THE BOOK OF AHANIA . CHAPTER III.

1. The Globe shook; and Urizen, seated
On black clouds, his sore wound anointed.
The ointment flow’d down on the void
Miz’d with blood – here the snake gets her poison.

2  . With difficulty & great pain Urizen
Lifted on high the dead corse;
On his shoulders he bore it to where
A Tree hung over the Immensity.

3  . For when Urizen shrunk away
From Eternals, he sat on a rock
Barren, a rock which himself
From redounding fancies had petrified.
Many tears fell on the rock,
Many sparks of vegetation.
Soon shot the pained root
Of Mystery under his heel.
It grew a thick tree; he wrote
In silence his book of iron;
Till the horrid plant, bending its boughs,
Grew to roots when it felt the earth
And again sprung to many a tree.

4  . Amaz’d started Urizen! When
He beheld himself compassed round
And high roofed over with trees.
He arose, but the stems stood so thick
He with difficulty and great pain
Brought his Books, all but the Book
Of iron, form the dismal shade.

5  . The Tree still grows over the Void,
Enrooting itself all around,
An endless labyrinth of woe!

6  . The corse of his first begotten
on the accursed Tree of Mystery
On the topmost stem of this Tree
Urizen nail’d Fuzon’s corse.