The prophetic books of William Blake, Milton/Extra pages
EXTRA PAGES.
P. 3* BENEATH the Plow of Rintrah & the Harrow of the Almighty,
In the hands of Palamabron, Where the Starry Mills of Satan
Are built beneath the Earth & Waters of the Mundane Shell:
Here the Three Classes of Men take their Sexual texture Woven.
5The Sexual is Threefold: the Human is Fourfold.
If you account it Wisdom when you are angry to be silent, and
Not to shew it: I do not account that Wisdom, but Folly.
Every Man's Wisdom is peculiar to his own Individuality.
O Satan, my youngest born, art thou not Prince of the Starry Hosts,
10And of the Wheels of Heaven, to turn the Mills day & night?
Art thou not Newton's Pantocrator, weaving the Woof of Locke?
To Mortals thy Mills seem every thing, & the Harrow of Shaddai
A Scheme of Human Conduct invisible & incomprehensible.
Get to thy Labours at the Mills & leave me to my wrath.
15Satan was going to reply, but Los roll'd his loud thunders.
Anger me not! thou canst not drive the Harrow in pity's paths:
Thy Work is Eternal Death with Mills & Ovens & Cauldrons.
Trouble me no more, thou canst not have Eternal Life.
So Los spoke: Satan trembling obey'd, weeping along the way.
20Mark well my words! they are of your eternal Salvation!
Between South Molton Street & Stratford Place: Calvary's foot:
Where the Victms were preparing for sacrifice their Cherubim:
Around their loins pour'd forth their arrows, & their bosoms beam
With all colours of precious stones, and their inmost palaces
25Resounded with preparation of animals wild & tame.
(Mark well my words: Corporeal Friends are Spiritual Enemies)
Mocking Druidical Mathematical Proportion of Length, Bredth, Highth:
Displaying Naked Beauty: with Flute & Harp & Song.
P. 5* BY Enitharmon's looms when Albion was slain upon his Mountains,
And in his tent, through envy of the living form, even of the Divine Vision,
And of the sports of wisdom in the Human Imagination,
Which is the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus blessed for ever.
Mark well my words, they are of your eternal salvation.
Urizen lay in darkness and solitude in chains of the mind locked up.
Los seized his hammer and tongs; he laboured at his resolute anvil
Among indefinite Druid rocks, and snows of doubt and reasoning.
Refusing all definite form the Abstract Horror roofed, stony hard;
10And a first age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.
Down sunk with fright a red hot globe, round, burning, deep,
Deep down into the abyss, panting, conglobing, trembling;
And a second age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.
Rolling round into two little orbs, and closed in two little caves,
15The ages beheld the Abyss, lest bones of solitude freeze all over;
And a third age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.
From beneath his orbs of vision two ears in close volutions
Shot spiring out in the deep darkness and petrified as they grew;
And a fourth age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.
20Hanging upon the wind two nostrils bent down into the deep,
And a fifth age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.
In ghastly torment sick, a tongue of hunger and thirst flamed out,
And a sixth age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.
Enraged and stifled without and within, in terror and woe he threw his
25Right arm to the north, his left arm to the south, and his feet
Stamped the nether abyss in trembling and howling and dismay.
And a seventh age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.
Terrified, Los stood in the abyss, and his immortal limbs
Grew deadly pale. He became what he beheld, for a red
30Round globe sunk down from his Bosom into the Deep. In pangs
He hovered, it trembling and weeping. Trembling it shook
The nether abyss in tremblings. He wept over it, he cherished it
In deadly, sickening pain, till separated into a female pale
As the cloud that brings the snow. All the while from his Back
35A blue fluid exuded in sinews, hardening in the abyss,
Till it separated into a male form howling in jealousy,
Within, labouring; beholding without,—from particulars to generals
Subduing his Spectre. They builded the Looms of Generation;
They builded great Golgonooga, Time on Times, ages on ages.
40First Orc was born, then the Shadowy Female, then all Los's family.
At last Enitharmon brought forth Satan, refusing Form. In vain
The Miller of Eternity made subservient to the Great Harvest,
That he may go to his own Place, Prince of the Starry Wheels.
P. 8* THEN Los & Enitharmon knew that Satan is Urizen,
Drawn down by Orc & the Shadowy Female into Generation.
Oft Enitharmon enter'd weeping into the Space, there appearing
An aged Woman raving along the Streets (The Space is named
5Canaan): then she returned to Los, weary, frighted as from dreams.
The nature of a Female Space is this: it shrinks the Organs
Of Life till they become finite & Itself seems Infinite.
And Satan vibrated in the immensity of the Space: limited
To those without but Infinite to those within: it fell down and
10Became Canaan: closing Los from Eternity in Albion's Cliffs.
A mighty Fiend against the Divine Humanity must'ring to War.
Satan: Ah me! is gone to his own place, said Los: their Gods
I will not worship in their Churches, nor King in their Theatres.
Elynittria! whence is this Jealousy running along the mountains?
15British Women were not Jealous when Greek & Roman were Jealous.
Every thing in Eternity shines by its own Internal light: but thou
Darkenest every Internal light with the arrows of thy quiver,
Bound up in the horns of Jealousy to a deadly fading Moon.
And Ocalythron binds the Sun into a Jealous Globe,
20That every thing is fix'd, Opake without Internal light.
So Los lamented over Satan who triumphant divided the Nations
P. 17* AND Tharmas Demon of the Waters, & Orc, who is Luvah.
The Shadowy Female seeing Milton, howled in her lamentation
Over the Deeps, outstretching her Twenty seven Heavens over Albion.
And thus the Shadowy Female howls in articulate howlings:
I will lament over Milton in the lamentations of the afflicted:
My Garments shall be woven of sighs & heart broken lamentations:
The misery of unhappy Families shall be drawn out into its border,
Wrought with the needle with dire sufferings, poverty, pain & woe.
Along the rocky Island & thence throughout the whole Earth
There shall be the sick Father & his starving Family: there
The Prisoner in the Stone Dungeon & the Slave at the Mill.
I will have writings written all over it in Human Words,
That every Infant that is born upon the Earth shall read
And get by rote as a hard task of a life of sixty years.
15I will have Kings inwoven upon it, & Councellors & Mighty Men:
The Famine shall clasp it together with buckles & Clasps,
And the Pestilence shall be its fringe & the War its girdle,
To divide into Rahab & Tirzah that Milton may come to our tents.
For I will put on the Human Form & take the Image of God,
20Even Pity & Humanity, but my Clothing shall be Cruelty:
And I will put on Holiness as a breastplate & as a helmet,
And all my ornaments shall be of the gold of broken hearts,
And the precious stones of anxiety & care & desperation & death
And repentance for sin & sorrow & punishment & fear,
25To defend me from thy terrors, O Orc! my only beloved!
Orc answer'd: Take not the Human Form, O loveliest, Take not
Terror upon thee! Behold how I am, & tremble lest thou also
Consume in my Consummation: but thou maist take a Form
Female & lovely, that cannot consume in Man's consummation.
30Wherefore dost thou Create & Weave this Satan for a Covering?
When thou attemptest to put on the Human Form, my wrath
Burns to the top of heaven against thee in Jealousy & Fear.
Then I rend thee asunder, then I howl over thy clay & ashes.
When wilt thou put on the Female Form as in times of old,
35With a Garment of Pity & Compassion like the Garment of God?
His Garments are long sufferings for the Children of Men,
Jerusalem is his Garment & not thy Covering Cherub, O lovely
Shadow of my delight, who wanderest seeking for the prey.
So spoke Orc, when Oothoon & Leutha hover'd over his Couch
40Of fire in interchange of Beauty & Perfection in the darkness.
Opening interiorly into Jerusalem & Babylon shining glorious,
In the Shadowy Female's bosom Jealous her darkness grew:
Howlings fill'd all the desolate places in accusations of Sin,
In Female beauty shining in the unform'd void, & Orc in vain
45Stretch'd out his hands of fire, & wooed: they triumph in his pain.
Thus darken'd the Shadowy Female tenfold, & Orc tenfold
Glow'd on his rocky Couch against the darkness: loud thunders
Told of the enormous conflict, Earthquake beneath, around,
Rent the Immortal Females, limb from limb & joint from joint,
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
35Created to be Annihilated, & a new Ratio Created.
Whatever can be Created can be Annihilated: Forms cannot.
The Oak is cut down by the Ax, the Lamb falls by the Knife,
But their Forms Eternal exist, For ever. Amen. Hallelujah!
Thus they converse with the Dead, watching round the Couch of Death:
40For God himself enters Death's Door always with those that enter,
And lays down in the Grave with them, in Visions of Eternity,
Till they awake & see Jesus, & the Linen Clothes lying
That the Females had Woven for them, & the Gates of their Father's House.