William Blake - The Greatest Works of William Blake (With Complete Original Illustrations)

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The shadowy daughter of Urthona stood before red Orc.

When fourteen suns had faintly journey’d o’er his dark abode;

His food she brought in iron baskets, his drink in cups of iron;

Crown’d with a helmet & dark hair the nameless female stood;

A quiver with its burning stores, a bow like that of night,

When pestilence is shot from heaven; no other arms she need:

Invulnerable tho’ naked, save where clouds roll round her loins,

Their awful folds in the dark air; silent she stood as night;

For never from her iron tongue could voice or sound arise;

But dumb till that dread day when Orc assay’d his fierce embrace.

Dark virgin; said the hairy youth, thy father stern abhorr’d;

Rivets my tenfold chains while still on high my spirit soars;

Sometimes an eagle screaming in the sky, sometimes a lion,

Stalking upon the mountains, & sometimes a whale I lash

The raging fathomless abyss, anon a serpent folding

Around the pillars of Urthona, and round thy dark limbs,

On the Canadian wilds I fold, feeble my spirit folds.

For chaind beneath I rend these caverns; when thou bringest food

I howl my joy! and my red eyes seek to behold thy face

In vain! these clouds roll to & fro, & hide thee from my sight.

Silent as despairing love, and strong as jealousy,

The hairy shoulders rend the links, free are the wrists of fire;

Round the terrific loins he siez’d the panting struggling womb;

It joy’d: she put aside her clouds & smiled her firstborn smile;

As when a black cloud shews its light’nings to the silent deep.

Soon as she saw the terrible boy then burst the virgin cry.

I know thee, I have found thee, & I will not let thee go;

Thou art the image of God who dwells in darkness of Africa;

And thou art fall’n to give me life in regions of dark death.

On my American plains I feel the struggling afflictions

Endur’d by roots that writhe their arms into the nether deep:

I see a serpent in Canada, who courts me to his love;

In Mexico an Eagle, and a Lion in Peru;

I see a Whale in the South-sea, drinking my soul away.

O what limb rending pains I feel. thy fire & my frost

Mingle in howling pains, in furrows by thy lightnings rent;

This is eternal death; and this the torment long foretold.

The stern Bard ceas’d, asham’d of his own song; enrag’d he swung

His harp aloft sounding, then dash’d its shining frame against

A ruin’d pillar in glittring fragments; silent he turn’d away,

And wander’d down the vales of Kent in sick & drear lamentings.

The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent,

Sullen fires across the Atlantic glow to America’s shore:

Piercing the souls of warlike men, who rise in silent night,

Washington, Franklin, Paine & Warren, Gates, Hancock & Green;

Meet on the coast glowing with blood from Albions fiery Prince.

Washington spoke; Friends of America look over the Atlantic sea;

A bended bow is lifted in heaven, & a heavy iron chain

Descends link by link from Albions cliffs across the sea to bind

Brothers & sons of America, till our faces pale and yellow;

Heads deprest, voices weak, eyes downcast, hands work-bruis’d,

Feet bleeding on the sultry sands, and the furrows of the whip

Descend to generations that in future times forget.–-

The strong voice ceas’d; for a terrible blast swept over the heaving sea;

The eastern cloud rent; on his cliffs stood Albions wrathful Prince

A dragon form clashing his scales at midnight he arose,

And flam’d red meteors round the land of Albion beneath

His voice, his locks, his awful shoulders, and his glowing eyes,

Appear to the Americans upon the cloudy night.

Solemn heave the Atlantic waves between the gloomy nations,

Swelling, belching from its deeps red clouds & raging Fires!

Albion is sick. America faints! enrag’d the Zenith grew.

As human blood shooting its veins all round the orbed heaven

Red rose the clouds from the Atlantic in vast wheels of blood

And in the red clouds rose a Wonder o’er the Atlantic sea;

Intense! naked! a Human fire fierce glowing, as the wedge

Of iron heated in the furnace; his terrible limbs were fire

With myriads of cloudy terrors banners dark & towers

Surrounded; heat but not light went thro’ the murky atmosphere

The King of England looking westward trembles at the vision

Albions Angel stood beside the Stone of night, and saw

The terror like a comet, or more like the planet red

That once inclos’d the terrible wandering comets in its sphere.

Then Mars thou wast our center, & the planets three flew round

Thy crimson disk; so e’er the Sun was rent from thy red sphere;

The Spectre glowd his horrid length staining the temple long

With beams of blood; & thus a voice came forth, and shook the temple

The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations;

The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;

The bones of death, the cov’ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry’d.

Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!

Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst;

Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:

Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;

Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,

Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;

Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.

And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge;

They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream.

Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning

And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;

For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.

In thunders ends the voice. Then Albions Angel wrathful burnt

Beside the Stone of Night; and like the Eternal Lions howl

In famine & war, reply’d. Art thou not Orc, who serpent-form’d

Stands at the gate of Enitharmon to devour her children;

Blasphemous Demon, Antichrist, hater of Dignities;

Lover of wild rebellion, and transgresser of Gods Law;

Why dost thou come to Angels eyes in this terrific form?

The terror answerd: I am Orc, wreath’d round the accursed tree:

The times are ended; shadows pass the morning gins to break;

The fiery joy, that Urizen perverted to ten commands,

What night he led the starry hosts thro’ the wide wilderness:

That stony law I stamp to dust: and scatter religion abroad

To the four winds as a torn book, & none shall gather the leaves;

But they shall rot on desart sands, & consume in bottomless deeps;

To make the desarts blossom, & the deeps shrink to their fountains,

And to renew the fiery joy, and burst the stony roof.

That pale religious letchery, seeking Virginity,

May find it in a harlot, and in coarse-clad honesty

The undefil’d tho’ ravish’d in her cradle night and morn:

For every thing that lives is holy, life delights in life;

Because the soul of sweet delight can never be defil’d.

Fires inwrap the earthly globe, yet man is not consumd;

Amidst the lustful fires he walks: his feet become like brass,

His knees and thighs like silver, & his breast and head like gold.

Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets & alarm my Thirteen Angels!

Loud howls the eternal Wolf! the eternal Lion lashes his tail!