Written in 1789, this narrative poem is the first poetry in which Blake used free septenaries (lines of verse containing seven metrical feet), which the poet would go on to use in many of his later works. Unpublished throughout Blake’s lifetime, Tiriel was first printed in 1874, when it appeared in William Michael Rossetti’s Poetical Works of William Blake. Although Blake chose not to engrave the poem, he did make twelve sepia drawings to accompany the rough and unfinished manuscript, although three of them are considered lost as they have not been traced since 1863.
The narrative introduces the history of the sons of Har and Heva, characters in Blake’s mythological writings that roughly correspond to an aged Adam and Eve, who have revolted and abandoned their parents. Tiriel subsequently sets himself up as a tyrant in the west, driving one of his brothers, Ijim, into exile in the wilderness and chaining the other, Zazel, in a cave in the mountains.