Night the Fourth

But Tharmas rode on the dark abyss. The voice of Tharmas rolled
Over the heavy deluge. He saw Los and Enitharmon emerge
In strength and brightness from the abyss. His bowels yearned over them.

They rose in strength above the heaving deluge, in mighty scorn,
Red as the sun in the bright morning of the bloody day,
Tharmas beheld them, and his bowels yearned over them.

He said: Ah, Enion, wherefore do I feel such love and pity?

How is this? All my hope is gone! Enion for ever fled!

Like a famished eagle, eyeless, raging in the vast expanse.
Incessant tears are now my food, incessant tears and rage.

Deathless for ever now I wander, seeking oblivion —

In torrents of despair — in vain. For if I plunge beneath,
Stifling I live. If dashed to pieces from a rocky height,
I re-unite in endless torment. Would I had never risen
From death's cold sleep beneath the bottom of the raging ocean.

And cannot those who once have loved ever forget their love?

Are love and rage the same passion? They are the same in me.

Are those who love like those who died, risen again from death,
Immortal in immortal torment never to be delivered?
Is it not possible that one risen again from death
Can die? When dark despair comes over, can I not then
Flow down into the sea and slumber in oblivion?

Deformed I see these lineaments of ungratified desire.

The all-powerful curse of an honest man be upon Urizen and Luvah.
But thou, my son, glorious in brightness, comforter of Tharmas,
Go forth, rebuild this universe beneath my indignant power,
An universe of Death and Decay! Let Enitharmon's hands
Weave soft delusive forms of man above my watery world,
Renew these ruined souls of men through Earth, Sea, Air and Fire,
To waste in endless corruption, renew those I will destroy.
Perhaps Enion may resume some little semblance yet
To ease my pangs of heart and to restore some peace to Tharmas.

Los answered in his furious pride, sparks issuing from his hair,
Hitherto shalt thou come, no further; here thy proud waves cease.
We have drunk up the Eternal Man by our unbounded power.

Beware lest we also drink up thee, rough Demon of the Waters.

Our God is Urizen, the King, King of the Heavenly hosts.

We have no other god but him, thou father of worms and clay.

And he is fallen into the deep, rough Demon of the waters,
And Los remains God over all, weak father of worms and clay.

I know I was Urthona, keeper of the gates of Heaven,
But now I am all-powerful Los, and Urthona is but my shadow.

Doubting stood Tharmas in the solemn darkness. His dim eyes
Swam in red tears. He reared his waves above the head of Los
In wrath; but pitying, back withdrew again with many a sigh.
Now he resolved to destroy Los, and now his tears rolled down.

In scorn stood Los, red sparks of blighting from his furious head
Flew o'er the waves of Tharmas. Pitying, Tharmas stayed his waves,
For Enitharmon shrieked amain, crying: — Oh, my sweet world,
Built by the Architect divine, whose love to Los and Enitharmon,
Thou rash abhorred Demon in thy fury hast o'erthrown!
What Sovereign Architect, said Tharmas, dare my will control?
For, if I will, I urge these waters: if I will, they sleep
In peace beneath my awful frown. My will shall be my law.

So saying, in a wave he raped bright Enitharmon far
Away from Los, but covered her with softest brooding care
On a broad wave in the far west, balming her bleeding wound.
Oh, how Los howled at the rending asunder! All the fibres rent
Where Enitharmon joined to his left side, in grinding pain.

He, falling on the rocks, bellowed his dolour, till the blood
Stanched. Then in ululation wailed his woes upon the wind.

But Tharmas called to the Dark Spectre, who upon the shores
With dislocated limbs had fallen. The spectre rose in pain, —
A shadow blue, obscure and dismal, like a statue of lead
Bent by its fall from a high tower, the dolorous shadow rose.
Go forth, said Tharmas, works of joy are thine: obey and live.
So shall the spongy marrow issuing from thy splintered bones
Bonify, and thou shalt have rest, when this thy labour is done.
Go forth, bear Enitharmon back to the Eternal Prophet,
Build her a bower in the midst of all my dashing waves;
Make first a resting place for Los and Enitharmon, then
Thou shalt have rest. If thou refusest, dashed abroad on all
My waves thy limbs shall separate in rottenness, and thou
Become a prey to all my demons of despair and hope.

The Spectre of Urthona, seeing Enitharmon, writhed
His cloudy form in jealous fears, and muttering thunders hoarse
And casting round thick glooms, his fierce pangs of heart thus uttered:

Tharmas, I know thee — how are we altered, our beauty decayed!
But still I know thee, though in this horrible ruin whelmed.

Thou, once the mildest son of heaven, art now a Rage become,
A terror to all living things. Think not I am ignorant
That thou art risen from the dead, or that, my power forgot,
I slumber here in weak repose. I remember the day,
The day of terror and abhorrence ......

When fleeing from the battle, thou fleeting, and, like the raven
Of dawn, outstretching an expanse where no expanse had been,
Drewest all the sons of Beulah into thy dread vortex, following
The eddying spirit down the hills of Beulah. All my sons
Stood round me at the anvil, where, new-heated, the red wedge
Of iron glowed furious, prepared for spades and mattocks hard.
Hearing the symphonies of war loud sounding, all my sons
Fled from my side. Then pangs smote me unknown before I felt
My loins begin to break forth into veiny pipes and writhe
Before me in the wind, englobing, trembling with vibrations,
The bloody mass began to animate. I, bending over,
Wept bitter tears incessant, still beholding how the form
Dividing and dividing from my loins, a weak and piteous
Soft cloud of snow, a female pale. I saw, and soft embraced
My counterpart, and called it love. I named her Enitharmon.
But found myself and her together issuing down the tide
Which now our rivers were become, delving through caverns huge
Of gory blood, struggling to be delivered from our bonds.
She strove in vain. Not so Urthona strove, for, breaking forth,
A shadow blue, obscure and dismal, from the breathing nostrils
Of Enion I issued to air, divided from Enitharmon.

I howled in sorrow. I beheld thee rotting upon the rocks.

I, pitying, hovered over thee; I protected thy ghastly corse
From vultures of the deep; then wherefore shouldst thou rage as now
Against me who thee guarded in the night of death from harm?

Tharmas replied, — Art thou Urthona, my friend, my old companion,
With whom I lived in happiness before that deadly night
When Urizen gave the horses of light into the hands of Luvah?
Thou knowest not what Tharmas knows. Oh! I could tell thee tales
That would enrap thee as it has enrapped me, even
From death in wrath and fury. But now, come, arise, bear back
The loved Enitharmon. Thou hast her here before thine eyes.
But my sweet Enion is vanished, and I never more
Shall see her, unless thou, O Shadow, will protect this son
Of Enion, and him assist to bind the fallen king,
Lest he should rise again from death in all his dreary furor.
Bind him. Take Enitharmon for thy sweet reward, while I
In vain am driven on false hope, the sister of despair.

Groaning the Terror rose, and drave his solid rocks before
Upon the tide, till underneath the feet of Los a world,
Dark, dreadful rose, and Enitharmon lay at Los's feet.

The dolorous shadow joyed. Weak hope appeared around his head
Tharmas before Los stood, and thus the voice of Tharmas rolled.

Now all comes into the power of Tharmas. Urizen is fallen,
And Luvah hidden in the elemental forms of life and death.

Urthona is my son. Oh, Los, thou art Urthona, and Tharmas
Is God. The Eternal Man is sealed, never to be delivered.
I roll my floods over his body. My billows and waves pass over him,
The sea encompasses him and monsters of the deep are his companions,
Dreamer of furious oceans, cold sleeper of weeds and shells
Thy eternal form shall never renew. My uncertain prevails against thee,
Yet though I rage, God over all, a portion of my life
That in eternal fields in comfort wandered with my flocks
At noon, and laid her head upon my wearied bosom at night; —
She is divided. She is vanished, even like Luvah and Vala.

Oh, why did foul ambition seize thee, Urizen, Prince of Light?
And thou, oh Luvah, Prince of Love, till Tharmas was divided?
And I, — what can I now behold but an Eternal Death?
Before my eyes, and an Eternal weary work to strive
Against the monstrous forms to breed among my silent waves,
Is this to be a God? For rather would I be a Man,
To know sweet science, and to do with simple companions
Sitting beneath a tent and viewing sheepfolds and soft pastures.
Take thou the hammer of Urthona. Rebuild these furnaces.
Dost thou refuse? Mind I the sparks that issue from thy hair?

I will compel thee to rebuild by these my furious waves
Death choose or life. Thou strugglest in my waters now. Choose life,
And all the elements shall serve thee to their soothing flutes.
Their sweet inspiring lyres thy labour shall administer,
And they to thee only resist not. Faint not thou, my son,
Now thou dost know what 'tis to strive against the god of waters.

So saying, Tharmas on his furious chariots of the deep
Departed far into the unknown and left a wondrous void
Round Los. Afar his waters bore on all sides round with noise
Of wheels and horses' hoofs, and trumpets, horns and clarions.
Terrified, Los beheld the ruins of Urizen beneath
A horrible chaos to his eyes, a formless immeasurable death
Whirling up broken rocks on high into the dismal air,
And fluctuating all beneath in eddies of molten fluid.

Then Los with terrible hands seized on the Round Furnaces
Of Urizen: enormous work; he builded them anew,
Labour of ages in the darkness and the wars of Tharmas
And Los formed anvils of hard iron petrific, for his blows
Petrify with incessant beating many a rock, a planet,
But Urizen slept in a stony stupor in the nether abyss,
A dreamful, horrible state in tossings on his icy bed
Freezing to solid all beneath. His grey oblivious form
Stretched over the immense heaves in strong shudders silent
In brooding contemplations stretching out from north to south
In mighty power. Bound him always Los rolled furious,
His thund'rous wheels from furnace to furnace tending diligent
The contemplative Terror, frightened in his sorrowing sphere.
Frightened with cold infectious madness. In his hands the thundering
Hammer of Urthona, forming under his heavy hand,
The days and years in chains of iron round the limbs of Urizen,
Linked hour to hour, and day to night, night to day, year to year,
In periods of pulsative furor. Mills he formed and works
Of many wheels resistless in the power of dark Urthona.

But Enitharmon wrapped in clouds wailed loud, for as Los beat
The anvils of Urthona link by link the chain of sorrow
Warping upon the winds and whirling round in the dark deep,
Lashed on the limbs of Enitharmon, and the sulphur fires
Belched from the furnaces wreathed round her chained in ceaseless fire.
The lovely female howled, and Urizen beneath deep groaned
Deadly, beneath the hammers beating, grateful to the ears
Of Los absorbed in dire revenge. He drank with joy the cries
Of Enitharmon, and the groans of Urizen, fuel for wrath,
And for his pity secret, feeding on thoughts of cruelty.

The Spectre wept at his dire labours when from ladles huge
He poured the molten iron round the limbs of Enitharmon.

But when he poured it round the bones of Urizen, he laughed
Hollow upon the hollow wind, his shadowy form obeying
The voice of Los, compelled he laboured round the furnaces.

And thus began the binding of Urizen, day and night in fear.
Circling round the Demon, dark with howlings and dismay,
The prophet of Eternity beat on iron links and brass,
And as he beat, the hurtling Demon terrified at the shape
Enslaved humanity put on, became what he beheld
Raging against Tharmas, his god, and uttering aloud
Ambiguous words, blasphemous, filled with envy, firm resolved
On hate eternal in his vast disdain he laboured beating
The links of fate, link after link, an endless chain of sorrow.
The Eternal Mind bounded, began to roll, Eddies of wrath
Round and round, and the sulphurous foam now surging thick,
Settled, a bright and shining lake, as clear and white as snow.

Forgetfulness, dumbness, necessity, in chains of the mind locked up,
In fetters of iron shrinking, disorganized, rent from Eternity,
Los beat on his fetters and heated his furnaces,
And poured iron solder and solder of brass.

Restless, the immortal, enchained, heaving dolorous,
Anguished, unbearable, till a roof, shaggy, wild, enclosed
In an orb his fountain of thought.

In a horrible, dreamful slumber like the linked chain,
A vast spine writhed in torment upon the wind,
Shooting out pained roots like a bending cavern,
And bones of solidness froze over all his nerves of joy.

And a first age passed over and a state of dismal woe.

From the curves of his pointed spine down sunk with fright,
A red round globe hot burning, deep down into the abyss
Panting, conglobing, trembling, shooting out ten thousand branches
Around his solid bones, and a second age passed over him.
In harrowing fear rolling his nervous brain shot branches
Round the branches of his heart, ....
On high into two little orbs hiding in two little caves,
Hiding carefully from the wind. His eyes beheld the deep,
And a third age passed over and a state of dismal woe.

The pangs of hope began, a heavy pain striving and struggling,
Two ears in close volutions from beneath his orbs of vision
Shot spiring out and petrified,
And a fourth age passed over and a state of dismal woe.

In ghastly torment sick, hanging upon the wind,
Two nostrils bent down to the deeps ....
And a fifth age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

In ghastly torment sick, within his ribs bloated round
A craving hungry cavern; thence arose his channelled throat,
Like a red flame a tongue of hunger and of thirst appeared,
And a sixth age passed over and a state of dismal woe.

Enraged and stifled with torment, he threw his right arm to the north,
His left arm to the south, shooting out in anguish deep,
And his feet stamped the nether abyss in trembling and dismay,
And a seventh age passed over and a state of dismal woe.

The Council of God on high watching the Body
Of Man clothed in Luvah's robes of blood, beheld, and wept,
Descending over Beulah's mild moon-covered regions,
The daughters of Beulah saw the Divine Vision comforted.
And as a double female form, loveliness and perfection
They bowed their head and worshipped, and with mild voice spoke these words:

Lord Saviour, if Thou hadst been here our brother had not died,
And now we know that whatsoever thou wilt ask of God
He will give it Thee, for we are weak women and dare not lift
Our eyes to thy Divine pavilion, therefore in mercy thou
Appearest clothed in Luvah's garments that we may behold
And live. Behold Eternal Death is in Beulah; behold
We perish and shall not be found unless thou grant a place
In which may be hidden, under the shadow of wings. if we who are but for a time and who pass away in winter
Behold these wonders of Eternity we shall consume.

Such were the words of Beulah, of the feminine emanations.
The Empyrean groaned throughout. All Eden was darkened.
The corse of Man lay on the rock. The Sea of Time and Space
Beat round the rocks in mighty waves, and as a polypus
That vegetates beneath the sea, the limbs of man vegetated
In monstrous forms of death, a human polypus of death.

The Saviour mild and gentle bent over the corse of death,
Saying, — If ye will but believe your brother shall rise again.
And first he found the limit of opacity and named it Satan
In Albion's bosom, for in every human bosom these limits stand.
And next he found the limit of contraction, and named it Adam,
While yet those beings were not born nor knew of good or evil.

Then wondrously the deeps beneath felt the Divine hand. Limit
Was put to Eternal Death. Los felt the limit and saw
The finger of God go forth and touch the seventh furnace in terror.
And Los beheld the hand of God over his furnaces
Beneath the deeps in dismal darkness beneath immensity.

In terror Los shrank from his task. His great hammer
Fell from his hand, his fires hid their mighty limbs in smoke.

For with noises ruinous, hurtling and clashing and groans,
The immortal endured, though bound in a deadly sleep.

Pale terror seized the eyes of Los as labouring he beat round.

The hurtling demon terrified as he beheld the shape
Enslaved Humanity put on: he became what he beheld;

He became what he was doing and he was himself transformed.

Spasms seized his muscular fibres writhing from his lips
Unwilling moved as Urizen howled: his loins wave like the sea.
At Enitharmon's shrieks his knees each other smote as he looked
With stony eyes on Urizen, and then swift writhed his neck
Involuntary to the couch where Enitharmon lay.
The bones of Urizen hurtle in the wind. The bones of Los and his iron sinews bend like lead and fold
Into unusual forms, dancing, and howling, stamping the abyss.