The Book Of Urizen: Chapter III

I     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 II     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. III     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. IV     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. V     But no light from the fires. all was darkness     In the flames of Eternal fury VI     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. VII     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. VIII     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 IX     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. X     But Urizen laid in a stony sleep     Unorganiz'd, rent from Eternity XI     The Eternals said: What is this? Death     Urizen is a clod of clay. XII     Los howld in a dismal stupor,     Groaning! gnashing! groaning!     Till the wrenching apart was healed XIII     But the wrenching of Urizen heal'd not     Cold, featureless, flesh or clay,     Rifted with direful changes     He lay in a dreamless night XIV     Till Los rouz'd his fires, affrighted     At the formless unmeasurable death.