50And 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 Spectre still wandering thro' them follows my Emanation,
5He 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:
10We 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 Spectre of Albion,
Who made himself a God & destroyed the Human Form Divine.
But the Divine Humanity & Mercy gave us a Human Form,
15Because 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
20In 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.
25Satan & 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.
30Judge 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.
Affection or Love becomes a State when divided from Imagination.
The Memory is a State always, & the Reason is a State
51
