Chap. III

The voice ended: they saw his pale visage
Emerge from the darkness, his hand
On the rock of Eternity unclasping
The Book of brass. Rage seiz'd the strong —

Rage, fury, intense indignation,
In cataracts of fire, blood, and gall,
In whirlwinds of sulphurous smoke,
And enormous forms of energy,
In living creations appear'd,
In the flames of eternal fury.

Sund'ring, dark'ning, thund'ring,
Rent away with a terrible crash,
Eternity roll'd wide apart,
Wide asunder rolling;
Mountainous, all around
Departing, departing, departing,
Leaving ruinous fragments of life,
Hanging, frowning cliffs, and, all between,
An Ocean of voidness unfathomable.

The roaring fires ran o'er the heav'ns
In whirlwinds and cataracts of blood,
And o'er the dark deserts of Urizen
Fires pour thro' the void, on all sides,
On Urizen's self-begotten armies.

But no light from the fires! all was darkness
In the flames of Eternal fury.

In fierce anguish and quenchless flames
In deserts and rocks he ran racing.
To hide; but he could not. Combining,
He dug mountains and hills in vast strength,

He piled them in incessant labour,

In howlings and pangs and fierce madness,
Long periods in burning fires labouring;
Till hoary, and age-broke, and aged,
In despair and the shadows of death.

And a roof vast, petrific, around
On all sides he fram'd, like a womb,

Where thousands of rivers, in veins
Of blood, pour down the mountains to cool
The eternal fires, beating without

From Eternals; and like a black Globe,
View'd by sons of Eternity, standing
On the shore of the infinite ocean,
Like a human heart, struggling and beating,
The vast world of Urizen appear'd.

And Los, round the dark globe of Urizen,
Kept watch for Eternals to confine

The obscure separation alone;
For Eternity stood wide apart,
As the stars are apart from the earth,

Los wept, howling around the dark Demon,
And cursing his lot; for in anguish

Urizen was rent from his side,
And a fathomless Void for his feet,
And intense fires for his dwelling.

But Urizen, laid in a stony sleep,
Unorganiz'd, rent from Eternity.

The Eternals said: 'What is this? Death?
Urizen is a clod of clay!'

Los howl'd in a dismal stupor,
Groaning, gnashing, groaning,
Till the wrenching apart was healed.

But the wrenching of Urizen heal'd not.
Cold, featureless, flesh or clay,
Rifted with direful changes,
He lay in a dreamless night,

Till Los rous'd his fires, affrighted
At the formless, unmeasurable Death.