Night the Second

Reclining upon his couch of death Albion beheld his sons.
Turning his eyes outward to self, losing the Divine Vision,
Albion called Urizen and said: — Behold these sickening spheres, —
Whence is this voice of Enion that soundeth in my ears?
Take thou possession. Take this sceptre. Go forth in my might,
For I am weary and must sleep in the dark sleep of death.
Thy brother Luvah hath smitten me, but pity thou his youth,
Though thou hast not pitied my age, oh Urizen, Prince of Light.

Urizen rose from the bright feast like a star through the evening sky.

Exulting at the voice that called him from the feast of envy
First he beheld the body of Man, pale, cold. The horrors of death
Beneath his feet shot through him as he stood in the human brain.
No more exulting, for he saw Eternal Death beneath,
Where Enion, blind and age-bent, wept in direful hunger craving,
All ravening like the hungry worm and like the silent grave.
Mighty was the draught of voidness to draw existence in.

Terrific Urizen strode above in fear and pale dismay.
He saw the indefinite space beneath and his soul shrunk with horror,
His feet upon the verge of non-existence. His voice went forth,
Luvah and Vala trembling and shrinking beheld the great Work Master
And heard his word: — Divide ye bands influence by influence.
Build me a bower for Heavens, darting in the grizzly deep,
Build me the Mundane Shell around the rock of Albion.

The Bands of Heaven flew through the air singing and shouting to Urizen.

Some fixed the anvil, some the loom erected, some the plough
And harrow formed and framed the harness of silver and ivory,
The golden compasses, the quadrant, and the rule and balance.
They erected the furnaces, they formed the anvils of gold in mills
Where winter beats incessant, fixing them firm on their base,
The bellows began to blow, and the lions of Urizen stood round the anvil,
And the leopards covered with skins of beasts tended the roaring fires,
Sublime, distinct in their lineaments of human beauty, stood,
Petrifying all the Human Imagination into rock and sand.
Groans ran along Tyburn's brook and along the river of Oxford
Among the Druid Temples. Albion groaned on Tyburn's brook.

Albion gave his loud death-groan. The Atlantic mountains trembled.
Aloft the moon fled with a cry: the sun with streams of blood.
From Albion's Loins fled all peoples, and nations of the Earth
Fled, with the noise of slaughter, and the stars of Heaven fled.

Jerusalem came down in a dire ruin over all the Earth,
She fell cold from Lambeth's vale in groans and dewy death,
The dew of anxious souls, the death sweat of the dying,
In every pillared hall and arched roof of Albion's skies.

The brother and the brother bathe in blood upon the Severn,
The maiden weeping by, the father and mother with
The maiden's father and her mother fainting over the body,
And the young man the murderer fleeing over the mountains.

Reuben slept on Penmaenmawr, and Levi slept on Snowdon,
Their eyes, their ears, their nostrils and tongues roll outward, they behold
What is within now seen without; they rave to the hungry wind.
They become Natures far remote in a little dark land.

The daughters of Albion girded around their garments of needlework
Stripping Jerusalem's curtains from mild demons of the hills
Across Europe and Asia to China and Japan like lightnings
They go forth and return to Albion on his rocky couch.

Guendolen, Ragan, Sabrina, Gonoril, Mehetabel, Cordelia,
Boadicea, Conwenna, Estrild, Guinifred, Ignoze, Cambel,
Binding Jerusalem's children in the dungeons of Babylon.
They play before the Armies, before the hounds of Nimrod,
While the Prince of Light on Salisbury Plain covers the Druid Thrones.

The Tigers of wrath called the horses of instruction from their mangers,
They unloosed them and put on the harness of gold, silver and ivory,
In human forms distinct they stood round Urizen, Prince of Light.
Rattling, the adamantine chains heave up the ore
In mountainous masses plunged in furnaces they shut and sealed
The furnaces a time and times. All the while blew the North
His cloudy bellows, and the South and East and dismal West,
And all the while the plough of iron cut the dreadful furrows
In Ulro, beneath Beulah, where the dead wail night and day.

Luvah was cast into the furnaces of affliction and sealed,
And Vala fed in cruel delight the furnaces with fire.
Stern Urizen beheld, urged by necessity to keep
The evil day afar, and if perchance with iron power
He might avert his own despair. In woe and fear he saw
Vala incircle round the furnace, where Luvah was closed.
In joy she heard his howlings and forgot he was her Luvah
With whom she walked in bliss in times of innocence and youth.

Hear ye the voice of Luvah from the furnaces of Urizen:
If I indeed am Vala's King, and ye, oh Sons of Men,
The workmanship of Luvah's hands in times of everlasting.

When I called forth the earthworm from the cold and dark obscure
And nurtured her, I fed her with my rains and dews, she grew
A scaled serpent, yet I fed her though she hated me,
Day after day she fed upon the mountains in Luvah's sight,
I brought her through the wilderness, a dry and thirsty land,
And I commanded springs to rise for her in the dark desert,
Till she became a dragon, winged, bright, and poisonous.

I opened all the floodgates of the heavens to quench her thirst
Till she became a little weeping infant a span long.

I carried her in my bosom as a man carries a lamb,
I loved her, I gave her all my soul and my delight,
I hid her in soft gardens and in secret bowers of summer
Inextricable labyrinths. She bore me sons and daughters
And they have taken her away and hid her from my sight.
They have surrounded me with walls of iron and brass. Oh Lamb
Of God clothed in Luvah's garments! little knowest thou
Of Death Eternal, — that we all go to Eternal Death
To our primaeval chaos in fortuitous concourse of incoherent
Discordant principles of Love and Hate. I suffer affliction
Because I love, for I was Love, but hatred awakes in me,
And Urizen who was Faith and certainty is changed to Doubt,
The Hand of Urizen is upon me because I blotted out
That Human Delusion to deliver all the Sons of God
From bondage of the Human Form. Oh first-born Son of Light,
Oh Urizen, my enemy, I weep for thy stern ambition,
But weep in vain. Oh, when will you return, Vala the Wanderer?
These were the words of Luvah, patient in afflictions,
Reasoning from the Loins in the unreal forms of Ulro's night.
And when Luvah, age after age, was quite melted with woe,
The fires of Vala faded like a shadow cold and pale,
An evanescent shadow. Last she fell, a heap of ashes
Beneath the furnaces, a woeful heap in living death.

Then were the furnaces unsealed with spades and pickaxes,
Roaring let out the fluid. The molten metal ran in channels
Cut by the plough of ages, held in Urizen's strong hand
In many a valley. For the bulls of Luvah dragged the plough.
With trembling horror, pale, aghast, the children of Man
Stood on the infinite earth and saw these visions in the air,
In waters, and in earth beneath. They cried to one another
What, are we terrors to one another? Come, oh brethren, wherefore
Was this wide earth spread all abroad? Not for wild beasts to roam.
But many stood silent, and busied in their families.
And many said, We see no visions in the darkened air,
Measure the course of that sulphur orb that lights the darksome day.

Set stations on the breeding earth and let us buy and sell.
Others arose, and schools erected forming instruments
To measure out the course of heaven. Stern Urizen beheld
In woe his brethren and his sons in darkening woe lamenting
Upon the winds in clouds involved. Uttering his voice in thunder
Commanding all the work with care and power and severity.

Then seized the lions of Urizen their work and heated in the forge,
Roar the bright masses. Thundering beat the hammers. Many a pyramid
Is formed and thrown down thundering into the deeps of nonentity,
Heated red-hot they, hissing, rend their way down many a league
Till resting each his centre finds. Suspended there they stand
Casting their sparkles dire abroad into the dismal deep.
For, measured out in ordered spaces, the sons of Urizen
With compasses divide the deep. They the strong scales erect
That Luvah rent from the faint heart of the Fallen Man,
And weigh the massy cubes, then fix them in their awful stations.

And all the time in caverns shut the golden looms erected,
First span, then wove the atmospheres. Then the spider and worm
Plied the winged shuttle, piping shrill through all the listening threads,
Beneath the caverns roll the weights of lead and spindles of iron,
The enormous warp and woof rage direful on the affrighted deep.

While far into the vast unknown the strongwinged eagles bend
Their venturous flight in human forms distinct through darkness deep.
Their bear the woven draperies. On golden hooks they hang abroad
The universal curtains, and spread out from sun to sun
The vehicles of light. They separate the furious particles
Into mild currents as the water mingles with the wine.

While thus the spirits of strongest wing enlighten the dark deep
The threads are spun and the cords twisted and drawn out. Then the weak
Begin their work and many a net is netted, many a net
Spread, and many a spirit caught: innumerable the nets,
Innumerable the gins and traps, and many a soothing flute
Is formed, and many a corded lyre outspread over the immense.
In cruel delight they trap the listeners, and in cruel delight
Bind them, condensing the strong energies into little compass.

Some became seed of every plant that shall be planted. Some
The bulbous roots thrown up together into barns and garners.

Then rose the builders. First the Architect divine his plan
Unfolds, and the wondrous scaffold reared all round the infinite
Quadrangular the building rose, the heavens squared by a line,
Trigons and cubes divide the elements in finite bonds.

Multitudes without number work incessant, the hewn stone
Is placed in beds of mortar mingled with the ashes of Vala.
Severe the labour. Female slaves the mortar trod oppressed.

Twelve halls after the names of his twelve sons composed
The wondrous building, and three central domes after the names
Of his three daughters were encompassed by the twelve bright halls.
Every hall surrounded by a bright paradise of delight,
In which were towns and cities, nations, seas, mountains and rivers.
Each dome opened towards four halls, and the three domes encompassed
The Golden Hall of Urizen, whose western side glow'd bright
With ever streaming fires beaming from his awful limbs.
His Shadowy Feminine Semblance here reposed on a white couch,
Or hovered over his starry head, and when he smiled she brightened
Like a bright cloud in harvest; but when Urizen frowned she wept
In mists over his carved throne. And when he turned his back
Upon his golden hall and sought the labyrinthine porches
Of his wide heaven. Trembling, cold, in palsy fears she sat
A shadow of despair. Therefore toward the west Urizen formed
A recess in the wall for fires to glow upon the pale
Females, lonely in his absence, and her daughters oft upon
A golden altar burned perfumes with art celestial formed
Foursquare, sculptured and sweetly engraved to please their shadowy mother.

Ascending into her misty garments the blue smoke rolled to revive
Her cold limbs in the absence of her lord. Also her sons
With lives of victims sacrificed upon an altar of brass,
On the East side revived her soul with lives of beasts and birds
Slain on the altar, up ascending into her cloudy bosom: —
Of terrible workmanship the altar, labour of ten thousand slaves,
One thousand men of wondrous power spent their lives in its formation.
It stood on twelve steps named after her twelve sons,
And was erected at the chief entrance of Urizen's hall.

When Urizen returned from his immense labours and travels,
Descending she reposed beside him, folding him around
In her bright skirts. Astonished and confounded he beheld
Her shadowy form now separate. He shuddered and was silent.
Till her caresses and her tears revived him to life and joy.
Two wills they had, two intellects, and not as in time of old,
This Urizen perceived, and silent brooded in darkening clouds,
To him his labour was but sorrow and his kingdom was repentance,
He drove the male spirits all away from Ahania,
And she drove all the females from him away.

Los joyed, and Enitharmon laughed, saying, Let us go down
And see their labour and sorrow. They went down to see the woes
Of Vala, and the woes of Luvah, to draw in their delights,
And Vala like a shadow oft appeared to Urizen.

The King of Night beheld her moving among the brick-kilns compelled
To labour night and day among the fires, her lamenting voice
Is heard when silent night returns and labourers take their rest.

O Lord, wilt thou not look upon our sore afflictions
Among these flames incessant labouring? Our hard masters laugh
At all our sorrow. We are made to turn the wheel for water,
To carry the heavy basket on our scorched shoulders, to sift
The sand and ashes, to mix the clay with tears and repentance.
The times are now returned upon us. We have given ourselves
To scorn, and now are scorned by the slaves of our enemies.
Our beauty is covered over with clay and ashes, and our backs
Furrow'd with whips, and our flesh bruised with the heavy basket.
Forgive us, Oh, thou piteous one whom we have offended! Forgive
The weak remaining shadow of Vala that returns in sorrow to thee.
I cannot see Luvah as of old, I only see his feet
Like pillars of fire travelling through darkness and nonentity,
Thus she lamented day and night compelled to labour and sorrow.
Luvah in vain her lamentations heard: in vain his love
Brought him in various forms before her, still she knew him not,
Still she despised him, calling on his name and knowing him not,
Still hating, still professing love, still labouring in the smoke.

But infinitely beautiful the wondrous work arose
In sorrow and care, a golden world whose porches round the heaven,
And pillar'd halls and rooms received the eternal wandering stars.
A wondrous golden building, many a window, many a door,
And many a division let in and out the vast unknown.
Circled in infinite wall immovable, within its walls and recesses
The heavens were closed, and spirits mourned their bondage night and day,
And the Divine Vision appeared in Luvah's robes of blood.

There was the Mundane shell builded by Urizen's strong power.
Sorrowing went the planters forth to plant, the sower to sow,
They dry the channels for the rivers, they poured abroad the seas,
The seas and lakes. They reared the mountains and the rocks and hills
In beauteous order. Thence arose soft clouds and exhalations
Wandering even to the sunny orbs of light and heat,
For many a window ornamented with sweet ornaments
Looked out into the world of Tharmas, where in ceaseless torrents
His billows roll where monsters wander in the foamy paths.

On clouds the sons of Urizen beheld heaven walled round
They weighed and ordered all, and Urizen comforted saw
The wondrous work flow forth like visible out of the invisible,
For the Divine Lamb, even Jesus who is the Divine Vision,
Permitted all lest Man should fall into Eternal Death,
For when Luvah sunk down himself put on the robes of blood
Lest the state called Luvah should cease, and the Divine Vision
Walked in robes of blood till he who slept should awake.

Thus were the stars of heaven created like a golden chain
To bind the Body of Man to heaven from falling into the abyss.

Each took his station and his course began with sorrow and care.

In sevens and tens and fifties, hundreds, thousands, numbered all
According to their various powers subordinate to Urizen.
And to his sons in their degrees, and to his beauteous daughters
Travelling in silent majesty along their ordered ways
In right lined paths outmeasured by proportion, number, weight,
And measure, mathematic motion wondrous along the deep
In fiery pyramid or cube, or on ornamented pillars square
Of fire, far shining, travelling along even to its destined end,
Then falling down a terrible space, recovering in winter dire
Its wasted strength it back returns upon a nether course,
Till fired with ardour, fresh recruited in its humble spring
It rises up on high all summer, till its wearied course
Turns into autumn. Such the periods of many worlds.
Others triangular, right-angled course maintain. Others obtuse,
Acute, travel in simple paths. But others move
In intricate ways, biquadrate, trapeziums, rhombs, rhomboids,
Parallelograms triple and quadruple, polygons
In their amazing hard subdued course in the dark deep.

And Los and Enitharmon were driven down by their desires,
Descending sweet upon the wind among soft harps and voices
To plant divisions in the soul of Urizen and Ahania,
To conduct the voice of Enion to Ahania's midnight pillow.

Urizen saw and envied, and his imagination was filled;
Repining he contemplated the past in his bright sphere,
Terrified with his heart and spirit at the visions of futurity
That his dread fancy formed before him in the unformed void.

For Los and Enitharmon walked forth on the dewy earth,
Contracting or expanding all their flexible senses
At will to murmur in the flowers small as the honey-bee,
At will to stretch across the heavens and step from star to star,
Or standing on the earth erect, or on the stormy seas,
Driving the storms before them or delighting in sunny beams,
While round their heads the elemental gods kept harmony.

And Los said: Lo, the lily pale and the rose reddening fierce
Reproach thee, and the beamy garden sickens at thy beauty,
I grasp thy vest in my strong hands in vain. Like water springs
In the bright sands of Los evading my embrace. Thus I alone
Wander among the virgins of the summer. Look, they cry,
The poor forsaken Los mocked by the worm, the shelly snail,
The emmet and the beetle, hark! they laugh and mock at Los.

Secure now from the smitings of thy power, Demon of Fury,
Enitharmon answered. If the god enraptured me infold
In clouds of sweet obscurity my beauteous form dissolving,
Howl thou over the body of death. 'Tis thine. But if among the visions
Of summer I have seen thee sleep and turn thy cheek delighted
Upon the rose or lily pale, or on a bank where sleep
The beamy daughters of the light, starting, they rise, they flee
From thy fierce love, for though I am dissolved in the bright god
My spirit still pursues thy false love over rocks and valleys.

Los answered: Therefore fade I thus dissolved in raptured trance,
Thou canst repose on clouds of secrecy, while o'er my limbs
Cold dews and hoary frost creep, though I lie on banks of summer
Among the branches of the world. Cold and repining Los
Still dies for Enitharmon, nor a spirit springs from my dead corse,
Then I am dead till thou revivest me with thy sweet song.
Now taking on Ahania's form and now the form of Enion
I know thee not as once I knew thee in those blessed fields
Where Memory wishes to repose among the flocks of Tharmas.

Enitharmon answered, — Wherefore dost thou throw thine arms around
Ahania's image? I deceived thee and will still deceive.
Urizen saw thy sin and hid his beams in darkening clouds.

I still keep watch although I tremble and wither across the heavens
In strong vibrations of fierce jealousy, for thou art mine,
Created for my will, my slave, though strong, though I am weak.
Farewell, the God calls me away, I depart in my sweet bliss.

She fled, vanishing upon the wind and left a dead cold corse
In Los's arms. Howlings began over the body of death.

Los spoke. Thy God in vain shall call thee if by my strong power
I can infuse my dear revenge into his glowing breast.
There jealousy shall shadow all his mountains and Ahania
Curse thee, thou plague of woeful Los, and seek revenge on thee.

So saying in deep sobs he languished till dead; he also fell.
Night passed, and Enitharmon ere the dawn returned in bliss.
She sang over Los reviving him to life: his groans were terrible,
And thus she sang, —

I seize the sphery harp, awake the strings!

At the first sound the golden Sun arises from the deep
And shakes his awful hair,
The echo wakes the moon again to unbind her silver locks,
The golden Sun bears on my song,
And nine bright spheres of harmony rise round the fiery king.
The joy of woman is the death even of her most beloved,
Who dies for love of her
In torments of fierce jealousy and pangs of adoration.
The lovers' night bears on my song
And the nine spheres rejoice beneath my powerful control.

They sing unwearied to the notes of my immortal hand.
The solemn silent moon
Reverberates the long harmony sounding upon my limbs,
The birds and beasts rejoice and play,
And every one seeks for his mate to prove his inmost joy.

Furious and terrible they sport and rend the nether deep,
The deep lifts up his rugged head
And lost in infinite hovering wings vanishes with a cry.
The fading cry is ever dying,
The living voice is ever living in its inmost joy.

Arise, you little glancing wings and sing your infant joy,
Arise and drink your bliss,
For everything that lives is holy, for the source of life
Descends to be a weeping babe;
For the earthworm renews the moisture of the sandy plain.

Now my left hand I stretch abroad, even to Earth beneath,
And strike the terrible string.

I wake sweet joy in dews of sorrow and I plant a smile
In forests of affliction,
And wake the bubbling springs of life in regions of dark death.

I am weary. Lay thy hand upon me or I faint,
I faint beneath these beams of thine,
For thou hast touched my fine senses and they answered thee.
Now I am nothing, and I sink
And fall on the bed of solemn sleep till thou awakenest me.

Thus sang the lonely one in rapturous delusive trance.
Los heard, reviving. He seized her in his arms, delusive hope
Kindling she led him into shadows, and thence fled outstretched
Upon the immense like a bright rainbow, weeping, smiling, fading.

Thus lived Los, driving Enion far into the deathful infinite,
That he may also draw Ahania's spirit into her vortex.
Ah, happy blindness which sees not the terrors of the uncertain!
And thus she wails on the dark deep; the golden heavens tremble.

I am made to sow the thistle for wheat, the nettle for a nourishing dainty.

I have planted a false oath on the earth. It has brought forth a poison tree.

I have chosen the serpent for a councillor, and the dog
For a schoolmaster to my children.

I have blotted out from light and living the dove and the nightingale.
I have caused the earthworm to beg from door to door.
I have taught the thief a secret path into the house of the just.
I have taught pale artifice to spread his nets upon the morning.
My heavens are brass, my earth is iron, my moon a clod of clay,
My sun a pestilence burning at noon, a vapour of death in the night.
What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, — his wife, his house, his children.
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy,
And in the withered fields where the farmer ploughs for bread in vain.
It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun,
And in the harvest to sing on the waggon loaded with corn.
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted,
To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer,
To listen to the hungry raven's cry in the winter season,
When the red blood is filled with wine and with the marrow of lambs.
It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements,
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter-house moan;

To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast;
To hear sounds of love in the thunderstorm that destroys our enemy's house;
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, in the sickness that cuts off his children.
While our olive and wine sing and laugh round our door, and our children bring fruits and flowers,
Then the groan and the dolor are quite forgotten, and the slave grinding at the mill,
And the captive in chains, and the poor in the prison, and the soldier in the fields
When the shattered bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead.

It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity; —
Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me.

Ahania heard the lamentation, and a swift vibration
Spread through her golden frame. She rose up e'er the dawn of day
When Urizen slept on his couch. Drawn through unbounded space
On to the margin of Non-Entity the bright female came.
There she beheld the terrible form of Enion in the void,
And never from that moment could she rest upon her pillow.