Read The Portable William Blake Online
Authors: William Blake
The Portable William Blake (47 page)
Before I had ever beheld with love the Face of Jehovah, or known
That there was a God of Mercy. O Mercy, O Divine Humanity!
O Forgiveness & Pity & Compassion! If I were Pure I should never
Have known Thee: If I were Unpolluted I should never have
Glorified thy Holiness or rejoiced in thy great Salvation.”
Mary leaned her side against Jerusalem: Jerusalem recieved
The Infant into her hands in the Visions of Jehovah. Times passed on.
Jerusalem fainted over the Cross & Sepulcher. She heard the voice:
“Wilt thou make Rome thy Patriarch Druid & the Kings of Europe his
Horsemen? Man in the Resurrection changes his Sexual Garments at Will.
Every Harlot was once a Virgin: every Criminal an Infant Love....
[THE DESOLATE WORLD ]The inhabitants are sick to death: they labour to divide into Days
And Nights the uncertain Periods, and into Weeks & Months. In vain
They send the Dove & Raven & in vain the Serpent over the mountains
And in vain the Eagle & Lion over the four-fold wilderness:
They return not, but generate in rocky places desolate:
They return not, but build a habitation separate from Man.
The Sun forgets his course like a drunken man; he hesitates
Upon the Cheselden hills, thinking to sleep on the Severn.
In vain: he is hurried afar into an unknown Night:
He bleeds in torrents of blood as he rolls thro’ heaven above.
He chokes up the paths of the sky; the Moon is leprous as snow,
Trembling & descending down, seeking to rest on high Mona,
Scattering her leprous snows in flakes of disease over Albion.
The Stars flee remote; the heaven is iron, the earth is sulphur,
And all the mountains & hills shrink up like a withering gourd
As the Senses of Men shrink together under the Knife of flint
In the hands of Albion’s Daughters among the Druid Temples, ...
And the Twelve Daughters of Albion united in Rahab & Tirzah,
A Double Female; and they drew out from the Rocky Stones
Fibres of Life to Weave, for every Female is a Golden Loom,
The Rocks are opake hardnesses covering all Vegetated dungs;
And as they Wove & Cut from the Looms, in various divisions
Stretching over Europe & Asia from Ireland to Japan,
They divided into many lovely Daughters, to be counterparts
To those they Wove; for when they Wove a Male, they divided
Into a Female to the Woven Male: in opake hardness
They cut the Fibres from the Rocks: groaning in pain they Weave,
Calling the Rocks Atomic Origins of Existence, denying Eternity
By the Atheistical Epicurean Philosophy of Albion’s Tree.
Such are the Feminine & Masculine when separated from Man.
They call the Rocks Parents of Men, & adore the frowning Chaos,
Dancing around in howling pain, clothed in the bloody Veil,
Hiding Albion’s Sons within the Veil, closing Jerusalem’s Sons without, to feed with their Souls the Spectres of Albion,
Ashamed to give Love openly to the piteous & merciful Man,
Counting him an imbecile mockery, but the Warrior They adore & his revenge cherish with the blood of the Innocent.
[THE SPECTRE’S THREATS]“0 thou poor Human Form!” said she. “0 thou poor child of woel
Why wilt thou wander away from Tirzah? why me compel to bind thee?
If thou dost go away from me I shall consume upon these Rocks.
These fibres of thine eyes that used to beam in distant heavens
Away from me, I have bound down with a hot iron.
These nostrils that expanded with delight in Morning skies
I have bent downward with lead melted in my roaring furnaces
Of affliction, of love, of sweet despair, of torment unendurable.
My soul is seven furnaces; incessant roars the bellows Upon my terribly flaming heart, the molten metal runs In channels thro’ my fiery limbs. O love, 0 pity, O fear, O pain! O the pangs, the bitter pangs of love forsaken!”
[THE WARRIOR’S LAMENT]“.... Once Man was occupied in intellectual pleasures & energies,
But now my Soul is harrow’d with grief & fear & love & desire,
And now I hate & now I love, & Intellect is no more.
There is no time for any thing but the torments of love & desire....”
[ALL ARE MEN IN ETERNITY]For all are Men in Eternity, Rivers, Mountains, Cities, Villages,
All are Human, & when you enter into their Bosoms you walk
In Heavens & Earths, as in your own Bosom you bear your Heaven
And Earth & all you behold; tho’ it appears Without, it is Within,
In your Imagination, of which this World of Mortality is but a Shadow.
[MEN AND STATES]As the Pilgrim passes while the Country permanent remains,
So Men pass on, but States remain permanent for ever.
[SPECTRE AND IMAGINATION]The Spectre is the Reasoning Power in Man, & when separated
From Imagination and closing itself as in steel in a Ratio Of the Things of Memory, It thence frames Laws & Moralities
To destroy Imagination, the Divine Body, by Martyrdoms & Wars.
Teach me, O Holy Spirit, the Testimony of Jesus! let me Comprehend wonderous things out of the Divine Law!
I behold Babylon in the opening Streets of London. I behold
Jerusalem in ruins wandering about from house to house.
This I behold: the shudderings of death attend my steps.
I walk up and down in Six Thousand Years: their Events are present before me
To tell how Los in grief & anger, whirling round his Hammer on high,
Drave the Sons & Daughters of Albion from their ancient mountains.
[LOS’S HAMMER]The blow of his Hammer is Justice, the swing of his Hammer Mercy,
The force of Los’s Hammer is eternal Forgiveness....
[THE ETERNAL CIRCLE]And where Luther ends Adam begins the Eternal Circle
To awake Prisoners of Death, to bring Albion again
With Luvah into light eternal in his eternal day.
But now the Starry Heavens are fled from the mighty limbs of Albion.
[WHAT GOD IS]“.... It is easier to forgive an Enemy than to forgive a Friend.
The man who permits you to injure him deserves your vengeance:
He also will recieve it; go Spectre! obey my most secret desire
Which thou knowest without my speaking. Go to these Fiends of Righteousness,
Tell them to obey their Humanities & not pretend Holiness
When they are murderers as far as my Hammer & Anvil permit.
Go, tell them that the Worship of God is honouring his gifts
In other men & loving the greatest men best, each according
To his Genius which is the Holy Ghost in Man; there is no other
God than that God who is the intellectual fountain of Humanity.
He who envies or calumniates, which is murder & cruelty,
Murders the Holy-one. Go, tell them this, & overthrow their cup,
Their bread, their altar-table, their incense & their oath,
Their marriage & their baptism, their burial & consecration.
I have tried to make friends by corporeal gifts but have only
Made enemies. I never made friends but by spiritual gifts,
By severe contentions of friendship & the burning fire of thought.
He who would see the Divinity must see him in his Children,
One first, in friendship & love, then a Divine Family, & in the midst
Jesus will appear; so he who wishes to see a Vision, a perfect Whole,
Must see it in its Minute Particulars, Organized, & not as thou,
O Fiend of Righteousness, pretendest; thine is a Disorganized
And snowy cloud, brooder of tempests & destructive War.
You smile with pomp & rigor, you talk of benevolence & virtue;
I act with benevolence & Virtue & get murder’d time after time.
You accumulate Particulars & murder by analyzing, that you
May take the aggregate, & you call the aggregate Moral Law,
And you call that swell’d & bloated Form a Minute Particular;
But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars, & every
Particular is a Man, a Divine Member of the Divine Jesus....
“I care not whether a Man is Good or Evil; all that I care
Is whether he is a Wise Man or a Fool. Go, put off Holiness
And put on Intellect, or my thund’rous Hammer shall drive thee
To wrath which thou condemnest, till thou obey my voice.”
[THE BREATH DIVINE]The Breath Divine went forth upon the morning hills. Albion mov’d
Upon the Rock, he open’d his eyelids in pain, in pain he mov’d
His stony members, he saw England. Ah! shall the Dead live again?
The Breath Divine went forth over the morning hills. Albion rose
In anger, the wrath of God breaking, bright flaming on all sides around
His awful limbs; into the Heavens he walked, clothed in flames,
Loud thund’ring, with broad flashes of flaming lightning & pillars
Of fire, speaking the Words of Eternity in Human Forms, in direful
Revolutions of Action & Passion, thro’ the Four Elements on all sides
Surrounding his awful Members. Thou seest the Sun in heavy clouds
Struggling to rise above the Mountains; in his burning hand
He takes his Bow, then chooses out his arrows of flaming gold;
Murmuring the Bowstring breathes with ardor! clouds roll round the
Horns of the wide Bow, loud sounding winds sport on the mountain brows,
Compelling Urizen to his Furrow & Tharmas to his Sheepfold
And Luvah to his Loom. Urthona he beheld, mighty labouring at
His Anvil, in the Great Spectre Los unwearied labouring & weeping:
Therefore the Sons of Eden praise Urthona’s Spectre in songs,
Because he kept the Divine Vision in time of trouble.
[JESUS AND ALBION]Then Jesus appeared standing by Albion as the Good Shepherd
By the lost Sheep that he hath found, & Albion knew that it
Was the Lord, the Universal Humanity; & Albion saw his Form
A Man, & they conversed as Man with Man in Ages of Eternity.
And the Divine Appearance was the likeness & similitude of Los.
Albion said: “0 Lord, what can I do? my Selfhood cruel
Marches against thee, deceitful, from Sinai & from Edom
In to the Wilderness of Judah, to meet thee in his pride.
I behold the Visions of my deadly Sleep of Six Thousand Years
Dazling around thy skirts like a Serpent of precious stones & gold.
I know it is my Self, O my Divine Creator & Redeemer.”
Jesus replied: “Fear not Albion: unless I die thou canst not live;
But if I die I shall arise again & thou with me.
This is Friendship & Brotherhood: without it Man Is Not.”
So Jesus spoke: the Covering Cherub coming on in darkness
Overshadow’d them, & Jesus said: “Thus do Men in Eternity
One for another to put off, by forgiveness, every sin.”
Albion reply’d: “Cannot Man exist without Mysterious Offering of Self for Another? is this Friendship & Brotherhood?
I see thee in the likeness & similitude of Los my Friend.”
Jesus said: “Wouldest thou love one who never died
For thee, or ever die for one who had not died for thee?
And if God dieth not for Man & giveth not himself
Eternally for Man, Man could not exist; for Man is Love
As God is Love: every kindness to another is a little Death
In the Divine Image, nor can Man exist but by Brotherhood.”
So saying the Cloud overshadowing divided them asunder.
Albion stood in terror, not for himself but for his Friend
Divine; & Self was lost in the contemplation of faith
And wonder at the Divine Mercy & at Los’s sublime honour.
“Do I sleep amidst danger to Friends? O my Cities & Counties,
Do you sleep? rouze up, rouze up! Eternal Death is abroad!”
So Albion spoke & threw himself into the Furnaces of affliction.
All was a Vision, all a Dream: the Furnaces became
Fountains of Living Waters flowing from the Humanity Divine.
And all the Cities of Albion rose from their Slumbers, and All
The Sons-& Daughters of Albion on soft clouds, waking from Sleep.
Soon all around remote the Heavens burnt with flaming fires,
And Urizen & Luvah & Tharmas & Urthona arose into
Albion’s Bosom. Then Albion stood before Jesus in the Clouds
Of Heaven, Fourfold among the Visions of God in Eternity.
VII.
ON ART, MONEY, AND THE AGE
From
THE LAOCOÖN GROUP
THE LAOCOÖN GROUP
(1820)
If Morality was Christianity, Socrates was the Saviour.
Art Degraded, Imagination Denied, War Governed the Nations.
Spiritual War: Israel deliver’d from Egypt, is Art deliver’d from Nature & Imitation.
A Poet, a Painter, a Musician, an Architect: the Man Or Woman who is not one of these is not a Christian.
You must leave Fathers & Mothers & Houses & Lands if they stand in the way of Art.
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