discern the flying cloud
As the ravens eye? or does he measure the expanse like the
vulture?
Does the still spider view the cliffs where eagles hide their
young?
Or does the fly rejoice. because the harvest is brought in?
Does not the eagle scorn the earth & despise the treasures
beneath?
But the mole knoweth what is there, & the worm shall tell it
thee.
Does not the worm erect a pillar in the mouldering church yard?
PLATE 6
And a palace of eternity in the jaws of the hungry grave
Over his porch these words are written. Take thy bliss O Man!
And sweet shall be thy taste & sweet thy infant joys renew!
Infancy, fearless, lustful, happy! nestling for delight
In laps of pleasure; Innocence! honest, open, seeking
The vigorous joys of morning light; open to virgin bliss.
Who taught thee modesty, subtil modesty! child of night & sleep
When thou awakest, wilt thou dissemble all thy secret joys
Or wert thou not awake when all this mystery was disclos'd!
Then com'st thou forth a modest virgin knowing to dissemble
With nets found under thy night pillow, to catch virgin joy,
And brand it with the name of whore; & sell it in the night,
In silence. ev'n without a whisper, and in seeming sleep:
Religious dreams and holy vespers, light thy smoky fires:
Once were thy fires lighted by the eyes of honest morn
And does my Theotormon seek this hypocrite modesty!
This knowing, artful, secret, fearful, cautious, trembling
hypocrite.
- 49 -
Then is Oothoon a whore indeed! and all the virgin joys
Of life are harlots: and Theotormon is a sick mans dream
And Oothoon is the crafty slave of selfish holiness.
But Oothoon is not so, a virgin fill'd with virgin fancies
Open to joy and to delight where ever beauty appears
If in the morning sun I find it: there my eyes are fix'd
PLATE 7
In happy copulation; if in evening mild. wearied with work;
Sit on a bank and draw the pleasures of this free born joy.
The moment of desire! the moment of desire! The virgin
That pines for man; shall awaken her womb to enormous joys
In the secret shadows of her chamber; the youth shut up from
The lustful joy. shall forget to generate. & create an amorous
image
In the shadows of his curtains and in the folds of his silent
pillow.
Are not these the places of religion? the rewards of continence?
The self enjoyings of self denial? Why dost thou seek religion?
Is it because acts are not lovely, that thou seekest solitude,
Where the horrible darkness is impressed with reflections of
desire.
Father of jealousy. be thou accursed from the earth!
Why hast thou taught my Theotormon this accursed thing?
Till beauty fades from off my shoulders darken'd and cast out,
A solitary shadow wailing on the margin of non-entity.
I cry, Love! Love! Love! happy happy Love! free as the mountain
wind!
Can that be Love, that drinks another as a sponge drinks water?
That clouds with jealousy his nights, with weepings all the day:
To spin a web of age around him. grey and hoary! dark!
Till his eyes sicken at the fruit that hangs before his sight.
Such is self-love that envies all! a creeping skeleton
With lamplike eyes watching around the frozen marriage bed.
But silken nets and traps of adamant will Oothoon spread,
And catch for thee girls of mild silver, or of furious gold;
I'll lie beside thee on a bank & view their wanton play
In lovely copulation bliss on bliss with Theotormon:
Red as the rosy morning, lustful as the first born beam,
Oothoon shall view his dear delight, nor e'er with jealous cloud
Come in the heaven of generous love; nor selfish blightings
bring.
Does the sun walk in glorious raiment. on the secret floor
PLATE 8
Where the cold miser spreads his gold? or does the bright cloud
drop
On his stone threshold? does his eye behold the beam that brings
Expansion to the eye of pity? or will he bind himself
Beside the ox to thy hard furrow? does not that mild beam blot
- 50 -
The bat, the owl, the glowing tyger, and the king of night.
The sea fowl takes the wintry blast. for a cov'ring to her limbs:
And the wild snake, the pestilence to adorn him with gems & gold.
And trees. & birds. & beasts. & men. behold their eternal joy.
Arise you little glancing wings, and sing your infant joy!
Arise and drink your bliss, for every thing that lives is holy!
Thus every morning wails Oothoon. but Theotormon sits
Upon the margind ocean conversing with shadows dire.
The Daughters of Albion hear her woes, & eccho back her sighs.
The End
AMERICA a PROPHECY t
LAMBETH
Printed by William Blake in the year 1793.
PLATE 1
PRELUDIUM
The shadowy daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc.
When fourteen suns had faintly journey'd o'er his dark abode;
His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron;
Crown'd with a helmet & dark hair the nameless female stood;
A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,
When pestilence is shot from heaven; no other arms she need:
Invulnerable tho' naked, save where clouds roll round her loins,
Their awful folds in the dark air; silent she stood as night;
For never from her iron tongue could voice or sound arise;
But dumb till that dread day when Orc assay'd his fierce embrace.
Dark virgin; said the hairy youth, thy father stern abhorr'd;
Rivets my tenfold chains while still on high my spirit soars;
Sometimes an eagle screaming in the sky, sometimes a lion,
Stalking upon the mountains, & sometimes a whale I lash
The raging fathomless abyss, anon a serpent folding
Around the pillars of Urthona, and round thy dark limbs,
On the Canadian wilds I fold, feeble my spirit folds.
For chaind beneath I rend these caverns; when thou bringest food
I howl my joy! and my red eyes seek to behold thy face
In vain! these clouds roll to & fro, & hide thee from my sight.
- 51 -
PLATE 2
Silent as despairing love, and strong as jealousy,
The hairy shoulders rend the links, free are the wrists of fire;
Round the terrific loins he siez'd the panting struggling womb;
It joy'd: she put aside her clouds & smiled her first-born smile;
As when a black cloud shews its lightnings to the silent deep.
Soon as she saw the terrible boy then burst the virgin cry.
I know thee, I have found thee, & I will not let thee go;
Thou art the image of God who dwells in darkness of Africa;
And thou art fall'n to give me life in regions of dark death.
On my American plains I feel the struggling afflictions
Endur'd by roots that writhe their arms into the nether deep:
I see a serpent in Canada, who courts me to his love;
In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru;
I see a Whale in the South-sea, drinking my soul away.
O what limb rending pains I feel. thy fire & my frost
Mingle in howling pains, in furrows by thy lightnings rent;
This is eternal death; and this the torment long foretold.
[The stern Bard ceas'd, asham'd of his own song; enrag'd he t
swung
His harp aloft sounding, then dash'd its shining frame against
A ruin'd pillar in glittring fragments; silent he turn'd away,
And wander'd down the vales of Kent in sick & drear lamentings.
]
PLATE 3
A PROPHECY
The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent,
Sullen fires across the Atlantic glow to America's shore:
Piercing the souls of warlike men, who rise in silent night,
Washington, Franklin, Paine & Warren, Gates, Hancock & Green;
Meet on the coast glowing with blood from Albions fiery Prince.
Washington spoke; Friends of America look over the Atlantic sea;
A bended bow is lifted in heaven, & a heavy iron chain
Descends link by link from Albions cliffs across the sea to bind
Brothers & sons of America, till our faces pale and yellow;
Heads deprest, voices weak, eyes downcast, hands work-bruis'd, t
Feet bleeding on the sultry sands, and the furrows of the whip t
Descend to generations that in future times forget.----
The strong voice ceas'd; for a terrible blast swept over the
heaving sea;
The eastern cloud rent; on his cliffs stood Albions wrathful
Prince t
A dragon form clashing his scales at midnight he arose,
And flam'd red meteors round the land of Albion beneath[.] t
His voice, his locks, his awful shoulders, and his glowing eyes,
- 52 -
PLATE 4
Appear to the Americans upon the cloudy night.
Solemn heave the Atlantic waves between the gloomy nations,
Swelling, belching from its deeps red clouds & raging Fires!
Albion is sick. America faints! enrag'd the Zenith grew.
As human blood shooting its veins all round the orbed heaven
Red rose the clouds from the Atlantic in vast wheels of blood
And in the red clouds rose a Wonder o'er the Atlantic sea;
Intense! naked! a Human fire fierce glowing, as the wedge
Of iron heated in the furnace; his terrible limbs were fire
With myriads of cloudy terrors banners dark & towers
Surrounded; heat but not light went thro' the murky atmosphere
The King of England looking westward trembles at the vision
PLATE 5
Albions Angel stood beside the Stone of night, and saw
The terror like a comet, or more like the planet red
That once inclos'd the terrible wandering comets in its sphere.
Then Mars thou wast our center, & the planets three flew round
Thy crimson disk; so e'er the Sun was rent from thy red sphere;
The Spectre glowd his horrid length staining the temple long
With beams of blood; & thus a voice came forth, and shook the
temple
PLATE 6
The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their
stations;
The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;
The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry'd.
Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!
Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst;
Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:
Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;
Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are
open.
And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge;
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream.
Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher
morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.
PLATE 7
In thunders ends the voice. Then Albions Angel wrathful burnt
Beside the Stone of Night; and like the Eternal Lions howl
In famine & war, reply'd. Art thou not Orc, who serpent-form'd
Stands at the gate of Enitharmon to devour her children;
Blasphemous Demon, Antichrist, hater of Dignities;
- 53 -
Lover of wild rebellion, and transgresser of Gods Law;
Why dost thou come to Angels eyes in this terrific form?
PLATE 8
The terror answerd: I am Orc, wreath'd round the accursed tree:
The times are ended; shadows pass the morning gins to break;
The fiery joy, that Urizen perverted to ten commands,
What night he led the starry hosts thro' the wide wilderness:
That stony law I stamp to dust: and scatter religion abroad
To the four winds as a torn book, & none shall gather the leaves;
But they shall rot on desart sands, & consume in bottomless
deeps;
To make the desarts blossom, & the deeps shrink to their
fountains,
And to renew the fiery joy, and burst the stony roof.
That pale religious letchery, seeking Virginity,
May find it in a harlot, and in coarse-clad honesty
The undefil'd tho' ravish'd in her cradle night and morn:
For every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life;
Because the soul of sweet delight can never be defil'd.
Fires inwrap the earthly globe, yet man is not consumd;
Amidst the lustful fires he walks: his feet become like brass,
His knees and thighs like silver, & his breast and head like
gold.
PLATE 9
Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets & alarm my Thirteen Angels!
Loud howls the eternal Wolf! the eternal Lion lashes his tail!
America is darkned; and my punishing Demons terrified
Crouch howling before their caverns deep like skins dry'd in the
wind.
They cannot smite the wheat, nor quench the fatness of the
earth.
They cannot smite with sorrows, nor, subdue the plow and spade.
They cannot wall the city, nor moat round the castle of princes.
They cannot bring the stubbed oak to overgrow the hills.
For terrible men stand on the shores, &,in their robes I see
Children take shelter from the lightnings, there stands
Washington
And Paine and Warren with their foreheads reard toward the east
But clouds obscure my aged sight. A vision from afar!
Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets & alarm my thirteen Angels:
Ah vision from afar! Ah rebel form that rent the ancient
Heavens; Eternal Viper self-renew'd, rolling in clouds
I see thee in thick clouds and darkness on America's shore.
Writhing in pangs of abhorred birth; red flames the crest
rebellious
And eves of death; the harlot womb oft opened in vain
Heaves in enormous circles, now the times are return'd upon thee,
Devourer of thy parent, now thy unutterable torment renews.
Sound! sound! my loud war trumpets & alarm my thirteen Angels!
Ah terrible birth! a young one bursting! where is the weeping
mouth?
And where the mothers milk? instead those ever-hissing jaws
And parched lips drop with fresh gore; now roll thou in the
clouds
- 54 -
Thy mother lays her length outstretch'd upon the shore beneath.
Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets & alarm my thirteen Angels!
Loud howls the eternal Wolf: the eternal Lion lashes his tail!
PLATE 10
Thus wept the Angel voice & as he wept the terrible blasts
Of trumpets, blew a loud alarm across the Atlantic deep.
No trumpets answer; no reply of clarions or of fifes,
Silent the Colonies remain and refuse the loud alarm.
On those vast shady hills between America & Albions shore;
Now barr'd out by the Atlantic sea: call'd Atlantean hills:
Because from their bright summits you may pass to the Golden
world
An ancient palace, archetype of mighty Emperies,
Rears its immortal pinnacles, built in the forest of God
By Ariston the king of beauty for his stolen bride,
Here on their magic seats the thirteen Angels sat perturb'd
For clouds from the Atlantic hover o'er the solemn roof.
PLATE 11
Fiery the Angels rose, & as they rose deep thunder roll'd
Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc
And Bostons Angel cried aloud as they flew thro' the dark night.
He cried: Why trembles honesty and like a murderer,
Why seeks he refuge from the frowns of his immortal station!
Must the generous tremble & leave his joy, to the idle: to the
pestilence!
That mock him? who commanded this? what God? what Angel!
To keep the gen'rous from experience till the ungenerous
Are unrestraind performers of the energies of nature;
Till pity is become a trade, and generosity a science,
That men get rich by, & the sandy desart is giv'n to the strong
What God is he, writes laws of peace, & clothes him in a tempest
What pitying Angel lusts for tears, and fans himself with sighs
What crawling villain preaches abstinence & wraps himself
In fat of lambs? no more I follow, no more obedience pay.
PLATE 12
So cried he, rending off his robe & throwing down his scepter.
In sight of Albions Guardian, and all the thirteen Angels
Rent off their robes to the hungry wind, & threw their golden
scepters
Down on the land of America. indignant they descended
Headlong from out their heav'nly heights, descending swift as
fires
Over the land; naked & flaming are their lineaments seen
In the deep gloom, by Washington & Paine & Warren they stood
And the flame folded roaring fierce within the pitchy night
Before the Demon red, who burnt towards America,
In black smoke thunders and loud winds rejoicing in its terror
- 55 -
Breaking in smoky wreaths from the wild deep, & gath'ring thick
In flames as of a furnace on the land from North to South
PLATE 13
What time the thirteen Governors that England sent convene
In Bernards house; the flames coverd the land, they rouze they
cry
Shaking their mental chains they rush in fury to the sea
To quench their anguish; at the feet of Washington down fall'n
They grovel on the sand and writhing lie, while all
The British soldiers thro' the thirteen states sent up a howl
Of anguish: threw their swords & muskets to the earth & ran
From their encampments and dark castles seeking where to hide
From the grim flames; and from the visions of Orc; in sight
Of Albions Angel; who enrag'd his secret clouds open'd
From north to south, and burnt outstretchd on wings of wrath
cov'ring
The eastern sky, spreading his awful wings across the heavens;
Beneath him roll'd his num'rous hosts, all Albions Angels camp'd
Darkend the Atlantic mountains & their trumpets shook the valleys
Arm'd with diseases of the earth to cast upon the Abyss,
Their numbers forty millions, must'ring in the eastern sky.
PLATE 14
In the flames stood & view'd the armies drawn out in the sky
Washington Franklin Paine & Warren Allen Gates & Lee:
And heard the voice of Albions Angel give the thunderous command:
His plagues obedient to his voice flew forth out of their clouds
Falling upon America, as a storm to cut them off
As a blight cuts the tender corn when it begins to appear.
Dark is the heaven above, & cold & hard the earth beneath;
And as a plague wind fill'd with insects cuts off man & beast;
And as a sea o'erwhelms a land in the day of an earthquake; t
Fury! rage! madness! in a wind swept through America
And the red flames of Orc that folded roaring fierce around
The angry shores, and the fierce rushing of th'inhabitants
together:
The citizens of New-York close their books & lock their chests;
The mariners of Boston drop their anchors and unlade;
The scribe of Pensylvania casts his pen upon the earth;
The builder of Virginia throws his hammer down in fear.
Then had America been lost, o'erwhelm'd by the Atlantic,
And Earth had lost another portion of the infinite,
But all rush together in the night in wrath and raging fire
The red fires rag'd! the plagues recoil'd! then rolld they back
with fury
PLATE 15
On Albions Angels; then the Pestilence began in streaks of red
Across the limbs of Albions Guardian, the spotted plague smote
Bristols
- 56 -
And the Leprosy Londons Spirit, sickening all their bands:
The millions sent up a howl of anguish and threw off their
hammerd mail,
And cast their swords & spears to earth, & stood a naked
multitude.
Albions Guardian writhed in torment on the eastern sky
Pale quivring toward the brain his glimmering eyes, teeth
chattering
Howling & shuddering his legs quivering; convuls'd each muscle &
sinew
Sick'ning lay Londons Guardian, and the ancient miter'd York
Their heads on snowy hills, their ensigns sick'ning in the sky
The plagues creep on the burning winds driven by flames of Orc,
And by the fierce Americans rushing together in the night
Driven o'er the Guardians of Ireland and Scotland and Wales
They spotted with plagues forsook the frontiers & their banners
seard
With fires of hell, deform their ancient heavens with shame &
woe.
Hid in his eaves the Bard of Albion felt the enormous plagues.
And a cowl of flesh grew o'er his head & scales on his back &
ribs;
And rough with black scales all his Angels fright their ancient
heavens
The doors of marriage are open, and the Priests in rustling
scales
Rush into reptile coverts, hiding from the fires of Orc,
That play around the golden roofs in wreaths of fierce desire,
Leaving the females naked and glowing with the lusts of youth
For the female spirits of the dead pining in bonds of religion;
Run from their fetters reddening, & in long drawn arches sitting:
They feel the nerves of youth renew, and desires of ancient
times,
Over their pale limbs as a vine when the tender grape appears
PLATE 16
Over the hills, the vales, the cities, rage the red flames
fierce;
The Heavens melted from north to south; and Urizen who sat
Above all heavens in thunders wrap'd, emerg'd his leprous head
From out his holy shrine, his tears in deluge piteous
Falling into the deep sublime! flag'd with grey-brow'd snows
And thunderous visages, his jealous wings wav'd over the deep;
Weeping in dismal howling woe he dark descended howling
Around the smitten bands, clothed in tears & trembling shudd'ring
cold.
His stored snows he poured forth, and his icy magazines
He open'd on the deep, and on the Atlantic sea white shiv'ring.
Leprous his limbs, all over white, and hoary was his visage.
Weeping in dismal howlings before the stern Americans
Hiding the Demon red with clouds & cold mists from the earth;
Till Angels & weak men twelve years should govern o'er the
strong:
And then their end should come, when France reciev'd the Demons
light.
Stiff shudderings shook the heav'nly thrones! France Spain &
Italy,
In terror view'd the bands of Albion, and the ancient Guardians
Fainting upon the elements, smitten with their own plagues
- 57 -
They slow advance to shut the five gates of their law-built
heaven
Filled with blasting fancies and with mildews of despair
With fierce disease and lust, unable to stem the fires of Orc;
But the five gates were consum'd, & their bolts and hinges melted
And the fierce flames burnt round the heavens, & round the
abodes of men
FINIS t
[Canceled Plates] t
PLATE b
Reveal the dragon thro' the human; coursing swift as fire
To the close hall of counsel, where his Angel form renews.
In a sweet vale shelter'd with cedars, that eternal stretch
Their unmov'd branches, stood the hall; built when the moon shot
forth,
In that dread night when Urizen call'd the stars round his feet;
Then burst the center from its orb, and found a place beneath;
And Earth conglob'd, in narrow room, roll'd round its sulphur
Sun.
To this deep valley situated by the flowing Thames;
Where George the third holds council. & his Lords & Commons meet:
Shut out from mortal sight the Angel came; the vale was dark
With clouds of smoke from the Atlantic, that in volumes roll'd
Between the mountains, dismal visions mope around the house.
On chairs of iron, canopied with mystic ornaments,
Of life by magic power condens'd; infernal forms art-bound
The council sat; all rose before the aged apparition;
His snowy beard that streams like lambent flames down his wide
breast
Wetting with tears, & his white garments cast a wintry light.
Then as arm'd clouds arise terrific round the northern drum;
The world is silent at the flapping of the folding banners;
So still terrors rent the house: as when the solemn globe
Launch'd to the unknown shore, while Sotha held the northern
helm,
Till to that void it came & fell; so the dark house was rent,
The valley mov'd beneath; its shining pillars split in twain,
And its roofs crack across down falling on th'Angelic seats.
PLATE C (as revised)
[Then Albions Angel rose] resolv'd to the cove of
armoury: t
His shield that bound twelve demons & their cities in its orb, t
He took down from its trembling pillar; from its cavern deep,
His helm was brought by Londons Guardian, & his thirsty spear
By the wise spirit of Londons river: silent stood the King
breathing damp mists: t
And on his aged limbs they clasp'd the armour of terrible gold. t
- 58 -
Infinite Londons awful spires cast a dreadful cold t
Even on rational things beneath, and from the palace walls t
Around Saint James's chill & heavy, even to the city gate. t
On the vast stone whose name is Truth he stood, his cloudy shield
Smote with his scepter, the scale bound orb loud howld; th'
ancie[nt] pillar t
Trembling sunk, an earthquake roll'd along the massy pile. t
In glittring armour, swift as winds; intelligent as clouds; t
Four winged heralds mount the furious blasts & blow their trumps
Gold, silver, brass & iron clangors clamoring rend the shores.
Like white clouds rising from the deeps, his fifty-two armies
From the four cliffs of Albion rise, mustering around their
Prince; t
Angels of cities and of parishes and villages and families,
In armour as the nerves of wisdom, each his station holds.
In opposition dire, a warlike cloud the myriads stood
In the red air before the Demon; [seen even by mortal men: t
Who call it Fancy, & shut the gates of sense, & in their
chambers,
Sleep like the dead.] But like a constellation ris'n and
blazing
Over the rugged ocean; so the Angels of Albion hung,
a frowning shadow, like an aged King in arms of gold, t
Who wept over a den, in which his only son outstretch'd
By rebels hands was slain; his white beard wav'd in the wild
wind. t
On mountains & cliffs of snow the awful apparition hover'd;
And like the voices of religious dead, heard in the mountains:
When holy zeal scents the sweet valleys of ripe virgin bliss;
Such was the hollow voice that o'er America lamented. t
[Fragment]
[d] t
As when a dream of Thiralatha flies the midnight hour:
In vain the dreamer grasps the joyful images, they fly
Seen in obscured traces in the Vale of Leutha, So
The British Colonies beneath the woful Princes fade.
And so the Princes fade from earth, scarce seen by souls of men
But tho' obscur'd, this is the form of the Angelic land.
- 59 -
EUROPE a PROPHECY t
LAMBETH Printed by Will: Blake: 1794
PLATE iii
Five windows light the cavern'd Man; thro' one he breathes the
air;
Thro' one, hears music of the spheres; thro' one, the eternal
vine
Flourishes, that he may recieve the grapes; thro' one can look.
And see small portions of the eternal world that ever groweth;
Thro' one, himself pass out what time he please, but he will not;
For stolen joys are sweet, & bread eaten in secret pleasant.
So sang a Fairy mocking as he sat on a streak'd Tulip,
Thinking none saw him: when he ceas'd I started from the trees!
And caught him in my hat as boys knock down a butterfly.
How know you this said I small Sir? where did you learn this
song?
Seeing himself in my possession thus he answered me:
My master, I am yours. command me, for I must obey.
Then tell me, what is the material world, and is it dead?
He laughing answer'd: I will write a book on leaves of flowers,
If you will feed me on love-thoughts, & give me now and then
A cup of sparkling poetic fancies; so when I am tipsie,
I'll sing to you to this soft lute; and shew you all alive
The world, when every particle of dust breathes forth its joy.
I took him home in my warm bosom: as we went along
Wild flowers I gatherd; & he shew'd me each eternal flower:
He laugh'd aloud to see them whimper because they were pluck'd.
They hover'd round me like a cloud of incense: when I came
Into my parlour and sat down, and took my pen to write:
My Fairy sat upon the table, and dictated EUROPE.
PLATE 1
PRELUDIUM
The nameless shadowy female rose from out the breast of Orc:
Her snaky hair brandishing in the winds of Enitharmon,
And thus her voice arose.
O mother Enitharmon wilt thou bring forth other sons?
To cause my name to vanish, that my place may not be found.
For I am faint with travel! t
Like the dark cloud disburdend in the day of dismal thunder.
My roots are brandish'd in the heavens. my fruits in earth
beneath
Surge, foam, and labour into life, first born & first consum'd!
Consumed and consuming!
Then why shouldst thou accursed mother bring me into life?
- 60 -
I wrap my turban of thick clouds around my lab'ring head;
And fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs.
Yet the red sun and moon,
And all the overflowing stars rain down prolific pains.
PLATE 2
Unwilling I look up to heaven! unwilling count the stars!
Sitting in fathomless abyss of my immortal shrine.
I sieze their burning power
And bring forth howling terrors, all devouring fiery kings.
Devouring & devoured roaming on dark and desolate mountains
In forests of eternal death, shrieking in hollow trees.
Ah mother Enitharmon!
Stamp not with solid form this vig'rous progeny of fires.
I bring forth from my teeming bosom myriads of flames.
And thou dost stamp them with a signet, then they roam abroad
And leave me void as death:
Ah! I am drown'd in shady woe, and visionary joy.
And who shall bind the infinite with an eternal band?
To compass it with swaddling bands? and who shall cherish it
With milk and honey?
I see it smile & I roll inward & my voice is past.
She ceast & rolld her shady clouds
Into the secret place.
PLATE 3
A PROPHECY
The deep of winter came;
What time the secret child,
Descended thro' the orient gates of the eternal day:
War ceas'd, & all the troops like shadows fled to their abodes.
Then Enitharmon saw her sons & daughters rise around.
Like pearly clouds they meet together in the crystal house:
And Los, possessor of the moon, joy'd in the peaceful night:
Thus speaking while his num'rous sons shook their bright fiery
wings
Again the night is come