THE FIRST BOOK OF URIZEN. CHAPTER IX

1. Then the Inhabitants of those Cities:
Felt their Nerves change into Marrow
And hardening Bones began
In swift diseases and torments,
In throbbings & shootings & grindings
Thro’ all the coasts; till weaken’d
The Senses inward rush’d shrinking,
Beneath the dark net of infection.

2  . Till the shrunken eyes clouded over
BDiscernd not the woven hipocrisy
But the streaky slime in their heavens
Brought together by narrowing perceptions
Appeard transparent air; for their eyes
Grew small like the eyes of a man
And in reptile forms shrinking together
Of seven feet stature they remaind

3  . Six days they shrunk up from existence
And on the seventh day they rested
And they bless’d the seventh day, in sick hope:
And forgot their eternal life

4  . And their thirty cities divided
In form of a human heart
No more could they rise at will
In the infinite void, but bound down
To earth by their narrowing perceptions