MILTON

A Poem in a Books

To Justify the Ways of God to Men.

The Author & Printer W. Blake.

1804.

p. 2

PREFACE

THE Stolen and Perverted Writings of Homer & Ovid, of Plato & Cicero, which all Men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the Sublime of the Bible: but when the New Age is at leisure to Pronounce, all will be set right & those Grand Works of the more ancient & consciously & professedly Inspired Men will hold their proper rank & the Daughters of Memory shall become the Daughters of Inspiration. Shakspeare & Milton were both curb'd by the general malady & infedlion from the silly Greek & Latin slaves of the Sword.

Rouze up O Young Men of the New Age! Set your foreheads against

lo the ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court, & the University: who would if they could for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War. Painters! on you I call. Sculptors! Architects! Suffer not the fashionable Fools to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works or the expensive advertizing boasts that they make of such works; believe Christ & his Apostles that there is a Class of Men whose whole delight is in Destroying. We do not want either Greek or Roman Models if we are but just & true to our own Imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live for ever, in Jesus Our Lord.

And did those feet in ancient time

20 Walk upon England's mountains green,

And was the holy Lamb of God

On England's pleasant pastures seen.''

And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

25 And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:

Bring me my Arrows of desire:

Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!

30 Bring me my Chariot of fire :

I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand,

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In England's green & pleasant Land.

Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets.

Numbers, xi. ch. 29 v,

xix

MILTON

BOOK THE FIRST

P- 3

DAUGHTERS of Beulah! Muses who inspire the Poet's Song,

Record the journey of immortal Milton thro' your Realms

Of terror & mild moony lustre, in soft sexual delusions

Of varied beauty, to delight the wanderer and repose

5 His burning thirst & freezing hunger! Come into my hand

By your mild power; descending down the Nerves of my right arm

From out the Portals of my Brain, where by your ministry

The Eternal Great Humanity Divine planted his Paradise,

And in it caus'd the Spe6lres of the Dead to take sweet form

10 In likeness of himself. Tell also of the False Tongue! vegetated

Beneath your land of shadows : of its sacrifices, and

Its offerings : even till Jesus, the image of the Invisible God,

Became its prey; a curse, an offering, and an atonement

For Death Eternal in the heavens of Albion, & before the Gates

15 Of Jerusalem his Emanation, in the heavens beneath Beulah.

Say first ! what mov'd Milton, who walk'd about in Eternity

One hundred years, pond'ring the intricate mazes of Providence,

Unhappy tho' in heav'n, he obey'd, he murmur'd not, he was silent.

Viewing his Sixfold Emanation scatter'd thro' the deep

20 In torment: To go into the deep her to redeem & himself perish .?

That cause at length mov'd Milton to this unexampled deed,

A Bard's prophetic Song ! for sitting at eternal tables.

Terrific among the Sons of Albion, in chorus solemn & loud

A Bard broke forth : all sat attentive to the awful man.

25 Mark well my words! they are of your eternal salvation!

Three Classes are Created by the Hammer of Los, & Woven

p. 4 FROM Golgonooza the spiritual Four-fold London eternal,

In immense labours & sorrows, ever building, ever falling.

Thro' Albion's four Forests which overspread all the Earth

From London Stone to Blackheath east : to Hounslow west :

5 To Finchley north : to Norwood south : and the weights

Of Enitharmon's Loom play lulling cadences on the winds of Albion

From Caithness in the north, to Lizard-point & Dover in the south.

I B

Loud sounds the hammer of Los, & loud his Bellows is heard

Before London to Hampstead's breadths & Highgate's heights, To

10 Stratford & old Bow, & across to the Gardens of Kensington

On Tyburn's Brook : loud groans Thames beneath the iron Forge

Of Rintrah & Palamabron, of Theotorm &c Bromion, to forge the instruments

Of Harvest: The Plow & Harrow to pass over the Nations.

The Surrey hills glow like the clinkers of the furnace: Lambeth's Vale

15 Where Jerusalem's foundations began; where they were laid in ruins,

Where they were laid in ruins from every Nation & Oak Groves rooted,

Dark gleams before the Furnace-mouth a heap of burning ashes.

When shall Jerusalem return & overspread all the Nations?

Return, return to Lambeth's Vale, O building of human souls!

20 Thence stony Druid Temples overspread the Island white.

And thence from Jerusalem's ruins, from her walls of salvation

And praise, thro' the whole Earth were rear'd from Ireland

To Mexico & Peru west, & east to China & Japan : till Babel

The Spedre of Albion frown'd over the Nations in glory & war.

25 All things begin & end in Albion's ancient Druid rocky shore :

But now the Starry Heavens are fled from the mighty limbs of Albion.

Loud sounds the Hammer of Los, loud turn the Wheels of Enitharmon :

Her Looms vibrate with soft affe6l:ions, weaving the Web of Life

Out from the ashes of the Dead; Los lifts his iron Ladles

30 With molten ore: he heaves the iron cliffs in his rattling chains

From Hyde Park to the Alms-houses of Mile-end & old Bow.

Here the Three Classes of Mortal Men take their fix'd destinations,

And hence they overspread the Nations of the whole Earth & hence

The Web of Life is woven, & the tender sinews of life created,

35 And the three Classes of Men regulated by Los's Hammer, and woven

p. 5 BY Enitharmon's Looms & Spun beneath the Spindle of Tirzah.

The first. The Eled from before the foundation of the World:

The second, The Redeem'd: The Third, The Reprobate & form'd

To destruction from the mothers womb:

follow with me my plow.

5 Of the first class was Satan : with incomparable mildness ;

His primitive tyrannical attempts on Los; with most endearing love

He soft intreated Los to give to him Palamabron's station.

For Palamabron return'd with labour wearied every evening :

Palamabron oft refus'd : and as often Satan ofFer'd

10 His service, till by repeated offers and repeated intreaties

2

Los gave to him the Harrow of the Almighty ; alas, blamable

Palamabron fear'd to be angry lest Satan should accuse him of

Ingratitude, & Los believe the accusation thro' Satan's extreme

Mildness. Satan labour'd all day: it was a thousand years:

15 In the evening returning terrified, overlabour'd & astonish'd,

Embrac'd soft with a brother's tears Palamabron, who also wept.

Mark well my words ! they are of your eternal salvation !

Next morning Palamabron rose : the horses of the Harrow

Were madden'd with tormenting fury, & the servants of the Harrow,

20 The Gnomes, accus'd Satan with indignation, fury and fire.

Then Palamabron, reddening like the Moon in an eclipse,

Spoke, saying: You know Satan's mildness and his self-imposition,

Seeming a brother, being a tyrant, even thinking himself a brother

While he is murdering the just; prophetic I behold

25 His future course thro' darkness and despair to eternal death.

But we must not be tyrants also : he hath assum'd my place

For one whole day, under pretence of pity and love to me!

My horses hath he madden'd! and my fellow servants injur'd !

How should he, he, know the duties of another? O foolish forbearance!

30 Would I had told Los all my heart ! but patience, O my friends.

All may be well: silent remain, while I call Los and Satan.

Loud as the wind of Beulah that unroots the rocks & hills

Palamabron call'd: and Los & Satan came before him :

And Palamabron shew'd the horses & the servants. Satan wept,

35 And mildly cursing Palamabron, him accus'd of crimes

Himself had wrought. Los trembled : Satan's blandishments almost

Perswaded the Prophet of Eternity that Palamabron

Was Satan's enemy, & that the Gnomes, being Palamabron's friends,

Were leagued together against Satan thro' ancient enmity.

40 What could Los do? how could he judge, when Satan's self believ'd

That he had not oppressed the horses at the Harrow, nor the servants.

So Los said : Henceforth, Palamabron, let each his own station

Keep : nor in pity false, nor in officious brotherhood, where

None needs, be active. Mean time Palamabron's horses

45 Rag'd with thick flames redundant, & the Harrow madden'd with fury.

Trembling Palamabron stood, the strongest of Demons trembled:

Curbing his living creatures; many of the strongest Gnomes

They bit in their wild fury, who also madden'd like wildest beasts. '

Mark well my words I they are of your eternal salvation !

3

p. 6 MEAN WHILE went Satan before Los accusing Palamabron :

Himself exculpating with mildest speech, for himself believ'd

That he had not oppress'd nor injur'd the refradtory servants.

But Satan returning to his Mills (for Palamabron had serv'd

5 The Mills of Satan as the easier task) found all confusion :

And back return'd to Los, not fill'd with vengeance but with tears.

Himself convinc'd of Palamabron's turpitude. Los beheld

The servants of the Mills drunken with wine and dancing wild

With shouts and Palamabron's songs, rending the forests green

lo With ecchoing confusion, tho' the Sun was risen on high.

Then Los took off his left sandal, placing it on his head,

Signal of solemn mourning: when the servants of the Mills

Beheld the signal they in silence stood, tho' drunk with wine.

Los wept ! But Rintrah also came, and Enitharmon on

15 His arm lean'd tremblingly, observing all these things.

And Los said: Ye Genii of the Mills! the Sun is on high.

Your labours call you: Palamabron is also in sad dilemma:

His horses are mad: his Harrow confounded: his companions enrag'd.

Mine is the fault! I should have remember'd that pity divides the soul,

20 And man, unmans: follow with me my Plow: this mournful day

Must be a blank in Nature: follow with me, and tomorrow again

Resume your labours, & this day shall be a mournful day.

Wildly they follow'd Los and Rintrah, & the Mills were silent:

They mourn'd all day, this mournful day of Satan & Palamabron:

25 And all the Eledl & all the Redeem'd mourn'd one toward another

Upon the mountains of Albion among the cliffs of the Dead.

They Plow'd in tears ! incessant pour'd Jehovah's rain & Molech's

Thick fires, contending with the rain, thunder'd above rolling

Terrible over their heads; Satan wept over Palamabron.

30 Theotormon & Bromion contended on the side of Satan,

Pitying his youth and beauty, trembling at eternal death.

Michael contended against Satan in the rolling thunder:

Thulloh the friend of Satan also reprov'd him: faint their reproof.

But Rintrah who is of the reprobate: of those form'd to destrudion:

35 In indignation for Satan's soft dissimulation of friendship

Flam'd^ above all the plowed furrows, angry, red and furious:

Till Michael sat down in the furrow, weary, dissolv'd in tears.

Satan, who drave the team beside him, stood angry & red :

4

He smote Thulloh & sfew him, & he stood terrible over Michael

40 Urging him to arise : he wept. Enitharmon saw his tears.

But Los hid Thulloh from her sight, lest she should die of grief.

She wept: she trembled: she kissed Satan: she wept over Michael:

She form'd a Space for Satan & Michael & for the poor infedted.

Trembling she wept over the Space, & clos'd it with a tender Moon.

45 Los secret buried Thulloh, weeping disconsolate over the moony Space.

But Palamabron called down a Great Solemn Assembly,

That he who will not defend Truth, may be compelled to

Defend a Lie, that he may be snared & caught & taken.

p. 7 AND all Eden descended into Palamabron's tent,

Among Albion's Druids & Bards in the caves beneath Albion's

Death Couch, in the caverns of death, in the corner of the Atlantic.

And in the midst of the Great Assembly Palamabron pray'd:

5 O God, protedl me from my friends, that they have not power over me:

Thou hast giv'n me power to protedl myself from my bitterest enemies.

Mark well my words! they are of your eternal salvation 1

Then rose the Two Witnesses, Rintrah & Palamabron:

And Palamabron appeal'd to all Eden, and receiv'd

10 Judgment: and Lo! it fell on Rintrah and his rage,

Which now flam'd high & furious in Satan against Palamabron,

Till it became a proverb in Eden. Satan is among the Reprobate.

Los in his wrath curs'd heaven & earth, he rent up Nations,

Standing on Albion's rocks among high-rear'd Druid temples

15 Which reach the stars of heaven & stretch from pole to pole.

He displac'd continents, the oceans fled before his face:

He alter'd the poles of the world, east, west & north & south.

But he clos'd up Enitharmon from the sight of all these things.

For Satan flaming with Rintrah's fury hidden beneath his own mildness

20 Accus'd Palamabron before the Assembly of ingratitude, of malice:

He created Seven deadly Sins, drawing out his infernal scroll

Of Moral laws and cruel punishments upon the clouds of Jehovah,

To pervert the Divine voice in its entrance to the earth

With thunder of war & trumpet's sound, with armies of disease,

25 Punishments & deaths muster 'd & number'd. Saying: I am God alone:

There is no other: let all obey my principles of moral individuality.

I have brought them from the uppermost, innermost recesses

Of my Eternal Mind: transgressors I will rend ofi^for ever,

5

As now I rend this accursed Family from my covering.

30 Thus Satan rag'd amidst the Assembly, and his bosom grew

Opake against the Divine Vision: the paved terraces of

His bosom inwards shone with fires, but the stones, becoming opake,

Hid him from sight in an extreme blackness and darkness.

And there a World of deeper Ulro was open'd in the midst

35 Of the Assembly, in Satan's bosom, a vast unfathomable Abyss.

Astonishment held the Assembly in an awful silence: and tears

Fell down as dews of night, & a loud solemn universal groan

Was utter'd from the east & from the west & from the south

And from the north ; and Satan stood opake, immeasurable,

40 Covering the east with solid blackness, round his hidden heart,

With thunders utter'd from his hidden wheels: accusing loud

The Divine Mercy for protecting Palamabron in his tent.

Rintrah rear'd up walls of rocks and pour'd rivers & moats

Of fire round the walls: columns of fire guard around

45 Between Satan and Palamabron in the terrible darkness.

And Satan not having the Science of Wrath, but only of Pity,

Rent them asunder, and wrath was left to wrath, & pity to pity.

He sunk down a dreadful Death, unlike the slumbers of Beulah.

The Separation was terrible: the Dead was repos'd on his Couch

50 Beneath the Couch of Albion, on the seven mou[n]tains of Rome,

In the whole place of the Covering Cherub, Rome, Babylon & Tyre.

His Spedlre raging furious descended into its Space.

p. 9 HE set his face against Jerusalem to destroy the Eon of Albion.

But Los hid Enitharmon from the sight of all these things,

Upon the Thames whose lulling harmony repos'd her soul:

Where Beulah lovely terminates in rocky Albion:

5 Terminating in Hyde Park on Tyburn's awful brook.

And the Mills of Satan were separated into a moony Space

Among the rocks of Albion's Temples, and Satan's Druid sons

Offer the Human Vidims throughout all the Earth, and Albion's

Dread Tomb, immortal on his Rock, overshadow'd the whole Earth:

10 Where Satan making to himself Laws from his own identity

Compell'd others to serve him in moral gratitude & submission.

Being call'd God: setting himself above all that is called God.

And all the Spedlres of the Dead, calling themselves Sons of God,

In his Synagogues worship Satan under the Unutterable Name.

6

15 And it was enquir'd: Why in a Great Solemn Assembly

The Innocent should be condemn'd for the Guilty? Then an Eternal rose,

Saying: If the Guilty should be condemn'd he must be an Eternal Death,

And one must die for another throughout ail Eternity.

Satan is fall'n from his station & never can be redeem'd,

20 But must be new Created continually moment by moment.

And therefore the Class of Satan shall be call'd the Eled, & those

Of Rintrah the Reprobate, & those of Palamabron the Redeem'd :

For he is redeem'd from Satan's Law, the wrath falling on Rintrah.

And the'*efore Palamabron dared not to call a solemn Assembly

25 Till Satan had assum'd Rintrah's wrath in the day of mourning.

In a feminine delusion of false pride self-deceiv'd.

So spake the Eternal, and confirm'd it with a thunderous oath.

But when Leutha (a Daughter of Beulah) beheld Satan's condemnation.

She down descended into the midst of the Great Solemn Assem.bly,

30 Offering herself a Ransom for Satan, taking on her his Sin.

Mark well my words! they are of your eternal salvation!

And Leutha stood glowing with varying colours immortal, heart-piercing

And lovely : & her moth-like elegance shone over the Assembly.

At length, standing upon the golden floor of Palamabron,

35 She spake: I am the Author of this Sin! by my suggestion

My Parent power Satan has committed this transgression.

I loved Palamabron & I sought to approach his Tent,

But beautiful Elynittria with her silver arrows repell'd me.

p. 10 FOR her light is terrible to me: I fade before her immortal beauty.

O wherefore doth a Dragon-form forth issue from my limbs

To seize her new born son.'* Ah me! the wretched Leutha!

This to prevent, entering the doors of Satan's brain night after night,

5 Like sweet perfumes I stupified the masculine perceptions

And kept only the feminine awake: hence rose his soft

Delusory love to Palamabron; admiration join'd with envy!

Cupidity unconquerable! my fault, when at noon of day

The Horses of Palamabron call'd for rest and pleasant death:

10 I sprang out of the breast of Satan, over the Harrow beaming

In all my beauty, that I might unloose the flaming steeds

As Elynittria used to do; but too well those living creatures

Knew that I was not Elynittria, and they brake the traces.

7

But me the servants of the Harrow saw not, but as a bow

15 Of varying colours on the hills; terribly rag'd the horses.

Satan astonish'd, and with power above his own controll,

Compell'd the Gnomes to curb the horses, & to throw banks of sand

Around the fiery flaming Harrow in labyrinthine forms.

And brooks between to intersedl the meadows in their course.

20 The Harrow cast thick flames : Jehovah thunder'd above.

Chaos & ancient night fled from beneath the fiery Harrow:

The Harrow cast thick flames & orb'd us round in concave fire,

A Hell of our own making, see, its flames still gird me round!

Jehovah thunder'd above: Satan in pride of heart

25 Drove the fierce Harrow among the constellations of Jehovah,

Drawing a third part in the fires as stubble, north & south.

To devour Albion and Jerusalem, the Emanation of Albion,

Driving the Harrow in Pity's paths: 'twas then, with our dark fires

Which now gird round us (O eternal torment) I form'd the Serpent

30 Of precious stones & gold, turn'd poisons on the sultry wastes.

The Gnomes in all that day spar'd not; they curs'd Satan bitterly.

To do unkind things in kindness: with power arm'd to say

The most irritating things in the midst of tears and love:

These are the stings of the Serpent! thus did we by them, till thus

35 They in return retaliated, and the Living Creatures madden'd.

The Gnomes labour'd. I weeping hid in Satan's inmost brain.

But when the Gnomes refus'd to labour more, with blandishments

I came forth from the head of Satan : back the Gnomes recoil'd

And called me Sin, and for a sign portentous held me. Soon

40 Day sunk and Palamabron return'd, trembling I hid myself

In Satan's inmost Palace of his nervous fine wrought Brain:

For Elynittria met Satan with all her singing women,

Terrific in their joy & pouring wine of wildest power,

They gave Satan their wine, indignant at the burning wrath.

45 Wild with prophetic fury his former life became like a dream.

Cloth'd in the Serpent's folds, in selfish holiness demanding purity.

Being most impure, self-condemn'd to eternal tears, he drove

Me from his inmost Brain & the doors clos'd with thunder's sound.

Divine Vision who didst create the Female, to repose

50 The Sleepers of Beulah, pity the repentant Leutha. My

p. 1 1 SICK Couch bears the dark shades of Eternal Death infolding

The Spedtre of Satan: he furious refuses to repose in sleep:

1 humbly bow in all my Sin before the Throne Divine.

Not so the Sick-one ; Alas, what shall be done him to restore,

8

5 Who calls the Individual Law Holy, and despises the Saviour,

Glorying to involve Albion's Body in fires of eternal War?

Now Leutha ceas'd: tears flow'd: but the Divine Pity supported her.

All is my fault ! We are the Spedre of Luvah, the murderer

Of Albion! O Vala! O Luvah! O Albion! O lovely Jerusalem!

10 The Sin was begun in Eternity and will not rest to Eternity,

Till two Eternitys meet together. Ah! lost! lost! lost! for ever!

So Leutha spoke. But when she saw that Enitharmon had

Created a New Space to prote6t Satan from punishment:

She fled to Enitharmon's Tent & hid herself. Loud raging

15 Thunder'd the Assembly dark & clouded, and they ratify 'd.

The kind decision of Enitharmon, & gave a Time to the Space,

Even Six Thousand years, and sent Lucifer for Its Guard.

But Lucifer refus'd to die, & in pride he forsook his charge:

And they eleded Molech, and when Molech was impatient

20 The Divine hand found the Two Limits: first of Opacity, then of Contradlion,

Opacity was named Satan, Contradlion was named Adam.

Triple Elohim came: Elohim wearied fainted: they eledled Shaddai :

Shaddai angry, Pahad descended: Pahad terrified, they sent Jehovah,

And Jehovah was leprous; loud he call'd stretching his hand to Eternity.

25 For then the Body of Death was perfeded in hypocritic holiness.

Around the Lamb, a Female Tabernacle woven in Cathedron's Looms.

He died as a Reprobate, he was Punish'd as a Transgressor:

Glory! Glory! Glory! to the Holy Lamb of God!

I touch the heavens as an instrument to glorify the Lord!

30 The Eledl shall meet the Redeem'd on Albion's rocks they shall meet

Astonish'd at the Transgressor, in him beholding the Saviour.

And the Eledl shall say to the Redeemed: We behold it is of Divine

Mercy alone, of Free Gift and Eledlion that we live:

Our Virtues & Cruel Goodnesses have deserv'd Eternal Death,

35 Thus they weep upon the fatal Brook of Albion's River.

But Elynittria met Leutha in the place where she was hidden.

And threw aside her arrows, and laid down her sounding Bow:

She sooth'd her with soft words Sc brought her to Palamabron's bed.

In moments new created for delusion interwoven round about,

40 In dreams she bore the shadowy Spedire of Sleep & nam'd him Death:

In dreams she bore Rahab the mother of Tirzah & her sisters

In Lambeth's vales; in Cambridge & in Oxford, places of Thought,

Intricate labyrinths of Times and Spaces unknown, that Leutha lived

9 c

In Palamabron's Tent, and Oothoon was her charming guard.

45 The Bard Ceas'd. All consider'd and a loud resounding murmur

Continu'd round the Halls and much they question'd the immortal

Loud voic'd Bard, and many condemn'd the high toned Song,

Saying: Pity and Love are too venerable for the imputation

Of Guilt. Others said: If it is true, if the ads have been performed,

50 Let the Bard himself witness. Where hadst thou this terrible Song.?

The Bard replied: I am Inspired! I know it is Truth! for I Sing

p. 12 ACCORDING to the inspiration of the Poetic Genius,

Who is the eternal all proteding Divine Humanity,

To whom be Glory & Power & Dominion Evermore. Amen.

Then there was great murmuring in the Heavens of Albion

5 Concerning Generation & the Vegetative power & concerning

The Lamb the Saviour. Albion trembled to Italy, Greece & Egypt

^To Tartary & Hindostan & China & to Great America,

Shaking the roots & fast foundations of the Earth in doubtfulness:

The loud voic'd Bard terrify 'd took refuge in Milton's Bosom.

10 Then Milton rose up from the heavens of Albion ardorous:

The whole Assembly wept prophetic, seeing in Milton's face

And in his lineaments divine the shades of Death and Ulro:

He took ofFthe robe of the promise, & ungirded himself from the oath of God.

And Milton said: I go to Eternal Death! The Nations still

15 Follow after the detestable Gods of Priam : in pomp

Of warlike selfhood contradicting and blaspheming.

When will the Resurredtion come to deliver the sleeping body

From corruptibility; O when, Lord Jesus, wilt thou come.''

Tarry no longer, for my soul lies at the gates of death.

20 I will arise and look forth for the morning of the grave :

I will go down to the sepulcher to see if morning breaks:

I will go down to self annihilation and eternal death:

Lest the Last Judgment come & find me unannihilate

And I be seiz'd & giv'n into the hands of my own Selfhood.

25 The Lamb of God is seen thro' mists & shadows, hov'ring

Over the sepulchers in clouds of Jehovah & winds of Elohim,

A disk of blood distant; & heav'ns & earths roll dark between.

What do I here before the Judgment? without my Emanation?

With the daughters of memory & not with the daughters of inspiration?

30 I in my Selfhood am that Satan. I am that Evil One!

10

He is my Spedlre! in my obedience to loose him from my Hells,

To claim the Hells, my Furnaces, I go to Eternal Death.

And Milton said: I go to Eternal Death! Eternity shudder'd

For he took the outside course, among the graves of the dead,

35 A mournful shade. Eternity shudder'd at the image of eternal death.

Then on the verge of Beulah he beheld his own Shadow:

A mournful form double, hermaphroditic, male & female

In one wonderful body, and he enter'd into it

In direful pain for the dread shadow, twenty-seven fold

40 Reach'd to the depths of direst Hell, & thence to Albion's land:

Which is this earth of vegetation on which now I write.

The Seven Angels of the Presence wept over Milton's Shadow:

p. 14 AS when a man dreams, he refledls not that his body sleeps.

Else he would wake; so seem'd he entering his Shadow: but

With him the Spirits of the Seven Angels of the Presence

Entering, they gave him still perceptions of his Sleeping Body

5 Which now arose and walk'd with them in Eden, as an Eighth

Image Divine tho^ darken'd, and tho' walking as one walks

In sleep: and the Seven comforted and supported him.

Like as a Polypus that vegetates beneath the deep,

They saw his Shadow vegetated underneath the Couch

lo Of death : for when he enter'd into his Shadow, Himself,

His real and immortal Self; was as appear'd to those

Who dwell in immortality, as One sleeping on a couch

Of gold: and those in immortality gave forth their Emanations

Like Females of sweet beauty, to guard round him & to feed

15 His lips with food of Eden in his cold and dim repose:

But to himself he seem'd a wanderer lost in dreary night.

Onwards his Shadow kept its course among the Spedres, call'd

Satan, but swift as lightning passing them, startled the shades

Of Hell beheld him in a trail of light as of a comet

20 That travels into Chaos: so Milton went guarded within.

The nature of infinity is this : That every thing has its

Own Vortex; and when once a traveller thro' Eternity

Has passed that Vortex, he perceives it roll backward behind

His path, into a globe itself infolding, like a sun,

25 Or like a moon, or like a universe of starry majesty,

While he keeps onwards in his wondrous journey on the earth,

II

Or like a human form, a friend with whom he liv'd benevolent.

As the eye of man views both the east & west encompassing

Its vortex: and the north & south, with all their starry host:

30 Also the rising sun & setting moon he views surrounding

His corn-fields and his valleys of five hundred acres square.

Thus is the earth one infinite plane, and not as apparent

To the weak traveller confin'd beneath the moony shade.

Thus is the heaven a vortex pass'd already, and the earth

35 A vortex not yet pass'd by the traveller thro' Eternity.

First Milton saw Albion upon the Rock of Ages,

Deadly pale outstretch'd and snowy cold, storm cover'd:

A Giant form of perfe6l beauty outstretch'd on the rock

In solemn death: the Sea of Time & Space thunder 'd aloud

40 Against the rock, which was inwrapped with the weeds of death.

Hovering over the cold bosom, in its vortex Milton bent down

To the bosom of death : what was underneath soon seem'd above,

A cloudy heaven mingled with stormy seas in loudest ruin:

But as a wintry globe descends precipitant thro' Beulah bursting

45 With thunders loud and terrible: so Milton's shadow fell

Precipitant loud thund'ring into the Sea of Time & Space.

Then first I saw him in the Zenith as a falling star,

Descending perpendicular, swift as the swallow or swift :

And on my left foot falling on the tarsus, enter'd there,

50 But from my left foot a black cloud redounding spread over Europe.

Then Milton knew that the Three Heavens of Beulah were beheld

By him on earth in his bright pilgrimage of sixty years

p. 1 5 IN the three females whom his wives, & these three whom his daughters

Had represented and contain'd, that they might be resum'd

By giving up of Selfhood: & they distant view'd his journey

In their eternal spheres now Human, tho' their Bodies remain clos'd

5 In the dark Ulro till the Judgment : also Milton knew, they and

Himself was Human, tho' now wandering thro' Death's Vale,

In conflidl with those Female forms, which in blood & jealousy

Surrounded him dividing & uniting without end or number.

He saw the Cruelties of Ulro, and he wrote them down

10 In iron tablets: and his Wives' & Daughters' names were these:

Rahab and Tirzah, & Milcah & Malah & Noah & Hoglah.

They sat rang'd round him as the rocks of Horeb round the land

Of Canaan: and they wrote in thunder, smoke and fire

12

His diftate; and his body was the Rock Sinai: that body,

15 Which was on earth born to corruption: & the six Females

Are Hor & Peor & Bashan & Abarim & Lebanon & Hermon,

Seven rocky masses terrible in the Desarts of Midian.

But Milton's Human Shadow continu'd journeying above

The rocky masses of The Mundane Shell; in the Lands

20 Of Edom & Aram & Moab & Midian & Amalek.

The Mundane Shell is a vast Concave Earth: an immense

Harden'd shadow of all things upon our Vegetated Earth,

Enlarg'd into dimension & deform'd into indefinite space,

In Twenty-seven Heavens and all their Hells; with Chaos

25 And Ancient Night; & Purgatory. It is a cavernous Earth

Of labyrinthine intricacy twenty-seven-folds of opakeness,

And finishes where the lark mounts; here Milton journeyed

In that Region call'd Midian, among the rocks of Horeb.

For travellers from Eternity, pass onward to Satan's seat,

30 But travellers to Eternity, pass inward to Golgonooza.

Los, the Vehicular terror, beheld him, & divine Enitharmon

Call'd all her daughters. Saying: Surely to unloose my bond

Is this Man come! Satan shall be unloos'd upon Albion!

Los heard in terror Enitharmon's words : in fibrous strength

35 His limbs shot forth like roots of trees against the forward path

Of Milton's journey. Urizen beheld the immortal Man.

p. 17 AND he also darken'd his brows: freezing dark rocks between

The footsteps, and infixing deep the feet in marble beds:

That Milton labour'd with his journey, & his feet bled sore

Upon the clay now chang'd to marble; also Urizen rose,

5 And met him on the shores of Albion, & by the streams of the brooks.

Silent they met, and silent strove among the streams of Arnon

Even to Mahanaim, when with cold hand Urizen stoop'd down

And took up water from the river Jordan: pouring on

To Milton's brain the icy fluid from his broad cold palm.

10 But Milton took of the red clay of Succoth, moulding it with care

Between his palms: and filling up the furrows of many years.

Beginning at the feet of Urizen, and on the bones

Creating new flesh on the Demon cold, and building him.

As with new clay, a Human form in the Valley of Beth Peor.

15 Four Universes round the Mundane Egg remain Chaotic.

13

One to the North, named Urthona: One to the South, named Urizen:

One to the East, named Luvah: One to the West, named Tharmas:

They are the Four Zoas that stood around the Throne Divine.

But when Luvah assum'd the World of Urizen to the South,

20 And Albion was slain upon his mountains & in his tent:

All fell towards the Center in dire ruin, sinking down.

And in the South remains a burning fire: in the East, a void:

In the West, a world of raging waters: in the North, a solid.

Unfathomable, without end. But in the midst of these

25 Is built eternally the Universe of Los and Enitharmon:

Towards which Milton went, but Urizen oppos'd his path.

The Man and Demon strove many periods. Rahab beheld.

Standing on Carmel: Rahab and Tirzah trembled to behold

The enormous strife, one giving life, the other giving death

30 To his adversary, and they sent forth all their sons & daughters

In all their beauty to entice Milton across the river.

The Twofold form Hermaphroditic, and the Double-sexed,

The Female-male & the Male-female, self-dividing stood

Before him in their beauty, & in cruelties of holiness:

35 Shining in darkness, glorious upon the deeps of Entuthon.

Saying: Come thou to Ephraim! behold the Kings of Canaan!

The Beautiful Amalekites, behold the fires of youth

Bound with the Chain of Jealousy by Los & Enitharmon!

The banks of Cam, cold learning's streams, London's dark frowning towers,

40 Lament upon the winds of Europe in Rephaim's Vale,

Because Ahania, rent apart into a desolate night,

Laments! & Enion wanders like a weeping inarticulate voice.

And Vala labours for her bread & water among the Furnaces.

Therefore bright Tirzah triumphs, putting on all beauty,

45 And all perfedlion, in her cruel sports among the Vi6lims.

Come bring with thee Jerusalem with songs on the Grecian Lyre!

In Natural Religion : in experiments on Men.

Let her be OfFer'd up to Holiness: Tirzah numbers her:

She numbers with her fingers every fibre ere it grow :

50 Where is the Lamb of God.'' where is the promise of his coming.?

Her shadowy sisters form the bones, even the bones of Horeb,

Around the marrow: and the orbed scull around the brain:

His Images are born for War, for Sacrifice to Tirzah :

To Natural Religion! to Tirzah, the Daughter of Rahab the Holy:

55 She ties the knot of nervous fibres into a white brain !

14

She ties the knot of bloody veins into a red hot heart !

Within her bosom Albion lies embalm'd, never to awake.

Hand is become a rock: Sinai & Horeb is Hyle & Coban:

Scofield is bound in iron armour before Reuben's Gate :

60 She ties the knot of milky seed into two lovely Heavens,

p. 18 TWO yet but one; each in the other sweet refleded: these

Are our Three Heavens beneath the shades of Beulah, land of rest :

Come then to Ephraim & Manasseh, O beloved-one!

Come to my ivory palaces, O beloved of thy mother !

5 And let us bind thee in the bands of War & be thou King

Of Canaan and reign in Hazor where the Twelve Tribes meet.

So spoke they as in one voice: Silent Milton stood before

The darken'd Urizen ; as the sculptor silent stands before

His forming image: he walks round it patient labouring,

lo Thus Milton stood forming bright Urizen, while his Mortal part

Sat frozen in the rock of Horeb : and his Redeemed portion,

Thus form'd the Clay of Urizen; but within that portion

His real Human walk'd above in power and majesty,

Tho' darken'd; and the Seven Angels of the Presence attended him.

15 O how can I with my gross tongue that cleaveth to the dust.

Tell of the Four-fold Man in starry numbers fitly order'd,

Or how can I with my cold hand of clay! But thou, O Lord,

Do with me as thou wilt! for I am nothing, and vanity

If thou chuse to eledl a worm, it shall remove the mountains.

20 For that portion nam'd the Eled:: the Spedlrous body of Milton:

Redounding from my left foot into Los's Mundane space.

Brooded over his Body in Horeb against the Resurrection,

Preparing it for the Great Consummation: red the Cherub on Sinai

Glow'd: but in terrors folded round his clouds of blood.

25 Now Albion's sleeping Humanity began to turn upon his Couch,

Feeling the eleftric flame of Milton's awful precipitate descent.

Seest thou the little winged fly smaller than a grain of sand.^*

It has a heart like thee: a brain open to heaven & hell,

Withinside wondrous & expansive: its gates are not clos'd:

30 I hope thine are not: hence it clothes itself in rich array:

Hence thou art cloth'd with human beauty, O thou mortal man.

Seek not thy heavenly father then beyond the skies:

There Chaos dwells & ancient Night & Og & Anak old :

For every human heart has gates of brass & bars of adamant,

^5

35 Which few dare unbar, because dread Og & Anak guard the gates

Terrific: and each mortal brain is wall'd and moated round

Within: and Og & Anak watch here: here is the Seat

Of Satan in its Webs: for in brain and heart and loins

Gates open behind Satan's Seat to the City of Golgonooza,

40 Which is the spiritual fourfold London, in the loins of Albion.

Thus Milton fell thro' Albion's heart, travelling outside of Humanity

Beyond the Stars in Chaos in Caverns of the Mundane Shell.

But many of the Eternals rose up from eternal tables,

Drunk with the Spirit, burning round the Couch of death they stood,

45 Looking down into Beulah: wrathful, fill'd with rage:

They rend the heavens round the Watchers in a fiery circle.

And round the Shadowy Eighth : the Eight close up the Couch

Into a tabernacle, and flee with cries down to the Deeps:

Where Los opens his three wide gates, surrounded by raging fires:

50 They soon find their own place & join the Watchers of the Ulro.

Los saw them and a cold pale horror cover'd o'er his limbs.

Pondering he knew that Rintrah & Palamabron might depart:

Even as Reuben & as Gad: gave up himself to tears.

He sat down on his anvil-stock: and leaned upon the trough,

55 Looking into the black water, mingling it with tears.

At last when desperation almost tore his heart in twain

He recolleded an old Prophecy in Eden recorded,

And often sung to the loud harp at the immortal feasts:

That Milton of the Land of Albion should up ascend

60 Forwards from Ulro from the Vale of Felpham, and set free

Ore from his Chain of Jealousy : he started at the thought,

p. 19 AND down descended into Udan-Adan; it was night:

And Satan sat sleeping upon his Couch in Udan-Adan:

His Spedtre slept, his Shadow woke; when one sleeps th'other wakes.

But Milton entering my Foot, I saw in the nether

5 Regions of the Imagination ; also all men on Earth

And all in Heaven, saw in the nether regions of the Imagination,

In Ulro beneath Beulah, the vast breach of Milton's descent.

But I knew not that it was Milton, for man cannot know

What passes in his members till periods of Space & Time

10 Reveal the secrets of Eternity: for more extensive

Than any other earthly things, are Man's earthly lineaments.

16

And all this Vegetable World appeared on my left Foot

As a bright sandal form'd immortal of precious stones & gold :

I stooped down & bound it on to walk forward thro' Eternity.

15 There is in Eden a sweet River of milk & liquid pearl

Nam'd Ololon: on whose mild banks dwelt those who Milton drove

Down into Ulro: and they wept in long resounding songs

For seven days of eternity, and the river's living banks,

The mountains wail'd! & every plant that grew, in solemn sighs lamented.

20 When Luvah's bulls each morning drag the sulphur Sun out of the Deep

Harness'd with starry harness, black & shining, kept by black slaves

That work all night at the starry harness: Strong and vigorous

They drag the unwilling Orb : at this time all the Family

Of Eden heard the lamentation and Providence began.

25 But when the clarions of day sounded they drown'd the lamentation,

And when night came all was silent in Ololon; & all refused to lament

In the still night fearing lest they should others molest.

Seven mornings Los heard them, as the poor bird within the shell

Hears its impatient parent bird; and Enitharmon heard them:

30 But saw them riot, for the blue Mundane Shell inclos'd them in.

And they lamented that they had in wrath & fury & fire

Driven Milton into the Ulro; for now they knew too late

That it was Milton the Awakener: they had not heard the Bard,

Whose Song call'd Milton to the attempt; and Los heard these laments.

35 He heard them call in prayer all the Divine Family;

And he beheld the Cloud of Milton stretching over Europe.

But all the Family Divine colle6led as Four Suns

In the Four Points of heaven. East, West & North & South,

Enlarging and enlarging till their Disks approach'd each other:

40 And when they touch'd closed together Southward in One Sun

Over Ololon: and as One Man, who weeps over his brother

In a dark tomb, so all the Family Divine wept over Ololon.

Saying: Milton goes to Eternal Death! so saying they groan'd in spirit

And were troubled! and again the Divine Family groan'd in spirit!

45 And Ololon said: Let us descend also, and let us give

Ourselves to death in Ulro among the Transgressors,

Is Virtue a Punisher? O no! how is this wondrous thing?

This World beneath, unseen before; this refuge from the wars

Of Great Eternity! unnatural refuge! unknown by us till now.

17 P

50 Or are these the pangs of repentance? let us enter into them.

Then the Divine Family said: Six Thousand Years are now

Accomplish'd in this World of Sorrow; Milton's Angel knew

The Universal Dictate: and you also feel this Didate.

And now you know this World of Sorrow, and feel Pity. Obey

55 The Didlate! Watch over this World, and with your brooding wings

Renew it to Eternal Life: Lo! I am with you alway:

But you cannot renew Milton: he goes to Eternal Death.

So spake the Family Divine as One Man, even Jesus,

Uniting in One with Ololon & the appearance of One Man,

60 Jesus the Saviour, appear'd coming in the Clouds of Ololon:

p. 20 THO' driven away with the Seven Starry Ones into the Ulro,

Yet the Divine Vision remains Every-where For-ever. Amen.

And Ololon lamented for Milton with a great Lamentation.

While Los heard indistindl in fear, what time I bound my sandals

5 On, to walk forward thro' Eternity, Los descended to me:

And Los behind me stood: a terrible flaming Sun: just close

Behind my back: I turned round in terror and behold,

Los stood in that fierce glowing fire; & he also stoop'd down

And bound my sandals on in Udan-Adan: trembhng 1 stood

10 Exceedingly with fear & terror, standing in the Vale

Of Lambeth : but he kissed me and wish'd me health.

And I became One Man with him arising in my strength:

'Twas too late now to recede. Los had enter 'd into my soul:

His terrors now posses'd me whole! I arose in fury & strength.

15 I am that Shadowy Prophet who Six Thousand Years ago

Fell from my station in the Eternal bosom. Six Thousand Years

Are finish'd. I return! both Time & Space obey my will.

I in Six Thousand Years walk up and down: for not one Moment

Of Time is lost, nor one Event of Space unpermanent,

20 But all remain: every fabric of Six Thousand Years

Remains permanent: tho' on the Earth where Satan

Fell, and was cut off, all things vanish & are seen no more.

They vanish not from me & mine, we guard them first & last.

The generations of men run on in the tide of Time,

25 But leave their destin'd lineaments permanent for ever & ever.

So spake Los as we went along to his supreme abode.

Rintrah and Palamabron met us at the Gate of Golgonooza,

18

Clouded with discontent & brooding in their minds terrible things.

They said: O Father most beloved! O merciful Parent!

30 Pitying and permitting evil, tho' strong & mighty to destroy.

Whence is this Shadow terrible? wherefore dost thou refuse

To throw him into the Furnaces? knowest thou not that he

Will unchain Ore? & let loose Satan, Og, Sihon & Anak,

Upon the Body of Albion? for this he is come! behold it written

35 Upon his fibrous left Foot black: most dismal to our eyes.

The Shadowy Female shudders thro' heaven in torment inexpressible:

And all the Daughters of Los prophetic wail: yet in deceit

They weave a new Religion from new Jealousy of Theotormon.

Milton's Religion is the cause: there is no end to destrudion.

40 Seeing the Churches at their Period in terror & despair,

Rahab created Voltaire; Tirzah created Rousseau:

Asserting the Self-righteousness against the Universal Saviour,

Mocking the Confessors & Martyrs, claiming Self-righteousness,

With cruel Virtue: making War upon the Lamb's Redeemed:

45 To perpetuate War & Glory, to perpetuate the Laws of Sin.

They perverted Swedenborg's Visions in Beulah & in Ulro,

To destroy Jerusalem as a Harlot & her Sons as Reprobates,

To raise up Mystery the Virgin Harlot, Mother of War,

Babylon the Great, the Abomination of Desolation.

50 O Swedenborg! strongest of men, the Samson shorn by the Churches:

Shewing the Transgressors in Hell, the proud Warriors in Heaven,

Heaven as a Punisher, & Hell as One under Punishment:

With Laws from Plato & his Greeks to renew the Trojan Gods

In Albion: & to deny the value of the Saviour's blood.

55 But then I rais'd up Whitefield, Palamabron rais'd up Westley,

And these are the cries of the Churches before the two Witnesses.

Faith in God the dear Saviour who took on the likeness of men:

Becoming obedient to death, even the death of the Cross.

The Witnesses lie dead in the Street of the Great City:

60 No Faith is in all the Earth: the Book of God is trodden under Foot!

He sent his two Servants Whitefield & Westley: were they Prophets,

Or were they Idiots or Madmen? shew us Miracles!

p. 22 CAN you have greater Miracles than these? Men who devote

Their life's whole comfort to intire scorn & injury & death.

Awake, thou sleeper on the Rock of Eternity, Albion awake!

The trumpet of Judgment hath twice sounded: all Nations are awake,

5 But thou art still heavy and dull: Awake, Albion awake!

19

Lo, Ore arises on the Atlantic. Lo, his blood and fire

. Glow on America's shore: Albion turns upon his Couch:

He listens to the sounds of War, astonished and confounded:

He weeps into the Atlantic deep, yet still in dismal dreams

lo Unwaken'd: and the Covering Cherub advances from the East.

How long shall we lay dead in the Street of the great City:

How long beneath the Covering Cherub give our Emanations?

Milton will utterly consume us & thee our beloved Father:

He hath enter'd into the Covering Cherub, becoming one with

15 Albion's dread Sons, Hand, Hyle & Coban surround him as

A girdle; Gwendolen & Conwenna as a garment woven

Of War & Religion; let us descend & bring him chained

To Bowlahoola, O father most beloved! O mild Parent!

Cruel in thy mildness, pitying and permitting evil,

20 Tho' strong and mighty to destroy, O Los our beloved Father.

Like the black storm, coming out of Chaos, beyond the stars:

It issues thro' the dark & intricate caves of the Mundane Shell,

Passing the planetary visions, & the well adorned Firmament.

The Sun rolls into Chaos & the stars into the Desarts:

25 And then the storms become visible, audible & terrible.

Covering the light of day & rolling down upon the mountains

Deluge all the country round. Such is a vision of Los,

When Rintrah & Palamabron spake : and such his stormy face

Appear'd as does the face of heaven, when cover *d with thick storms

30 Pitying and loving tho' in frowns of terrible perturbation.

But Los dispers'd the clouds even as the strong winds of Jehovah.

And Los thus spoke: O noble Sons, be patient yet a little:

I have embrac'd the falling Death, he is become one with me:

O Sons, we live not by wrath, by mercy alone we live!

35 I recoiled an old Prophecy in Eden recorded in gold; and oft

Sung to the harp: That Milton of the land of Albion

Should up ascend forward from Felpham's Vale & break the Chain

Of Jealousy from all its roots; be patient therefore, O my Sons.

These lovely Females form sweet night and silence and secret

40 Obscurities to hide from Satan's Watch-Fiends Human loves

And graces, lest they write them in their Books & in the Scroll

Of mortal life, to condemn the accused: who at Satan's Bar

Tremble in Spedtrous Bodies continually day and night.

While on the Earth they live in sorrowful Vegetation.

45 O when shall we tread our Wine-presses in heaven, and Reap

Our wheat with shoutings of joy, and leave the Earth in peace.''

20

Remember how Calvin and Luther m fury premature

Sow'd War and stern division between Papists & Protestants.

Let it not be so now: O go not forth in Martyrdoms & Wars!

50 We were plac'd here by the Universal Brotherhood & Mercy,

With powers fitted to circumscribe this dark Satanic death,

And that the Seven Eyes of God may have space for Redemption.

But how this is as yet we know not, and we cannot know,

Till Albion is arisen: then patient wait a little while,

55 Six Thousand years are pass'd away, the end approaches fast:

This mighty one is come from Eden, he is of the Eled:,

Who died from Earth & he is return'd before the Judgment. This thing

Was never known that one of the holy dead should willing return.

Then patient wait a little while till the Last Vintage is over:

60 Till we have quench'd the Sun of Salah in the lake of Udan-Adan.

O my dear Sons: leave not your Father, as your brethren left me:

Twelve Sons successive fled away in that thousand years of sorrow,

p. 23 OF Palamabron's Harrow, & of Rintrah's wrath &fury:

Reuben & Manazzoth & Gad & Simeon & Levi,

And Ephraim & Judah were Generated, because

They left me wandering with Tirzah: Enitharmon wept

5 One thousand years, and all the Earth was in a wat'ry deluge.

We call'd him Menassheh because of the Generations of Tirzah,

Because of Satan : & the Seven Eyes of God continually

Guard round them, but I the Fourth Zoa am also set

The Watchman of Eternity: the Three are not: & I am preserved.

10 Still my four mighty ones are left to me in Golgonooza,

Still Rintrah fierce, and Palamabron mild & piteous,

Theotormon fill'd with care, Bromion loving Science:

You O my Sons still guard round Los: O wander not & leave me!

Rintrah, thou well rememberest when Amalek & Canaan

15 Fled with their Sister Moab into that abhorred Void,

They became Nations in our sight beneath the hands of Tirzah.

And Palamabron thou rememberest when Joseph an infant.

Stolen from his nurses cradle wrap'd in needle-work

Of emblematic texture, was sold to the Amalekite,

20 Who carried him down into Egypt where Ephraim & Menassheh

Gather'd my Sons together in the Sands of Midian.

And if you also flee away and leave your Father's side

Following Milton into Ulro, altho' your power is great

Surely you also shall become poor mortal vegetations

25 Beneath the Moon of Ulro: pity then your Father's tears.

21

When Jesus rais'd Lazarus from the Grave I stood & saw

Lazarus, who is the Vehicular Body of Albion the Redeem'd,

Arise into the Covering Cherub, who is the Spedre of Albion,

By martyrdoms to suffer: to watch over the Sleeping Body,

30 Upon his Rock beneath his Tomb. I saw the Covering Cherub

Divide Four-fold into Four Churches when Lazarus arose,

Paul, Constantine, Charlemaine, Luther: behold they stand before us

Stretch'd over Europe & Asia: come O Sons, come, come away.

Arise O Sons give all your strength against Eternal Death,

35 Lest we are vegetated, for Cathedron's Looms weave only Death,

A Web of Death: & were it not for Bowlahoola & AUamanda

No Human Form but only a Fibrous Vegetation,

A Polypus of soft affedions without Thought or Vision,

Must tremble in the Heavens & Earths thro' all the Ulro space.

40 Throw all the Vegetated Mortals into Bowlahoola:

But as to this Eleded Form who is return'd again.

He is the Signal that the Last Vintage now approaches,

Nor Vegetation may go on till all the Earth is reap'd.

So Los spoke. Furious they descended to Bowlahoola & AUamanda:

45 Indignant, unconvinced by Los's arguments & thun[d]ers rolling:

They saw that wrath now sway'd and now pity absorb'd him.

As it was so it remain'd & no hope of an end.

Bowlahoola is nam'd Law by mortals, Tharmas founded it:

Because of Satan before Luban in the City of Golgonooza.

50 But Golgonooza is nam'd Art & Manufadlure by mortal men.

In Bowlahoola Los's Anvils stand & his Furnaces rage:

Thundering the Hammers beat & the Bellows blow loud.

Living, self moving, mourning, lamenting & howling incessantly.

Bowlahoola thro' all its porches feels, tho' too fast founded

55 Its pillars & porticoes to tremble at the force

Of mortal or immortal arm : and softly lilling flutes

Accordant with the horrid labours make sweet melody.

The Bellows are the Animal Lungs: the Hammers the Animal Heart:

The Furnaces the Stomach for digestion: terrible their fury.

60 Thousands & thousands labour, thousands play on instruments

Stringed or fluted to ameliorate the sorrows of slavery.

Loud sport the dancers in the dance of death rejoicing in carnage:

The hard dentant Hammers are luU'd by the flutes lula lula.

The bellowing Furnaces blare by the long sounding clarion,

65 The double drum drowns howls & groans, the shrill fife shrieks & cries:

22

The crooked horn mellows the hoarse raving serpent, terrible, but harmonious.

Bowlahoola is the Stomach in every individual man.

Los is by mortals nam'd Time, Enitharmon is nam'd Space:

But they depidl him bald & aged who is in eternal youth

70 All powerful and his looks flourish like the brows of morning:

He is the Spirit of Prophecy, the ever apparent Elias.

Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Time's swiftness.

Which is the swiftest of all things, all were eternal torment.

All the Gods of the Kingdoms of Earth labour in Los's Halls:

75 Every one is a fallen Son of the Spirit of Prophecy:

He is the Fourth Zoa that stood around the Throne Divine.

p. 24 BUT the Wine-press of Los is eastward of Golgonooza before the Seat

Of Satan: Luvah laid the foundation & Urizen finish'd it in howling woe.

How red the sons & daughters of Luvah! here they tread the grapes:

Laughing & shouting, drunk with odours, many fall o'erwearied,

5 Drown'd in the wine is many a youth & maiden: those around

Lay them on skins of Tygers & of the spotted Leopard & the Wild Ass,

Till they revive, or bury them in cool grots, making lamentation.

This Wine-press is call'd War on Earth: it is the Printing- Press

Of Los: and here he lays his words in order above the mortal brain,

10 As cogs are form'd in a wheel to turn the cogs of the adverse wheel.

Timbrels & violins sport round the Wine-presses; the little Seed,

The sportive Root, the Earth-worm, the gold Beetle, the wise Emmet

Dance round the Wine-presses of Luvah: the Centipede is there:

The ground Spider with many eyes: the Mole clothed in velvet:

15 The ambitious Spider in his sullen web: the lucky golden Spinner:

The Earwig arm'd : the tender Maggot emblem of immortality:

The Flea: Louse: Bug: the Tape-worm: all the Armies of Disease:

Visible or invisible to the slothful vegetating Man.

The Slow Slug: the Grasshopper that sings & laughs & drinks:

20 Winter comes, he folds his slender bones without a murmur.

The cruel Scorpion is there: the Gnat: Wasp: Hornet & the Honey Bee:

The Toad & venomous Newt; the Serpent cloth'd in gems & gold.

They throw off their gorgeous raiment: they rejoice with loud jubilee

Around the Wine-presses of Luvah, naked & drunk with wine.

25 There is the Nettle that stings with soft down, and there

The indignant Thistle, whose bitterness is bred in his milk.

Who feeds on contempt of his neighbour: there all the idle weeds

That creep around the obscure places shew their various limbs

23

Naked in all their beauty dancing round the Wine-presses.

30 But in the Wine-presses the Human grapes sing not nor dance.

They howl & writhe in shoals of torment: in fierce flames consuming,

In chains of iron & in dungeons circled with ceaseless fires:

In pits & dens & shades of death: in shapes of torment & woe.

The plates & screws & wracks & saws & cords & fires & cisterns,

35 The cruel joys of Luvah's daughters lacerating with knives

And whips their Vidims, & the deadly sport of Luvah's Sons.

They dance around the dying, & they drink the howl & groan.

They catch the shrieks in cups of gold, they hand them to one another :

These are the sports of love, & these the sweet delights of amorous play,

40 Tears of the grape, the death sweat of the cluster, the last sigh

Of the mild youth who listens to the lureing songs of Luvah.

But Allamanda, call'd on Earth Commerce, is the Cultivated land

Around the City of Golgonooza in the Forests of Entuthon:

Here tne Sons of Los labour against Death Eternal; through all

45 The Twenty-seven Heavens of Beulah in Ulro, Seat of Satan,

Which is the False Tongue beneath Beulah : It is the Sense of Touch.

The Plow goes forth in tempests & lightnings & the Harrow cruel

In blights of the east, the heavy Roller follows in bowlings of woe.

Urizen's sons here labour also; & here are seen the Mills

50 Of Theotormon on the verge of the Lake of Udan-Adan.

These are the starry voids of night & the depths & caverns of earth.

These Mills are oceans, clouds & waters ungovernable in their fury:

Here are the stars created & the seeds of all things planted.

And here the Sun & Moon received their fixed destinations.

55 But in Eternity the Four Arts: Poetry, Painting, Music,

And Architecture which is Science: are the Four Faces of Man.

Not so in Time & Space: there Three are shut out, and only

Science remains thro' Mercy: & by means of Science the Three

Become apparent in Time & Space in the Three Professions,

60 Poetry in Religion: Music, Law: Painting, in Physic & Surgery:

That Man may live upon Earth all the time of his awaking.

And from these Three Science derives every Occupation of Men:

And Science is divided into Bowlahoola & Allamanda.

p. 25 LOUD shout the Sons of Luvah at the Wine-presses, as Los descended

With Rintrah & Palamabron in his fires of resistless fury.

The Wine-press on the Rhine groans loud, but all its central beams

24

Ad more terrific in the central Cities of the Nations,

5 Where Human Thought is crush'd beneath the iron hand of Power:

There Los puts all into the Press, the Opressor & the Opressed

Together, ripe for the Harvest & Vintage & ready for the Loom.

They sang at the Vintage. This is the Last Vintage: & Seed

Shall no more be sown upon Earth till all the Vintage is over,

lo And all gather'd in, till the Plow has pass'd over the Nations,

And the Harrow & heavy thundering Roller upon the mountains.

And loud the Souls howl round the Porches of Golgonooza,

Crying: O God deliver us to the Heavens or to the Earths

That we may preach righteousness & punish the sinner with death.

15 But Los refused, till all the Vintage of Earth was gathered in.

And Los stood & cried to the Labourers of the Vintage in voice of awe :

Fellow Labourers! The Great Vintage & Harvest is now upon Earth.

The whole extent of the Globe is explored. Every scatter'd Atom

Of Human Intelled: now is flocking to the sound of the Trumpet.

20 All the Wisdom which was hidden in caves & dens from ancient

Time, is now sought out from Animal & Vegetable & Mineral.

The Awakener is come outstretch'd over Europe : the Vision of God is fulfilled :

The Ancient Man upon the Rock of Albion Awakes:

He listens to the sounds of War astonish'd & ashamed,

25 He sees his Children mock at Faith and deny Providence.

Therefore you must bind the Sheaves not by Nations or Families: <

You shall bind them in Three Classes, according to their Classes

So shall you bind them: Separating What has been Mixed

Since Men began to be Wove into Nations by Rahab & Tirzah,

30 Since Albion's Death & Satan's Cutting off from our awful Fields:

When under pretence to benevolence the Eledl Subdu'd All

From the Foundation of the World. The Eled is one Class: You

Shall bind them separate: they cannot Believe in Eternal Life

Except by Miracle & a New Birth. The other two Classes:

35 The Reprobate who never cease to Believe, and the Redeem'd

Who live in doubts & fears perpetually tormented by the Eled,

These you shall bind in a twin-bundle for the Consummation:

But the Eledt must be saved [from] fires of Eternal Death,

To be formed into the Churches of Beulah that they destroy not the Earth.

40 For in every Nation & every Family the Three Classes are born,

And in every Species of Earth, Metal, Tree, Fish, Bird & Beast

We form the Mundane Egg, that Spedres coming by fury or amity.

All is the same, & every one remains in his own energy.

25 E

Go forth Reapers with rejoicing, you sowed in tears,

45 But the time of your refreshing cometh: only a little moment

Still abstain from pleasure & rest, in the labours of eternity.

And you shall Reap the whole Earth from Pole to Pole: from Sea to Sea:

Beglning at Jerusalem's Inner Court, Lambeth ruin'd and given

To the detestable Gods of Priam, to Apollo: and at the Asylum

50 Given to Hercules who labour in Tirzah's Looms for bread.

Who set Pleasure against Duty: who Create Olympic crowns

To make Learning a burden, & the Work of the Holy Spirit, Strife:

The Thor & cruel Odin who first rear'd the Polar Caves.

Lambeth mourns, calling Jerusalem: she weeps & looks abroad

55 For the Lord's coming, that Jerusalem may overspread all Nations.

Crave not for the mortal & perishing delights, but leave them

To the weak, and pity the weak as your infant care; Break not

Forth in your wrath lest you also are vegetated by Tirzah.

Wait till the judgement is past, till the Creation is consumed,

60 And then rush forward with me into the glorious spiritual

Vegetation: the Supper of the Lamb & his Bride: and the

Awaking of Albion our friend and ancient companion.

So Los spoke. But lightnings of discontent broke on all sides round

And murmurs of thunder rolling heavy long & loud over the mountains,

65 While Los call'd his Sons around him to the Harvest & the Vintage.

Thou seest the Constellations in the deep & wondrous Night:

They rise in order and continue their immortal courses

Upon the mountains & in vales with harp & heavenly song,

With flute & clarion: with cups & measures fill'd with foaming wine.

70 Glitt'ring the streams refledl the Vision of beatitude,

And the calm Ocean joys beneath & smooths his awful waves:

p. 26 THESE are the Sons of Los, & these the Labourers of the Vintage.

Thou see'st the gorgeous clothed Flies that dance & sport in summer

Upon the sunny brooks & meadows: every one the dance

Knows in its intricate mazes of delight artful to weave:

5 Each one to sound his instruments of music in the dance.

To touch each other & recede: to cross & change & return.

These are the Children of Los. Thou seest the Trees on mountains:

The wind blows heavy, loud they thunder thro' the darksom sky.

Uttering prophecies & speaking instruftive words to the sons

10 Of men: These are the Sons of Los: These the Visions of Eternity.

But we see only as it were the hem of their garments

When with our vegetable eyes we view these wondrous Visions.

26

There are two Gates thro' which all Souls descend, One Southward

From Dover Cliff to Lizard Point, the other toward the North,

15 Caithness & rocky Durness, Pentland & John Groat's House.

The Souls descending to the Body, wail on the right hand

Of Los: & those deliver'd from the Body on the left hand.

For Los against the east his force continually bends,

Along the Valleys of Middlesex from Hounslow to Blackheath,

20 Lest those Three Heavens of Beulah should the Creation destroy,

And lest they should descend before the north & south Gates:

Groaning with pity, he among the wailing Souls laments.

And these the Labours of the Sons of Los in Allamanda

And in the City of Golgonooza: & in Luban: & around

25 The Lake of Udan-Adan, in the Forests of Entuthon Benython:

Where Souls incessant wail, being piteous Passions & Desires,

With neither lineament nor form: but like to wat'ry clouds

The Passions & Desires descend upon the hungry winds:

For such alone Sleepers remain meer passion & appetite:

30 The Sons of Los clothe them & feed & provide houses & fields.

And every Generated Body in its inward form

Is a garden of delight & a building of magnificence,

Built by the Sons of Los in Bowlahoola & Allamanda:

And the herbs & flowers & furniture & beds & chambers

35 Continually woven in the Looms of Enitharmon's Daughters,

In bright Cathedron's golden Dome with care & love & tears.

For the various Classes of Men are all mark'd out determinate

In Bowlahoola: & as the Spedres choose their affinities.

So they are born on Earth, & every Class is determinate:

40 But not by Natural, but by Spiritual power alone. Because

The Natural power continually seeks & tends to Destrudtion,

Ending in death : which would of itself be Eternal Death.

And all are Class'd by Spiritual & not by Natural power.

And every Natural Effedl has a Spiritual Cause, and Not

45 A Natural: for a Natural Cause only seems: it is a Delusion

Of Ulro & a ratio of the perishing Vegetable Memory.

p. 27 SOME Sons of Los surround the Passions with porches of iron & silver,

Creating form & beauty around the dark regions of sorrow,

Giving to airy nothing a name and a habitation

Delightful: with bounds to the Infinite putting off the Indefinite

5 Into most holy forms of Thought: (such is the power of inspiration).

27

They labour incessant, with many tears & afflidions,

Creating the beautiful House for the piteous sufferer.

Others, Cabinets richly fabricate of gold & ivory.

For Doubts & fears unform'd & wretched & melancholy,

lo The little weeping Spedre stands on the threshold of Death

Eternal: and sometimes two Spedtres like lamps quivering

And often malignant they combat (heart-breaking sorrowful & piteous).

Antamon takes them into his beautiful flexible hands.

As the Sower takes the seed or as the Artist his clay

15 Or fine wax, to mould artful a model for golden ornaments,

The soft hands of Antamon draw the indelible Line:

Form immortal with golden pen; such as the Spedre admiring

Puts on the sweet form; then smiles Antamon bright thro' his windows.

The Daughters of beauty look up from their Loom & prepare

20 The integument soft for its clothing with joy & delight.

But Theotormon & Sotha stand in the Gate of Luban anxious:

Their numbers are seven million & seven thousand & seven hundred:

They contend with the weak Spedres, they fabricate soothing forms.

The Spedre refuses, he seeks cruelty: they create the crested Cock:

25 Terrified the Spedre screams & rushes in fear into their Net

Of kindness & compassion & is born a weeping terror.

Or they create the Lion & Tyger in compassionate thunderings:

Howling the Spedres flee: they take refuge in Human lineaments.

The Sons of Ozoth within the Optic Nerve stand fiery glowing :

30 And the number of his Sons is eight millions & eight.

They give delights to the man unknown; artificial riches

They give to scorn, & their possessors to trouble & sorrow & care,

Shutting the sun & moon & stars, & trees, & clouds, & waters.

And hills out from the Optic Nerve & hardening it into a bone

35 Opake, and like the black pebble on the enraged beach.

While the poor indigent is like the diamond which tho' cloth'd

In ragged covering in the mine, is open all within

And in his hallow'd center holds the heavens of bright eternity.

Ozoth here builds walls of rocks against the surging sea,

40 And timbers crampt with iron cramps bar in the joys of life

From fell destrudion in the Spedrous cunning or rage. He Creates

The speckled Newt, the Spider & Beetle, the Rat & Mouse,

The Badger & Fox: they worship before his feet in trembling fear.

But others of the Sons of Los build Moments & Minutes & Hours

45 And Days & Months & Years & Ages & Periods: wondrous buildings

28

And every Moment has a Couch of Gold for soft repose,

(A Moment equals a pulsation of the artery),

And between every two Moments stands a Daughter of Beulah

To feed the Sleepers on their Couches with maternal care.

50 And every Minute has an azure Tent with silken Veils:

And every Hour has a bright golden Gate carved with skill:

And every Day & Night has Walls of brass & Gates of adamant,

Shining like precious Stones & ornamented with appropriate signs:

And every Month a silver paved Terrace builded high:

55 And every Year invulnerable Barriers with high Towers:

And every Age is Moated deep with Bridges of silver & gold:

And every Seven Ages is Incircled with a Flaming Fire.

Now Seven Ages is amounting to Two Hundred Years.

Each has its Guard, each Moment, Minute, Hour, Day, Month & Year.

60 All are the work of Fairy hands of the Four Elements:

The Guard are Angels of Providence on duty evermore.

Every Time less than a pulsation of the artery

Is equal in its period & value to Six Thousand Years.

p. 28 FOR in this Period the Poet's Work is Done; and all the Great

Events of Time start forth & are conceiv'd in such a Period,

Within a Moment, a Pulsation of the Artery.

The Sky is an immortal Tent built by the Sons of Los:

5 And every Space that a Man views around his dwelling-place,

Standing on his own roof, or in his garden on a mount

Of twenty-five cubits in height, such space is his Universe:

And on its verge the Sun rises & sets, the Clouds bow

To meet the flat Earth & the Sea in such an order'd space:

10 The Starry heavens reach no further, but here bend and set

On all sides, & the two Poles turn on their valves of gold :

And if he move his dwelling-place, his heavens also move

Wher'eer he goes & all his neighbourhood bewail his loss :

Such are the Spaces called Earth & such its dimension.

15 As to that false appearance which appears to the reasoner

As of a Globe rolling thro' Voidness, it is a delusion of Ulro.

The Microscope knows not of this nor the Telescope: they alter

The ratio of the Spectator's Organs but leave Obje6ts untouch'd.

For every Space larger than a red Globule of Man's blood,

20 Is visionary, and is created by the Hammer of Los:

And every Space smaller than a Globule of Man's blood opens

Into Eternity of which this vegetable Earth is but a shadow:

29

The red Globule is the unwearied Sun by Los created

To measure Time and Space to mortal Men every morning.

25 Bowlahoola & Allamanda are placed on each side

Of that Pulsation & that Globule, terrible their power.

But Rintrah & Palamabron govern over Day & Night

In Allamanda & Entuthon Benython where Souls wail:

Where Ore incessant howls burning in fires of Eternal Youth,

30 Within the vegetated mortal Nerves; for every Man born is joined

Within into One mighty Polypus, and this Polypus is Ore.

But in the Optic vegetative Nerves Sleep was transformed

To Death in old time by Satan the father of Sin & Death:

And Satan is the Speftre of Ore, & Ore is the generate Luvah.

35 But in the Nerves of the Nostrils, Accident being Formed

Into Substance & Principle, by the cruelties of Demonstration

It became Opake & Indefinite : but the Divine Saviour

Formed it into a Solid by Los's Mathematic power.

He named the Opake, Satan: he named the Solid, Adam.

40 And in the Nerves of the Ear (for the Nerves of the Tongue are closed)

On Albion's Rock Los stands creating the glorious Sun each morning,

And when unwearied in the evening he creates the Moon,

Death to delude, who all in terror at their splendor leaves

His prey while Los appoints, & Rintrah & Palamabron guide,

45 The Souls clear from the Rock of Death, that Death himself may wake

In his appointed season when the ends of heaven meet.

Then Los conduds the Spirits to be Vegetated into

Great Golgonooza, free from the four iron pillars of Satan's Throne,

Temperance, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, the four pillars of tyranny,

50 That Satan's Watch-Fiends touch them not before they Vegetate.

But Enitharmon and her Daughters take the pleasant charge

To give them to their lovely heavens till the Great Judgment Day:

Such is their lovely charge. But Rahab & Tirzah pervert

Their mild influences, therefore the Seven Eyes of God walk round

55 The Three Heavens of Ulro where Tirzah & her Sisters

Weave the black Woof of Death upon Entuthon Benython,

In the Vale of Surrey where Horeb terminates in Rephaim.

The stamping feet of Zelophehad's Daughters are cover'd with Human gore

Upon the treddles of the Loom: they sing to the winged shuttle

60 The River rises above his banks to wash the Woof:

30

He takes it in his arms; he passes it in strength thro* his current.

The veil of human miseries is woven over the Ocean,

From the Atlantic to the Great South Sea, the Erythrean.

Such is the World of Los, the labour of six thousand years:

65 Thus Nature is a Vision of the Science of the Elohim.

END OF THE FIRST BOOK

31

p. 30 How wide the Gulf & Unpassable! between Simplicity ^ Insipidity.

MILTON

Contraries are Positives:

A Negation is not a Contrary,

BOOK THE SECOND

THERE is a place where Contraries are equally True:

This place is called Beulah. It is a pleasure lovely Shadow-

Where no dispute can come, Because of those who Sleep.

Into this place the Sons & Daughters of Ololon descended

5 With solemn mourning, into Beulah's moony shades & hills

Weeping for Milton : mute wonder held the Daughters of Beulah,

Enraptur'd with afFedion sweet and mild benevolence.

Beulah is evermore created around Eternity ; appearing

To the Inhabitants of Eden around them on all sides,

10 But Beulah to its Inhabitants appears within each district,

As the beloved infant in his mother's bosom round incircled

With arms of love & pity & sweet compassion. But to

The Sons of Eden the moony habitations of Beulah

Are from Great Eternity a mild & pleasant Rest.

15 And it is thus Created. Lo, the Eternal Great Humanity

To whom be Glory & Dominion Evermore, Amen,

Walks among all his awful Family seen in every face:

As the breath of the Almighty such are the words of man to man

In the great Wars of Eternity, in fury of Poetic Inspiration,

20 To build the Universe stupendous : Mental forms Creating.

But the Emanations trembled exceedingly, nor could they

Live, because the Life of Man was too exceeding unbounded.

His joy became terrible to them, they trembled & wept,

Crying with one voice: Give us a habitation & a place

25 In which we may be hidden under the shadow of wings:

For if we, who are but for a time & who pass away in winter.

Behold these wonders of Eternity we shall consume:

But you, O our Fathers & Brothers, remain in Eternity

But grant us a Temporal Habitation, do you speak

30 To us; we will obey your words as you obey Jesus

The Eternal who is blessed for ever & ever. Amen.

32

So spake the lovely Emanations: & there appeared a pleasant

Mild Shadow above, beneath, & on all sides round.

p. 31 INTO this pleasant Shadow all the weak & weary

Like Women & Children were taken away as on wings

Of dovelike softness, & shadowy habitations prepared for them.

But every man return'd & went still going forward thro'

5 The Bosom of the Father in Eternity on Eternity,

Neither did any lack or fall into Error without

A Shadow to repose in all the Days of happy Eternity.

Into this pleasant Shadow Beulah all Ololon descended,

And when the Daughters of Beulah heard the lamentation

10 All Beulah wept, for they saw the Lord coming in the Clouds,

And the Shadows of Beulah terminate in rocky Albion.

And all Nations wept in affliction. Family by Family:

Germany wept towards France &: Italy : England wept & trembled

Towards America: India rose up from his golden bed,

15 As one awaken'd in the night: they saw the Lord coming

In the Clouds of Ololon with Power & Great Glory.

And all the Living Creatures of the Four Elements wail'd

With bitter wailing: these in the aggregate are named Satan

And Rahab: they know not of Regeneration, but only of Generation,

20 The Fairies, Nymphs, Gnomes & Genii of the Four Elements,

Unforgiving & unalterable, these cannot be Regenerated

But must be Created, for they know only of Generation.

These are the Gods of the Kingdoms of the Earth : in contrarious

And cruel opposition: Element against Element, opposed in War,

25 Not Mental, as the Wars of Eternity, but a Corporeal Strife :

In Los's Halls continual labouring in the Furnaces of Golgonooza.

Ore howls on the Atlantic: Enitharmon trembles: All Beulah weeps

Thou hearest the Nightingale begin the Song of Spring:

The Lark sitting upon his earthly bed, just as the morn

30 Appears, listens silent, then springing from the waving Cornfield! loud

He leads the Choir of Day: trill, trill, trill, trill,

Mounting upon the wings of light into the Great Expanse,

Reechoing against the lovely blue & shining heavenly Shell.

His little throat labours with inspiration; every feather

35 On throat & breast & wings vibrates with the effluence Divine :

All Nature listens silent to him, & the awful Sun

Stands still upon the Mountain looking on this little Bird

33 F

With eyes of soft humility & wonder, love & awe.

Then Loud from their green covert all the Birds begin their Song:

40 The Thrush, the Linnet & the Goldfinch, Robin & the Wren

Awake the Sun from his sweet reverie upon the Mountain:

The Nightingale again assays his song & thro' the day

And thro' the night warbles luxuriant: every Bird of Song

Attending his loud harmony with admiration & love.

45 This is a Vision of the Lamentation of Beulah over Ololon.

Thou perceivest the Flowers put forth their precious Odours,

And none can tell how from so small a center comes such sweet,

Forgetting that within that Center Eternity expands

Its ever during doors, that Og & Anak fiercely guard.

50 First e'er the morning breaks joy opens in the flowery bosoms,

Joy even to tears, which the Sun rising dries : first the Wild Thyme

And Meadow-sweet downy and soft, waving among the reeds.

Light springing on the air lead the sweet Dance, they wake

The Honeysuckle sleeping on the Oak: the flaunting beauty

55 Revels along upon the wind : the White-thorn, lovely May,

Opens her many lovely eyes: listening the Rose still sleeps:

None dare to wake her, soon she bursts her crimson curtained bed

And comes forth in the majesty of beauty : every Flower,

The Pink, the Jessamine, the Wall-flower, the Carnation

60 The Jonquil, the mild Lilly opes her heavens; every Tree

And Flower & Herb soon fill the air with an innumerable Dance,

Yet all in order sweet & lovely. Men are sick with Love :

Such is a Vision of the Lamentation of Beulah over Ololon.

p. 32 AND the Divine Voice was heard in the Songs of Beulah, Saying

When I first Married you, I gave you all my whole Soul:

I thought that you would love my loves & joy in my delights,

Seeking for pleasures in my pleasures, O Daughter of Babylon.

5 Then thou wast lovely, mild & gentle, now thou art terrible

In jealousy & unlovely in my sight, because thou hast cruelly

Cut off my loves in fury till I have no love left for thee.

Thy love depends on him thou lovest & on his dear loves

Depend thy pleasures, which thou hast cut off by jealousy:

10 Therefore I shew my Jealousy & set before you Death.

Behold Milton descended to Redeem the Female Shade

From Death Eternal; such your lot, to be continually Redeem'd

By Death & misery of those you love & by Annihilation.

When the Sixfold Female perceives that Milton annihilates

34

15 Himself: that seeing all his loves by her cut off, heHeaves

Her also, intirely abstradling himself from Female loves:

She shall relent in fear of death; She shall begin to give

Her maidens to her husband, delighting in his delight.

And then & then alone begins the happy Female joy

20 As it is done in Beulah, & thou, O Virgin Babylon Mother of Whoredoms,

Shalt bring Jerusalem in thine arms in the night watches: and

No longer turning her a wandering Harlot in the streets,

Shalt give her into the arms of God your Lord & Husband,

Such are the Songs of Beulah, in the Lamentations of Ololon.

p. 34 AND all the Songs of Beulah sounded comfortable notes

To comfort Ololon's lamentation, for they said:

Are you the Fiery Circle that late drove in fury & fire

The Eight Immortal Starry-Ones down into Ulro dark,

5 Rending the Heavens of Beulah with your thunders & lightnings?

And can you thus lament & can you pity & forgive?

Is terror chang'd to pity, O wonder of Eternity ?

And the Four States of Humanity in its Repose,

Were shewed them. First of Beulah, a most pleasant Sleep

10 On Couches soft, with mild music, tended by Flowers of Beulah,

Sweet Female forms, winged or floating in the air spontaneous:

The Second State is Alia, & the third State Al-Ulro :

But the Fourth State is dreadful, it is named Or-Ulro.

The First State is in the Head, the Second is in the Heart,

15 The Third in the Loins & Seminal Vessels, & the Fourth

In the Stomach & Intestines terrible, deadly, unutterable.

And he whose Gates are open'd in those Regions of his Body

Can from those Gates view all these wondrous Imaginations.

But Ololon sought the Or-Ulro & its fiery Gates,

2c And the Couches of the Martyrs: & many Daughters of Beulah

Accompany them down to the Ulro with soft melodious tears,

A long journey & dark thro' Chaos in the track of Milton's course,

To where the Contraries of Beulah War beneath Negations Banner.

Then View'd from Milton's Track they see the Ulro, a vast Polypus

25 Of living fibres down into the Sea of Time & Space growing,

A self-devouring monstrous Human Death Twenty seven fold:

Within it sit Five Females & the nameless Shadowy Mother,

Spinning it from their bowels with songs of amorous delight

And melting cadences that lure the Sleepers of Beulah down

35

30 The River Storge (which is Arnon) into the Dead Sea :

Around this Polypus Los continual builds the Mundane Shell.

Four Universes round the Universe of Los remain Chaotic,

Four intersecting Globes, & the Egg form'd World of Los

In midst: stretching from Zenith to Nadir, in midst of Chaos.

35 One of these Ruin'd Universes is to the North, named Urthona:

One in the South, this was the glorious World of Urizen:

One to the East, of Luvah: One to the West, of Tharmas.

But when Luvah assumed the World of Urizen in the South

All fell towards the Center sinking-downward in dire Ruin.

40 Here in these Chaoses the Sons of Ololon took their abode.

In chasms of the Mundane Shell which open on all sides round,

Southward & by the East within the Breach of Milton's descent.

To watch the time, pitying & gentle to awaken Urizen.

They stood in a dark land of death, of fiery corroding waters,

45 Where lie in evil death the Four Immortals pale and cold.

And the Eternal Man, even Albion, upon the Rock of Ages.

Seeing Milton's Shadow, some Daughters of Beulah trembling

Return'd, but Ololon remain'd before the Gates of the Dead.

50 And Ololon looked down into the Heavens of Ulro in fear.

They said: How are the Wars of man which in Great Eternity

Appear around, in the External Spheres of Visionary Life,

Here render'd deadly within the Life & Interior Vision?

How are the Beasts & Birds & Fishes & Plants & Minerals

55 Here fix'd into a frozen bulk subjedt to decay & death?

Those Visions of Human Life & Shadows of Wisdom & Knowledge

p. 35 ARE here frozen to unexpansive deadly destroying terrors.

And War & Hunting, the Two Fountains of the River of Life,

Are become Fountains of bitter Death & of Corroding Hell:

Till Brotherhood is chang'd into a Curse & a Flattery,

5 By Differences between Ideas, that Ideas themselves, (which are

The Divine Members) may be slain in offerings for sin.

O dreadful Loom of Death! O piteous Female Forms compell'd

To weave the Woof of Death! On Camberwell Tirzah's Courts,

Malah's on Blackheath, Rahab & Noah dwell on Windsor's heights:

10 Where once the Cherubs of Jerusalem spread to Lambeth's Vale

Milcah's Pillars shine from Harrow to Hampstead, where Hoglah

On Highgate's heights magnificent Weaves over trembling Thames

To Shooters' Hill and thence to Blackheath the dark Woof; Loud,

36

Loud roll the Weights & Spindles over the whole Earth let down

15 On all sides round to the Four Quarters of the World, eastward on

Europe to Euphrates & Hindu to Nile & back in Clouds

Of Death across the Atlantic to America North & South.

So spake Ololon in reminiscence astonish'd, but they

Could not behold Golgonooza without passing the Polypus,

20 A wondrous journey not passable by Immortal feet, & none

But the Divine Saviour can pass it without annihilation.

For Golgonooza cannot be seen till having pass'd the Polypus

It is viewed on all sides round by a Four-fold Vision,

Or till you become Mortal & Vegetable in Sexuality

25 Then you behold its mighty Spires & Domes of ivory & gold

And Ololon examined all the Couches of the Dead,

Even of Los & Enitharmon & all the Sons of Albion

And his Four Zoas terrified & on the verge of Death:

In midst of these was Milton's Couch, & when they saw Eight

30 Immortal Starry-Ones, guarding the Couch in flaming fires.

They thunderous utter'd all a universal groan falling down

Prostrate before the Starry Eight asking with tears forgiveness.

Confessing their crime with humiliation and sorrow.

O how the Starry Eight rejoic'd to see Ololon descended:

35 And now that a wide road was open to Eternity

By Ololon's descent thro' Beulah to Los & Enitharmon.

For mighty were the multitudes of Ololon, vast the extent

Of their great sway reaching from Ulro to Eternity,

Surrounding the Mundane Shell outside in its Caverns

40 And through Beulah, and all silent forbare to contend

With Ololon, for they saw the Lord in the Clouds of Ololon.

There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find.

Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, but the Industrious find

This Moment & it multiply, & when it once is found

45 It renovates every Moment of the Day if rightly placed:

In this Moment Ololon descended to Los & Enitharmon

Unseen beyond the Mundane Shell, Southward in Milton's track.

Just in this Moment when the morning odours rise abroad.

And first from the Wild Thyme, stands a Fountain in a rock

50 Of crystal flowing into two Streams, one flows thro' Golgonooza

And thro' Beulah to Eden beneath Los's western Wall :

The other flows thro' the Aerial Void & all the Churches

37

Meeting again in Golgonooza beyond Satans Seat.

The Wild Thyme is Los's Messenger to Eden, a mighty Demon,

55 Terrible, deadly & poisonous his presence in Ulro dark.

Therefore he appears only a small Root creeping in grass

Covering over the Rock of Odours his bright purple mantle:

Beside the Fount above the Lark's Nest in Golgonooza.

Luvah slept here in death & here is Luvah's empty Tomb:

60 Ololon sat beside this Fountain on the Rock of Odours.

Just at the place to where the Lark mounts is a Crystal Gate:

It is the enterance of the First Heaven, named Luther : for

The Lark is Los's Messenger thro' the Twenty seven Churches,

That the Seven Eyes of God, who walk even to Satan's Seat

65 Thro' all the Twenty-seven Heavens, may not slumber nor sleep.

But the Lark's Nest is at the Gate of Los, at the eastern

Gate of wide Golgonooza & the Lark is Los's Messenger.

p. 2^ WHEN on the highest lift of his light pinions he arrives

At that bright Gate, another Lark meets him, & back to back

They touch their pinions, tip [to] tip: and each descend

To their respedive Earths & there all night consult with Angels

5 Of Providence & with the eyes of God all night in slumbers

Inspired; & at the dawn of day send out another Lark

Into another Heaven to carry news upon his wings.

Thus are the Messengers dispatch'd till they reach the Earth again

In the East Gate of Golgonooza, & the Twenty-eighth bright

10 Lark met the Female Ololon descending into my Garden.

Thus it appears to Mortal eyes & those of the Ulro Heavens

But not thus to Immortals: the Lark is a mighty Angel.

For Ololon step'd into the Polypus within the Mundane Shell:

They could not step into Vegetable Worlds without becoming

15 The enemies of Humanity except in a Female Form:

And as One Female Ololon and all its mighty Hosts

Appear'd: a Virgin of twelve years: nor time nor space was

To the perception of the Virgin Ololon, but as the

Flash of lightning, but more quick, the Virgin in my Garden

20 Before my Cottage stood, for the Satanic Space is delusion.

For When Los join'd with me he took me in his fiery whirlwind:

My Vegetated portion was hurried from Lambeth's shades :

He set me down in Felpham's Vale & prepar'd a beautiful

Cottage for me, that in three years I might write all these Visions,

38

25 To display Nature's cruel holiness: the deceits of Natural Religion.

Walking in my Cottage Garden, sudden I beheld

The Virgin Ololon & address'd her as a Daughter of Beulah.

Virgin of Providence, fear not to enter into my Cottage.

What is thy message to thy friend: What am I now to do?

30 Is it again to plunge into deeper afflidlion? behold me

Ready to obey, but pity thou my Shadow of Delight:

Enter my Cottage, comfort her, for she is sick with fatigue.

p. 37 THE Virgin answer'd: Knowest thou of Milton who descended,

Driven from Eternity; him I seek, terrified at my Ad

In Great Eternity which thou knowest: I come him to seek.

So Ololon utter'd in words distind the anxious thought:

5 Mild was the voice but more distindl than any earthly.

That Milton's Shadow heard, & condensing all his Fibres

Into a strength impregnable of majesty & beauty infinite,

I saw he was the Covering Cherub & within him Satan

And Rahab in an outside which is fallacious within,

10 Beyond the outline of Identity in the Selfhood deadly:

And he appear'd the Wicker Man of Scandinavia, in whom

Jerusalem's children consume in flames among the Stars.

Descending down into my Garden a Human Wonder of God,

Reaching from heaven to earth, a Cloud & Human Form,

15 I beheld Milton with astonishment & in him beheld

The Monstrous Churches of Beulah, the Gods of Ulro dark,

Twelve monstrous dishumanized terrors. Synagogues of Satan,

A Double Twelve & Thrice Nine: such their divisions.

And these their Names & their Places within the Mundane Shell.

20 In Tyre & Sidon I saw Baal & Ashtaroth. In Moab Chemosh:

In Ammon Molech: loud his Furnaces rage among the Wheels

Of Og, & pealing loud the cries of the Vidtims of Fire:

And pale his Priestesses unfolded in Veils of Pestilence, border'd

With War: Woven in Looms of Tyre & Sidon by beautiful Ashtaroth.

25 In Palestine Dagon, Sea Monster: worship'd o'er the Sea.

Thammuz in Lebanon & Rimmon in Damascus curtain'd:

Osiris, Isis, Orus, in Egypt : dark their Tabernacles on Nile

Floating with solemn songs, & on the Lakes of Egypt nightly

With pomp even till morning break & Osiris appear in the sky.

30 But Belial of Sodom & Gomorrha, obscure Demon of Bribes

39

And secret Assasl nations, not worship'd nor ador'd: but

With the finger on the h'ps & the back turn'd to the light.

And Saturn, Jove & Rhea of the Isles of the Sea remote.

These Twelve Gods, are the Twelve Speftre Sons of the Druid Albion

35 And these the names of the Twenty-seven Heavens & their Churches.

Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch,

Methuselah, Lamech: these are Giants, mighty. Hermaphroditic.

Noah, Shem, Arphaxad, Cainan the second, Salah, Heber,

Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, these are the Female-Males,

40 A Male within a Female hid as in an Ark & Curtains.

Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Paul, Constantine, Charlemaine,

Luther, these seven are the Male-Females, the Dragon Forms,

Religion hid in War, a Dragon red & hidden Harlot.

All these are seen in Milton's Shadow who is the Covering Cherub,

45 The Spedre of Albion, in which the Sped:re of Luvah inhabits,

In the Newtonian Voids between the Substances of Creation.

For the Chaotic Voids outside of the Stars are measured by

The Stars, which are the boundaries of Kingdoms, Provinces

50 And Empires of Chaos invisible to the Vegetable Man.

The Kingdom of Og is in Orion: Sihon is in Ophiucus.

Og has Twenty-seven Distridts: Sihon's Distridts Twenty-one,

From Star to Star, Mountains & Valleys, terrible dimension

Stretched out, compose the Mundane Shell, a mighty Incrustation

55 Of Forty-eight deformed Human Wonders of the Almighty

With Caverns whose remotest bottoms meet again beyond

The Mundane Shell in Golgonooza, but the Fires of Los rage

In the remotest bottoms of the Caves, that none can pass

Into Eternity that way, but all descend to Los

60 To Bowlahoola & AUamanda & to Entuthon Benython.

The Heavens are the Cherub: the Twelve Gods are Satan:

p. 39 AND the Forty-eight Starry Regions are Cities of the Levites,

The Heads of the Great Polypus. Four-fold twelve enormity

In mighty & mysterious comingling, enemy with enemy.

Woven by Urizen into Sexes from his mantle of years.

5 And Milton colleding all his fibres into impregnable strength

Descended down a Paved work of all kinds of precious stones

Out from the eastern sky; descending down into my Cottage

Garden, clothed in black, severe & silent he descended.

40

The Spedre of Satan stood upon the roaring sea & beheld

lo Milton within his sleeping Humanity: trembling & shudd'ring

He stood upon the waves a Twenty seven fold mighty Demon

Gorgeous & beautiful: loud roll his thunders against Milton:

Loud Satan thunder'd, loud & dark upon mild Felpham shore,

Not daring to touch one fibre he howl'd round upon the Sea.

15 I also stood in Satan's bosom & beheld its desolations:

A ruin'd Man: a ruin'd building of God, not made with hands:

Its plains of burning sand, its mountains of marble terrible:

Its pits & declivities flowing with molten ore & fountains

Of pitch & nitre: its ruin'd palaces & cities & mighty works:

20 Its furnaces of afflidion, in which his Angels & Emanations

Labour with blacken'd visages among its stupendous ruins,

Arches & Pyramids & porches, colonades & domes.

In which dwells Mystery, Babylon, here is her secret place.

From hence she comes forth in the Churches in delight,

25 Here is her cup fill'd with its poisons, in these horrid vales,

And here her scarlet Veil woven in pestilence & war;

Here is Jerusalem bound in chains in the Dens of Babylon.

In the Eastern porch of Satan's Universe Milton stood & said:

Satan! my Spedtre! I know my power thee to annihilate,

30 And be a greater in thy place, & be thy Tabernacle,

A covering for thee to do thy will, till one greater comes

And smites me as I smote thee & becomes my covering.

Such are the Laws of thy false Heav'ns: but Laws of Eternity

Are not such: know thou! I come to Self Annihilation.

35 Such are the Laws of Eternity, that each shall mutually

Annihilate himself for others' good, as I for thee.

Thy purpose & the purpose of thy Priests & of thy Churches

Is to impress on men the fear of death; to teach

Trembling & fear, terror, constri6lion : abjedl selfishness.

40 Mine is to teach Men to despise death & to go on

In fearless majesty annihilating Self, laughing to scorn

Thy Laws & terrors, shaking down thy Synagogues, as webs.

I come to discover before Heav'n & Hell the Self righteousness

In all its Hypocritic turpitude, opening to every eye

45 These wonders of Satan's holiness, shewing to the Earth

The Idol Virtues of the Natural Heart, & Satan's Seat

Explore in all its Selfish Natural Virtue & put off

In Self annihilation all that is not of God alone:

41

To put off Self & all I have, ever & ever. Amen.

50 Satan heard, Coming in a cloud, with trumpets & flaming fire.

Saying: I am God the judge of all, the living & the dead.

Fall therefore down & worship me, submit thy supreme

Didate, to my eternal Will & to my dictate bow.

I hold the Balances of Right & Just & mine the Sword:

55 Seven Angels bear my Name & in those Seven I appear.

But I alone am God & I alone in Heav'n & Earth

Of all that live dare utter this, others tremble & bow :

p. 40 TILL all Things become One Great Satan in Holiness

Oppos'd to Mercy, and the Divine Delusion Jesus be no more.

Suddenly around Milton on my Path, the Starry Seven

Burn'd terrible: my Path became a solid fire, as bright

5 As the clear Sun & Milton silent came down on my Path.

And there went forth from the Starry limbs of the Seven, Forms

Human, with Trumpets innumerable, sounding articulate

As the Seven spake: and they stood in a mighty Column of Fire

Surrounding Felpham's Vale, reaching to the Mundane Shell, Saying:

10 Awake, Albion awake ! reclaim thy Reasoning Spe6tre. Subdue

Him to the Divine Mercy. Cast him down into the Lake

Of Los, that ever burneth with fire, ever & ever, Amen!

Let the Four Zoas awake from Slumbers of Six thousand years.

Then loud the Furnaces of Los were heard; & seen as Seven Heavens

15 Stretching from South to North over the mountains of Albion.

Satan heard; trembling round his Body, he incircled it:

He trembled with exceeding great trembling & astonishment,

Howling in his Spedtre round his Body hung'ring to devour.

But fearing for the pain, for if he touches a Vital

20 His torment is unendurable: therefore he cannot devour:

But howls round it as a lion round his prey continually.

Loud Satan thunder'd, loud & dark upon mild Felpham's Shore,

Coming in a Cloud with Trumpets & with Fiery Flame,

An awful Form eastward from midst of a bright Paved-work

25 Of precious stones by Cherubim surrounded: so permitted

(Lest he should fall apart in his Eternal Death) to imitate

The Eternal Great Humanity Divine surrounded by

His Cherubim & Seraphim in ever happy Eternity.

Beneath sat Chaos: Sin on his right hand. Death on his left,

42

30 And Ancient Night spread over all the heav'n his Mantle of Laws.

He trembled with exceeding great trembling & astonishment.

Then Albion rose up in the Night of Beulah on his Couch

Of dread repose seen by the visionary eye: his face is toward

The east, toward Jerusalem's Gates: groaning he sat above

35 His rocks, London & Bath & Legions & Edinburgh

Are the four pillars of his Throne: his left foot near London

Covers the shades of Tyburn : his instep from Windsor

To Primrose Hill stretching to Highgate & Holloway.

London is between his knees: its basements fourfold:

40 His right foot stretches to the sea on Dover cliffs, his heel

On Canterbury's ruins; his right hand covers lofty Wales:

His left Scotland; his bosom girt with gold involves

York, Edinburgh, Durham & Carlisle, & on the front

Bath, Oxford, Cambridge, Norwich : his right elbow

45 Leans on the Rocks of Erin's Land, Ireland, ancient nation.

His head bends over London: he sees his embodied Spedtre

Trembling before him with exceeding great trembling & fear.

He views Jerusalem & Babylon, his tears flow down:

He mov'd his right foot to Cornwall, his left to the Rocks of Bognor:

50 He strove to rise to walk into the Deep, but strength failing

Forbad, & down with dreadful groans he sunk upon his Couch

In moony Beulah. Los his strong Guard Walks round beneath the Moon.

Urizen faints in terror striving among the Brooks of Arnon

With Milton's Spirit: as the Plowman or Artificer or Shepherd

55 While in the labours of his Calling sends his Thought abroad

To labour in the ocean or in the starry heaven. So Milton

Labour 'd in Chasms of the Mundane Shell tho' here before

My Cottage midst the Starry Seven, where the Virgin Ololon

Stood trembling in the Porch: loud Satan thunder'd on the stormy Sea,

60 Circling Albion's Chffs, in which the Four-fold World resides

Tho' seen in fallacy outside: a fallacy of Satan's Churches.

p. 42 BEFORE Ololon Milton stood & perciev'd the Eternal Form

Of that mild Vision: wondrous were their ads by me unknown

Except remotely: and I heard Ololon say to Milton:

I see thee strive upon the Brooks of Arnon, there a dread

S And awful Man I see, o'ercover'd with the mantle of years.

I behold Los & Urizen, I behold Ore & Tharmas,

The Four Zoas of Albion, & thy Spirit with them striving,

43

In Self annihilation giving thy life to thy enemies.

Are those who contemn Religion & seek to annihilate it

lo Become in their Femin[in]e portions the causes & promoters

Of these Religions, how is this thing: this Newtonian Phantasm,

This Voltaire & Rousseau: this Hume & Gibbon & Bolingbroke:

This Natural Religion; this impossible absurdity?

Is Ololon the cause of this? O where shall I hide my face?

15 These tears fall for the httle ones, the Children of Jerusalem,

Lest they be annihilated in thy annihilation.

No sooner she had spoke but Rahab Babylon appear'd

Eastward upon the Paved work across Europe & Asia,

Glorious as the midday Sun in Satan's bosom glowing:

20 A Female hidden in a Male, Religion hidden in War,

Nam'd Moral Virtue: cruel two-fold Monster shining bright,

A Dragon red & hidden Harlot which John in Patmos saw.

And all beneath the Nations innumerable of Ulro

Appear'd, the Seven Kingdoms of Canaan & Five Baalim

25 Of Philistea into Twelve divided, call'd after the Names

Of Israel: as they are in Eden. Mountain, River & Plain,

City & sandy Desart intermingled beyond mortal ken.

But turning toward Ololon in terrible majesty Milton

Replied: Obey thou the Words of the Inspired Man.

30 All that can be (can be) annihilated must be annihilated

That the Children of Jerusalem may be saved from slavery.

There is a Negation, & there is a Contrary:

The Negation must be destroy'd to redeem the Contraries.

The Negation is the Spedlre: the Reasoning Power in Man:

35 This is a false Body: an Incrustation over my Immortal

Spirit; a Selfhood which must be put off & annihilated alway,

To cleanse the Face of my Spirit by Self-examination:

p. 43 TO bathe in the waters of Life: to wash off the Not Human.

I come in Self-annihilation & the grandeur of Inspiration,

To cast off Rational Demonstration by Faith in the Saviour,

To cast off the rotten rags of Memory by Inspiration,

5 To cast off Bacon, Locke & Newton from Albion's covering.

To take off his filthy garments & clothe him with Imagination,

To cast aside from Poetry, all that is not Inspiration

That it no longer shall dare to mock with the aspersion of Madness,

Cast on the Inspired by the tame high finisher of paltry Blots:

44

lo Indefinite or paltry Rhymes: or paltry Harmonies:

Who creeps into State Government like a catterpiller to destroy,

To cast off the idiot Questioner who is always questioning,

But never capable of answering, who sits with a sly grin

Silent plotting when to question like a thief in a cave:

15 Who publishes doubt & calls it knowledge: whose Science is Despair:

Whose pretence to knowledge is Envy: whose whole Science is

To destroy the wisdom of ages to gratify ravenous Envy,

That rages round him like a Wolf day & night without rest.

He smiles with condescension: he talks of Benevolence & Virtue:

20 And those who a6l with Benevolence & Virtue they murder time on time.

These are the destroyers of Jerusalem, those are the murderers

Of Jesus, who deny the Faith & mock at Eternal Life:

Who pretend to Poetry that they may destroy Imagination,

By imitation of Nature's Images drawn from Remembrance.

25 These are the Sexual Garments, the Abomination of Desolation,

Hiding the Human Lineaments as with an Ark & Curtains

Which Jesus rent: & now shall wholly purge away with Fire

Till Generation is swallow'd up in Regeneration.

Then trembled the Virgin Ololon & reply 'd in clouds of despair:

30 Is this our Femin[in]e Portion, the Six- fold Miltonic Female?

Terribly this Portion trembles before thee, O awful Man.

Altho' our Human Power can sustain the severe contentions

Of Friendship, our Sexual cannot: but flies into the Ulro.

Hence arose all our terrors in Eternity: & now remembrance

35 Returns upon us: are we contraries, O Milton, Thou & I,

O Immortal,? how were we led to War the Wars of Death.''

Is this the Void Outside of Existence, which if enter'd into

p. 44 BECOMES a Womb? & is this the Death Couch of Albion?

Thou goest to Eternal Death & all must go with thee.

So saying the Virgin divided Six-fold, & with a shriek

Dolorous that ran thro' all Creation, a Double Six-fold Wonder:

5 Away from Ololon she divided & fled into the depths

Of Milton's Shadow as a Dove upon the stormy Sea.

Then as a Moony Ark Ololon descended to Felpham's Vales,

In clouds of blood, in streams of gore, with dreadful thunderings.

Into the Fires of Intelledl that rejoic'd in Felpham's Vale

10 Around the Starry Eight: with one accord the Starry Eight became

One Man, Jesus the Saviour, wonderful! round his limbs

45

The Clouds of Ololon folded as a Garment dipped in blood,

Written within & without in woven letters: & the Writing

Is the Divine Revelation in the Litteral expression:

15 A Garment of War. I heard it nam'd the Woof of Six Thousand Years.

And I beheld the Twenty-four Cities of Albion

Arise upon their Thrones to Judge the Nations of the Earth:

And the Immortal Four in whom the Twenty- four appear Four- fold

Arose around Albion's body: Jesus wept, & walked forth

20 From Felpham's Vale clothed in Clouds of blood, to enter into

Albion's Bosom, the bosom of death, & the Four surrounded him

In the Column of Fire in Felpham's Vale: then to their mouths the Four

Applied their Four Trumpets, & then sounded to the Four winds.

Terror struck in the Vale I stood at that immortal sound:

25 My bones trembled, I fell outstretch'd upon the path

A moment, & my Soul returned into its mortal state.

To ResurreAion & Judgment in the Vegetable Body :

And my sweet Shadow of delight stood trembling by my side.

Immediately the Lark mounted with a loud trill from Felpham's Vale,

30 And the Wild Thyme from Wimbleton's green & impurpled Hills.

And Los & Enitharmon rose over the Hills of Surrey:

Their clouds roll over London with a south wind: soft Oothoon

Pants in the Vales of Lambeth, weeping o'er her Human Harvest.

Los listens to the Cry of the Poor Man : his Cloud

35 Over London in volume terrific, low bended in anger.

Rintrah & Palamabron view the Human Harvest beneath.

Their Wine-presses & Barns stand open: the Ovens are prepar'd:

The Waggons ready: terrific Lions & Tygers sport & play:

All Animals upon the Earth are preparM in all their strength

p. 45 TO go forth to the Great Harvest & Vintage of the Nations.

Finis.

46

EXTRA PAGES.

p. 3* BENEATH the Plow of Rintrah & the Harrow of the Almighty,

In the hands of Palamabron, Where the Starry Mills of Satan

Are built beneath the Earth & Waters of the Mundane Shell:

Here the Three Classes of Men take their Sexual texture Woven.

5 The Sexual is Threefold : the Human is Fourfold.

If you account it Wisdom when you are angry to be silent, and

Not to shew it: I do not account that Wisdom, but Folly.

Every Man's Wisdom is peculiar to his own Individuality.

O Satan, my youngest born, art thou not Prince of the Starry Hosts,

lo And of the Wheels of Heaven, to turn the Mills day & night?

Art thou not Newton's Pantocrator, weaving the Woof of Locke?

To Mortals thy Mills seem every thing, & the Harrow of Shaddai

A Scheme of Human Condudt invisible & incomprehensible.

Get to thy Labours at the Mills & leave me to my wrath.

15 Satan was going to reply, but Los roU'd his loud thunders.

Anger me not! thou canst not drive the Harrow in pity's paths:

Thy Work is Eternal Death with Mills & Ovens & Cauldrons.

Trouble me no more, thou canst not have Eternal Life.

So Los spoke : Satan trembling obey'd, weeping along the way.

20 Mark well my words! they are of your eternal Salvation!

Between South Molton Street & Stratford Place: Calvary's foot:

Where the Vidims were preparing for sacrifice their Cherubim:

Around their loins pour'd forth their arrows, & their bosoms beam

With all colours of precious stones, and their inmost palaces

25 Resounded with preparation of animals wild & tame.

(Mark well my words: Corporeal Friends are Spiritual Enemies)

Mocking Druidical Mathematical Proportion of Length, Bredth, Highth:

Displaying Naked Beauty: with Flute & Harp & Song.

p. 5* BY Enitharmon's looms when Albion was slain upon his Mountains,

And in his tent, through envy of the living form, even of the Divine Vision,

And of the sports of wisdom in the Human Imagination,

Which is the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus blessed for ever.

Mark well my words, they are of your eternal salvation.

47

Urizen lay in darkness and solitude in chains of the mind locked up.

Los seized his hammer and tongs ; he laboured at his resolute anvil

Among indefinite Druid rocks, and snows of doubt and reasoning.

Refusing all definite form the Abstract Horror roofed, stony hard;

10 And a first age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

Down sunk with fright a red hot globe, round, burning, deep.

Deep down into the abyss, panting, conglobing, trembling ;

And a second age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

Rolling round into two little orbs, and closed in two little caves,

15 The ages beheld the Abyss, lest bones of solitude freeze all over;

And a third age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

From beneath his orbs of vision two ears in close volutions

Shot spiring out in the deep darkness and petrified as they grew;

And a fourth age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

20 Hanging upon the wind two nostrils bent down into the deep.

And a fifth age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

In ghastly torment sick, a tongue of hunger and thirst flamed out.

And a sixth age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

Enraged and stifled without and within, in terror and woe he threw his

25 Right arm to the north, his left arm to the south, and his feet

Stamped the nether abyss in trembling and howling and dismay.

And a seventh age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

Terrified, Los stood in the abyss, and his immortal limbs

Grew deadly pale. He became what he beheld, for a red

30 Round globe sunk down from his Bosom into the Deep. In pangs

He hovered, it trembling and weeping. Trembling it shook

The nether abyss in tremblings. He wept over it, he cherished it

In deadly, sickening pain, till separated into a female pale

As the cloud that brings the snow. All the while from his Back

35 A blue fluid exuded in sinews, hardening in the abyss.

Till it separated into a male form howling in jealousy.

Within, labouring; beholding without, — from particulars to generals

Subduing his Spedre. They builded the Looms of Generation ;

They builded great Golgonooga, Time on Times, ages on ages.

40 First Ore was born, then the Shadowy Female, then all Los's family.

At last Enitharmon brought forth Satan, refusing Form. In vain

The Miller of Eternity made subservient to the Great Harvest,

48

That he may go to his own Place, Prince of the Starry Wheels.

p. 8* THEN Los & Enitharmon knew that Satan is Urizen,

Drawn down by Ore & the Shadowy Female into Generation.

Oft Enitharmon enter'd weeping into the Space, there appearing

An aged Woman raving along the Streets (The Space is named

5 Canaan): then she returned to Los, weary, frighted as from dreams.

The nature of a Female Space is this: it shrinks the Organs

Of Life till they become finite & Itself seems Infinite.

And Satan vibrated in the immensity of the Space: limited

To those without but Infinite to those within: it fell down and

lo Became Canaan: closing Los from Eternity in Albion's Cliffs.

A mighty Fiend against the Divine Humanity must'ring to War.

Satan: Ah me! is gone to his own place, said Los: their Gods

I will not worship in their Churches, nor King in their Theatres.

Elynittria! whence is this Jealousy running along the mountains,'*

15 British Women were not Jealous when Greek & Roman were Jealous.

Every thing in Eternity shines by its own Internal light: but thou

Darkenest every Internal light with the arrows of thy quiver.

Bound up in the horns of Jealousy to a deadly fading Moon.

And Ocalythron binds the Sun into a Jealous Globe,

20 That every thing is fix'd, Opake without Internal light.

So Los lamented over Satan who triumphant divided the Nations

p. 17* AND Tharmas Demon of the Waters, & Ore, who is Luvah.

The Shadowy Female seeing Milton, howled in her lamentation

Over the Deeps, outstretching her Twenty seven Heavens over Albion.

And thus the Shadowy Female howls in articulate howlings:

I will lament over Milton in the lamentations of the afflidled:

My Garments shall be woven of sighs & heart broken lamentations:

The misery of unhappy Families shall be drawn out into its border,

Wrought with the needle with dire sufferings, poverty, pain & woe.

Along the rocky Island & thence throughout the whole Earth

There shall be the sick Father & his starving Family: there

The Prisoner in the Stone Dungeon & the Slave at the Mill.

49 K

I will have writings written all over it in Human Words,

That every Infant that is born upon the Earth shall read

And get by rote as a hard task of a life of sixty years.

15 I will have Kings inwoven upon it, & Councellors & Mighty Men:

The Famine shall clasp it together with buckles & Clasps,

And the Pestilence shall be its fringe & the War its girdle,

To divide into Rahab & Tirzah that Milton may come to our tents.

For I will put on the Human Form & take the Image of God,

20 Even Pity & Humanity, but my Clothing shall be Cruelty:

And I will put on Holiness as a breastplate & as a helmet,

And all my ornaments shall be of the gold of broken hearts.

And the precious stones of anxiety & care & desperation & death

And repentance for sin & sorrow & punishment & fear,

25 To defend me from thy terrors, O Ore! my only beloved!

Ore answer'd: Take not the Human Form, O loveliest. Take not

Terror upon thee! Behold how I am, & tremble lest thou also

Consume in my Consummation: but thou maist take a Form

Female & lovely, that cannot consume in Man's consummation.

30 Wherefore dost thou Create & Weave this Satan for a Covering.^

When thou attemptest to put on the Human Form, my wrath

Burns to the top of heaven against thee in Jealousy & Fear.

Then I rend thee asunder, then I howl over thy clay & ashes.

When wilt thou put on the Female Form as in times of old,

35 With a Garment of Pity & Compassion like the Garment of God?

His Garments are long sufferings for the Children of Men,

Jerusalem is his Garment & not thy Covering Cherub, O lovely

Shadow of my dehght, who wanderest seeking for the prey.

So spoke Ore, when Oothoon & Leutha hover'd over his Couch

40 Of fire in interchange of Beauty & Perfection in the darkness.

Opening interiorly into Jerusalem & Babylon shining glorious.

In the Shadowy Female's bosom Jealous her darkness grew:

Howlings fill'd all the desolate places in accusations of Sin,

In Female beauty shining in the unform'd void, & Ore in vain

45 Stretch'd out his hands of fire, & wooed: they triumph in his pain.

Thus darken'd the Shadowy Female tenfold, & Ore tenfold

Glow'd on his rocky Couch against the darkness: loud thunders

Told of the enormous conflift. Earthquake beneath, around.

Rent the Immortal Females, limb from limb & joint from joint,

50

50 And moved the fast foundations of the Earth to wake the Dead.

Urizen emerged from his Rocky Form & from his Snows.

p. 32* AND Milton oft sat up on the Couch of Death & oft conversed

In vision & dream beatific with the Seven Angels of the Presence:

I have turned my back upon these Heavens builded on cruelty.

My Speftre still wandering thro' them follows my Emanation,

5 He hunts her footsteps thro' the snow & the wintry hail & rain.

The idiot Reasoner laughs at the Man of Imagination,

And from laughter proceeds to murder by undervaluing calumny.

Then Hillel, who is Lucifer, replied over the Couch of Death,

And thus the Seven Angels instructed him & thus they converse:

10 We are not Individuals but States: Combinations of Individuals.

We were Angels of the Divine Presence: & were Druids in Annandale,

Compell'd to combine into Form by Satan, the Spedlre of Albion,

Who made himself a God & destroyed the Human Form Divine.

But the Divine Humanity & Mercy gave us a Human Form,

15 Because we were combin'd in Freedom & holy Brotherhood:

While those combined by Satan's Tyranny, first in the blood of War

And Sacrifice, & next in Chains of imprisonment, are Shapeless Rocks

Retaining only Satan's Mathematic Holiness, Length, Bredth & Highth.

Calling the Human Imagination: which is the Divine Vision & Fruition

20 In which Man liveth eternally: madness & blasphemy, against

Its own Qualities, which are Servants of Humanity, not Gods or Lords.

Distinguish therefore States from Individuals in those States.

States Change: but Individual Identities never change nor cease.

You cannot go to Eternal Death in that which can never Die.

25 Satan & Adam are States Created into Twenty-seven Churches:

And thou, O Milton, art a State about to be Created,

Called Eternal Annihilation, that none but the Living shall

Dare to enter: & they shall enter triumphant over Death

And Hell and the Grave: States that are not, but ah! Seem to be.

30 Judge then of thy Own Self: thy Eternal Lineaments explore.

What is Eternal & what Changeable? & what Annihilable?

The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself.

AfFedlion or Love becomes a State when divided from Imagination.

The Memory is a State always, & the Reason is a State

35 Created to be Annihilated, & a new Ratio Created.

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40

Whatever can be Created can be Annihilated: Forms cannot.

The Oak is cut down by the Ax, the Lamb falls by the Knife,

But their Forms Eternal exist, For ever. Amen. Hallelujah !

Thus they converse with the Dead, watching round the Couch of Death:

For God himself enters Death's Door always with those that enter,

And lays down in the Grave with them, in Visions of Eternity,

Till they awake & see Jesus, & the Linen Clothes lying

That the Females had Woven for them, & the Gates of their Father's House.