THE FIRST BOOK OF URIZEN. CHAPTER III

1. The voice ended, they saw his pale visage
Emerge from the darkness; his hand
On the rock of eternity unclasping
The Book of brass. Rage siez’d the strong

2  . Rage, fury, intense indignation
In cataracts of fire blood & gall
In whirlwinds of sulphurous smoke:
And enormous forms of energy;
All the seven deadly sins of the soul

In living creations appear’d
In the flames of eternal fury.

3  . Sund’ring, dark’ning, thund’ring!
Rent away with a terrible crash
Eternity roll’d wide apart

Wide asunder rolling
Mountainous all around
Departing; departing; departing:
Leaving ruinous fragments of life
Hanging frowning cliffs & all between
An ocean of voidness unfathomable.

4  . The roaring fires ran o’er the heav’ns
In whirlwinds & cataracts of blood
And o’er the dark desarts of Urizen
Fires pour thro’ the void on all sides
On Urizens self-begotten armies.

5  . But no light from the fires. all was darkness
In the flames of Eternal fury

6  . In fierce anguish & quenchless flames
To the desarts and rocks He ran raging
To hide, but He could not: combining
He dug mountains & hills in vast strength,
He piled them in incessant labour,
In howlings & pangs & fierce madness
Long periods in burning fires labouring
Till hoary, and age-broke, and aged,
In despair and the shadows of death.

7  . And a roof, vast petrific around,
 On all sides He fram’d: like a womb;
Where thousands of rivers in veins
Of blood pour down the mountains to cool
The eternal fires beating without
From Eternals; & like a black globe
View’d by sons of Eternity, standing
On the shore of the infinite ocean
Like a human heart strugling & beating
The vast world of Urizen appear’d.

8  . And Los round the dark globe of Urizen,
Kept watch for Eternals to confine,
The obscure separation alone;
For Eternity stood wide apart,

 

As the stars are apart from the earth

9. Los wept howling around the dark Demon:
And cursing his lot; for in anguish,

Urizen was rent from his side;
And a fathomless void for his feet;
And intense fires for his dwelling.

10  . But Urizen laid in a stony sleep
Unorganiz’d, rent from Eternity

11  . The Eternals said: What is this? Death
Urizen is a clod of clay.

 

12: Los howld in a dismal stupor,
Groaning! gnashing! groaning!
Till the wrenching apart was healed

12: Los howld in a dismal stupor,
Groaning! gnashing! groaning!
Till the wrenching apart was healed

13  : But the wrenching of Urizen heal’d not
Cold, featureless, flesh or clay,
Rifted with direful changes
He lay in a dreamless night

14  : Till Los rouz’d his fires, affrighted
At the formless unmeasurable death.