emerge round the gloomy King.
18. With thunder and fire, leading his starry hosts thro' the waste
wilderness, he promulgates his ten commands, glancing his beamy
eyelids over the deep in dark dismay;
19. Where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the morning
plumes her golden breast,
20. Spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to
dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying,
Empire is no more! and now the lion and the wolf shall cease.
CHORUS.
Let the Priests of the Raven of dawn no longer in deadly black with
hoarse note curse the sons of joy; Nor his accepted brethren, whom,
tyrant, he calls free, lay the bound or build the roof; Nor pale
religious letchery call that virginity that wishes but acts not;
For everything that lives is Holy."
And so, as with fire and thunder--"thunder of thought, and flames of
fierce desire"--is this _Marriage of Heaven and Hell_ at length happily
consummated; the prophet, as a fervent paranymph, standing by to invoke
upon the wedded pair his most unclerical benediction. Those who are not
bidden to the bridegroom's supper may as well keep away, lest worse befall
them, not having a wedding garment. For us there remains little to say,
now that the torches are out, the nuts scattered, the songs silent, and
the saffron faded from the veil. We will wish them a quiet life, and an
heir who may combine the merits and capacities of either parent. It were
pleasant enough, but too superfluous, to dwell upon the beauty of this
nuptial hymn; to bid men remark what eloquence, what subtlety, what ardour
of wisdom, what splendour of thought, is here; how far it outruns, not in
daring alone but in sufficiency, all sayings of minor mystics who were not
also poets; how much of lofty love and of noble faith underlies and
animates these rapid and fervent words; what greatness of spirit and of
speech there was in the man who, living as Blake lived, could write as
Blake has written. Those who cannot see what is implied may remain unable
to tolerate what is expressed; and those who can read aright need no index
of ours.[51]
[Illustration]
The decorations of this great work, though less large and complete than
those of the subsequent prophecies, are full of noble and subtle beauty.
Over every page faint fibres and flickering threads of colour weave a net
of intricate design. Skies cloven with flame and thunder, half-blasted
trees round which huddled forms of women or men cower and cling, strange
beasts and splendid flowers, alternate with the engraved text; and
throughout all the sunbeams of heaven and fires of hell shed fiercer or
softer light. In minute splendour and general effect the pages of Blake's
next work fall short of these; though in the _Visions of the Daughters of
Albion_ the separate designs are fuller and more composed. This poem,
written in a sort of regular though quasi-lyrical blank verse, is more
direct and lucid in purpose than most of these books; but the style is
already laxer, veers more swiftly from point to point, stands weaker on
its feet, and speaks with more of a hurried and hysterical tone. With
"formidable moral questions," as the biographer has observed, it does
assuredly deal; and in a way somewhat formidable. This, we are told, "the
exemplary man had good right to do." Exemplary or not, he in common with
all men had undoubtedly such a right; and was not slow to use it. Nowhere
else has the prophet so fully and vehemently set forth his doctrine of
indulgence; too Albigensian or antinomian this time to be given out again
in more decorous form. Of pure mythology there is happily little; of pure
allegory even less. "The eye sees more than the heart knows;" these words
are given on the title-page by way of motto or key-note. Above this
inscription a single design fills the page; in it the title is written
with characters of pale fire upon cloud and rainbow; the figure of the
typical woman, held fast to earth but by one foot, seems to soar and yearn
upwards with straining limbs that flutter like shaken flame: appealing in
vain to the mournful and merciless Creator, whose sad fierce face looks
out beyond and over her, swathed and cradled in bloodlike fire and drifted
rain. In the prologue we get a design expressive of plain and pure
pleasure; a woman gathers a child from the heart of a blossom as it
breaks, and the sky is full of the golden stains and widening roses of a
sundawn. But elsewhere, from the frontispiece to the end, nothing meets us
but emblems of restraint and error; figures rent by the beaks of eagles
though lying but on mere cloud, chained to no solid rock by the fetters
only of their own faiths or fancies; leafless trunks that rot where they
fell; cold ripples of barren sea that break among caves of bondage. The
perfect woman, Oothoon, is one with the spirit of the great western world;
born for rebellion and freedom, but half a slave yet, and half a harlot.
"Bromion," the violent Titan, subject himself to ignorance and sorrow, has
defiled her;[52] "Theotormon," her lover, emblem of man held in bondage to
creed or law, will not become one with her because of her shame; and she,
who gathered in time of innocence the natural flower of delight, calls now
for his eagles to rend her polluted flesh with cruel talons of remorse and
ravenous beaks of shame: enjoys his infliction, accepts her agony, and
reflects his severe smile in the mirrors of her purged spirit.[53] But he
"sits wearing the threshold hard
With secret tears; beneath him sound like waves on a desert shore
The voice of slaves beneath the sun, and children bought with money."
From her long melodious lamentation we give one continuous excerpt here.
Sweet, and lucid as _Thel_, it is more subtle and more strong; the
allusions to American servitude and English aspiration, which elsewhere
distract and distort the sense and scheme of the poem, are here well
cleared away.
"I cry Arise, O Theotormon; for the village dog
Barks at the breaking day; the nightingale has done lamenting;
The lark does rustle in the green corn, and the eagle returns
From nightly prey and lifts his golden beak to the pure east;
Shaking the dust from his immortal pinions, to awake
The sun that sleeps too long. Arise my Theotormon, I am pure
Because the night is gone that closed me in its deadly black.
They told me that the night and day were all that I could see;
They told me that I had five senses to enclose me up,
And they enclosed my infinite beam into a narrow circle,
And sank my heart into the abyss, a red round globe hotburning
Till all from life I was obliterated and erased.
Instead of morn arises a bright shadow like an eye
In the eastern cloud; instead of night a sickly charnel-house.
But Theotormon hears me not: to him the night and morn
Are both alike; a night of sighs, a morning of fresh tears.
And none but Bromion can hear my lamentations.
With what sense is it that the chicken shuns the ravenous hawk?
With what sense does the tame pigeon measure out the expanse?
With what sense does the bee form cells? have not the mouse and frog
Eyes and ears and sense of touch? yet are their habitations
And their pursuits as different as their forms and as their joy.
Ask the wild ass why he refuses burdens, and the meek camel
Why he loves man: is it because of eye, ear, mouth or skin,
Or breathing nostrils? no: for these the wolf and tiger have.
Ask the blind worm the secrets of the grave and why her spires
Love to curl around the bones of death: and ask the ravenous snake
Where she gets poison; and the winged eagle why he loves the sun;
And then tell me the thoughts of man, that have been hid of old.
Silent I hover all the night, and all day could be silent,
If Theotormon once would turn his loved eyes upon me;
How can I be defiled when I reflect thy image pure?
Sweetest the fruit that the worm feeds on, and the soul prey'd on by woe;
The new-washed lamb tinged with the village smoke, and the bright swan
By the red earth of our immortal river; I bathe my wings
And I am white and pure to hover round Theotormon's breast.
Then Theotormon broke his silence, and he answered;
Tell me what is the night or day to one overflowed with woe?
Tell me what is a thought? and of what substance is it made?
Tell me what is joy? and in what gardens do joys grow?
And in what rivers swim the sorrows? and upon what mountains
Wave shadows of discontent? and in what houses dwell the wretched
Drunken with woe forgotten, and shut up from cold despair?
Tell me where dwell the thoughts forgotten till thou call them forth?
Tell me where dwell the joys of old? and where the ancient loves?
And when will they renew again and the night of oblivion be past?
That I might traverse times and spaces far remote and bring
Comfort into a present sorrow and a night of pain!
Where goest thou, O thought? to what remote land is thy flight?
If thou returnest to the present moment of affliction
Wilt thou bring comforts on thy wings and dews and honey and balm
Or poison from the desert wilds, from the eyes of the envier?"
After this Bromion, with less musical lamentation, asks whether for all
things there be not one law established? "Thou knowest that the ancient
trees seen by thine eyes have fruit; but knowest thou that trees and
fruits flourish upon the earth to gratify senses unknown, in worlds over
another kind of seas?" Are there other wars, other sorrows, and other joys
than those of external life? But the one law surely does exist "for the
lion and the ox," for weak and strong, wise and foolish, gentle and
fierce; and for all who rebel against it there are prepared from
everlasting the fires and the chains of hell. So speaks the violent slave
of heaven; and after a day and a night Oothoon lifts up her voice in sad
rebellious answer and appeal.
"O Urizen, Creator of men! mistaken Demon of heaven!
Thy joys are tears: thy labour vain, to form man to thine image;
How can one joy absorb another? are not different joys
Holy, eternal, infinite? and each joy is a Love.
Does not the great mouth laugh at a gift? and the narrow eyelids mock
At the labour that is above payment? and wilt thou take the ape
For thy counsellor, or the dog for a schoolmaster to thy children?
* * * * *
Does the whale worship at thy footsteps as the hungry dog?
Or does he scent the mountain prey, because his nostrils wide
Draw in the ocean? does his eye discern the flying cloud
As the raven's eye? or does he measure the expanse like the vulture?
Does the still spider view the cliffs where eagles hide their young?
Or does the fly rejoice because the harvest is brought in?
Does not the eagle scorn the earth and despise the treasures beneath?
But the mole knoweth what is there, and the worm shall tell it thee."
Perhaps there is no loftier note of music and of thought struck anywhere
throughout these prophecies. For the rest, we must tread carefully over
the treacherous hot ashes strewn about the latter end of this book: which
indeed speaks plainly enough for once, and with high equal eloquence; but
to no generally acceptable effect. The one matter of marriage laws is
still beaten upon, still hammered at with all the might of an insurgent
prophet: to whom it is intolerable that for the sake of mere words and
mere confusions of thought "she who burns with youth and knows no fixed
lot" should be "bound by spells of law to one she loathes," should "drag
the chain of life in weary lust," and "bear the wintry rage of a harsh
terror driven to madness, bound to hold a rod over her shrinking shoulders
all the day, and all the night to turn the wheel of false desire;"
intolerable that she should be driven by "longings that wake her womb" to
bring forth not men but some monstrous "abhorred birth of cherubs,"
imperfect, artificial, abortive; counterfeits of holiness and mockeries of
purity; things of barren or perverse nature, creatures inhuman or
diseased, that live as a pestilence lives and pass away as a meteor
passes; "till the child dwell with one he hates, and do the deed he
loathes, and the impure scourge force his seed into its unripe birth ere
yet his eyelids can behold the arrows of the day:" the day whose blinding
beams had surely somewhat affected the prophet's own eyesight, and left
his eyelids lined with strange colours of fugitive red and green that
fades into black. However, all these things shall be made plain by death;
for "over the porch is written Take thy bliss, O man! and sweet shall be
thy taste, and sweet thy infant joys renew." On the one hand is innocence,
on the other modesty; infancy is "fearless, lustful, happy;" who taught it
modesty, "subtle modesty, child of night and sleep?" Once taught to
dissemble, to call pure things impure, to "catch virgin joy, and brand it
with the name of whore and sell it in the night;" once corrupted and
misled, "religious dreams and holy vespers light thy smoky fires: once
were thy fires lighted by the eyes of honest morn." Not pleasure but
hypocrisy is the unclean thing; Oothoon is no harlot, but "a virgin filled
with virgin fancies, open to joy and to delight wherever it appears; if in
the morning sun I find it, there my eyes are fixed in happy copulation:"
and so forth--further than we need follow.
"Is it because acts are not lovely that thou seekest solitude
Where the horrible darkness is impressed with reflections of desire?--
Father of Jealousy, be thou accursed from the earth!
Why hast thou taught my Theotormon this accursed thing?
Till beauty fades from off my shoulders, darkened and cast out,
A solitary shadow wailing on the margin of non-entity;"
as in a later prophecy Ahania, cast out by the jealous God, being the type
or embodiment of this sacred natural love "free as the mountain wind."
"Can that be love which drinks another as a sponge drinks water?
That clouds with jealousy his nights, with weepings all the days?
* * * * *
Such is self-love, that envies all; a creeping skeleton
With lamp-like eyes watching around the frozen marriage-bed."
But instead of the dark-grey "web of age" spun around man by self-love,
love spreads nets to catch for him all wandering and foreign pleasures,
pale as mild silver or ruddy as flaming gold; beholds them without
grudging drink deep of various delight, "red as the rosy morning, lustful
as the first-born beam." No single law for all things alike; the sun will
not shine in the miser's secret chamber, nor the brightest cloud drop
fruitful rain on his stone threshold; for one thing night is good and for
another thing day: nothing is good and nothing evil to all at once.
"'The sea-fowl takes the wintry blast for a covering to her limbs,
And the wild snake the pestilence, to adorn him with gems and gold;
And trees and birds and beasts and men behold their eternal joy.
Arise, you little glancing wings, and sing your infant joy!
Arise and drink your bliss! For everything that lives is holy.'
Thus every morning wails Oothoon, but Theotormon sits
Upon the margined ocean, conversing with shadows dire.
The daughters of Albion hear her woes, and echo back her sighs."
It may be feared that Oothoon has yet to wait long before Theotormon will
leave off "conversing with shadows dire;" nor is it surprising that this
poem won such small favour; for had it not seemed inexplicable it must
have seemed unbearable. Blake, as evidently as Shelley, did in all
innocence believe that ameliorated humanity would be soon qualified to
start afresh on these new terms after the saving advent of French and
American revolutions. "All good things are in the West;" thence in the
teeth of "Urizen" shall human deliverance come at length. In the same year
Blake's prophecy of _America_ came forth to proclaim this message over
again. Upon this book we need not dwell so long; it has more of thunder
and less of lightning than the former prophecies; more of sonorous cloud
and less of explicit fire. The prelude, though windy enough, is among
Blake's nobler myths: the divine spirit of rebellious redemption,
imprisoned as yet by the gods of night and chaos, is fed and sustained in
secret by the "nameless" spirit of the great western continent; nameless
and shadowy, a daughter of chaos, till the day of their fierce and
fruitful union.
"Silent as despairing love and strong as jealousy,
The hairy shoulders rend the links, free are the wrists of fire."
At his embrace "she cast aside her clouds and smiled her first-born smile,
as when a black cloud shows its lightnings to the silent deep."
"Soon as she saw the terrible boy then burst the virgin's cry;
I love thee; I have found thee, and I will not let thee go.
Thou art the image of God who dwells in darkness of Africa,
And thou art fallen to give me life in regions of dark death."
Then begins the agony of revolution, her frost and his fire mingling in
pain; and the poem opens as with a sound and a light of storm. It is
throughout in the main a mere expansion and dilution of the "Song of
Liberty" which we have already heard; and in the interludes of the great
fight between Urizen and Orc the human names of American or English
leaders fall upon the ear with a sudden incongruous clash: not perhaps
unfelt by the author's ear also, but unheeded in his desire to make vital
and vivid the message he came to deliver. The action is wholly swamped by
the allegory; hardly is it related how the serpent-formed "hater of
dignities, lover of wild rebellion and transgressor of God's Law," arose
in red clouds, "a wonder, a human fire;" "heat but not light went from
him;" "his terrible limbs were fire;" his voice shook the ancient Druid
temple of tyranny and faith, proclaiming freedom and "the fiery joy that
Urizen perverted to ten commands;" the "punishing demons" of the God of
jealousy
"Crouch howling before their caverns deep like skins dried in the wind;
They cannot smite the wheat nor quench the fatness of the earth;
They cannot smite with sorrows nor subdue the plough and spade;
For terrible men stand on the shores, and in their robes I see
Children take refuge from the lightnings. * * * *
Ah vision from afar! ah rebel form that rent the ancient heavens!
* * * * Red flames the crest rebellious
And eyes of death; the harlot womb oft opened in vain
Heaves in eternal circles, now the times are returned upon thee."
"Thus wept the angel voice" of the guardian-angel of Albion; but the
thirteen angels of the American provinces rent off their robes and threw
down their sceptres and cast in their lot with the rebel; gathered
together where on the hills
"called Atlantean hills,
Because from their bright summits you may pass to the golden world,
An ancient palace, archetype of mighty emperies,
Rears its immortal pinnacles, built in the forest of God
By Ariston the king of beauty for his stolen bride."
A myth of which we are to hear no more, significant probably of the
rebellion of natural beauty against the intolerable tyranny of God, from
which she has to seek shelter in the darkest part of his creation with the
angelic or daemonic bridegroom (one of the descended "sons of God") who has
wedded her by stealth and built her a secret shelter from the strife of
divine things; where at least nature may breathe freely and take pleasure;
whither also in their time congregate all other rebellious forces and
spirits at war with the Creator and his laws. But the speech of "Boston's
angel" we will at least transcribe: not without a wish that he had never
since then spoken more incoherently and less musically.
"Must the generous tremble and leave his joy to the idle, to the
pestilence,
That mock him? who commanded this? what God? what Angel?
To keep the generous from experience, till the ungenerous
Are unrestrained performers of the energies of nature,
Till pity is become a trade and generosity a science
That men get rich by; and the sandy desert is given to the strong?
What God is he writes laws of peace and clothes him in a tempest?
What pitying Angel lusts for tears and fans himself with sighs?
What crawling villain preaches abstinence and wraps himself
In fat of lambs? no more I follow, no more obedience pay."
This is perhaps the finest and clearest passage in the book; and beyond
this point there is not much extractable from the clamorous lyrical chaos.
Here again besides the mere outward violence of battle, the visible plague
and fire of war, we have sight of a subtler and wider revolution.
"For the female spirits of the dead pining in bonds of religion
Run from their fetters reddening and in long-drawn arches sitting.
They feel the nerves of youth renew, and desires of ancient times."
Light and warmth and colour and life are shed from the flames of
revolution not alone on city and valley and hill, but likewise
"Over their pale limbs, as a vine when the tender grape appears;
* * * * *
The heavens melted from north to south; and Urizen who sat
Above all heavens in thunders wrapt, emerged his leprous head
From out his holy shrine; his tears in deluge piteous
Falling into the deep sublime."
Notwithstanding for twelve years it was fated that "angels and weak men
should govern o'er the strong, and then their end should come when France
received the demon's light:" and the ancient European guardians "slow
advance to shut the five gates of their law-built heaven, filled with
blasting fancies and with mildews of despair, with fierce disease and
lust;" but these gates were consumed in the final fire of revolution that
went forth upon the world. So ends the poem; and of the decoration we
have barely space to say enough. On one page are the visions of the
renewed world, on another the emblems of oppression and war: children
sleeping nestled in the fleece of a sleeping ram with heavy horns and
quiet mouth pressing the soft ground, while overhead shapely branches
droop and gracious birds are perched; or what seems the new-born body of
Orc cast under the sea, enmeshed in a web of water whose waves are waves
of corn when you come to look; maidens and infants that bridle a strong
dragon, and behind them a flight of birds through the clouds of a starry
moonlit night, where a wild swan with vast wings and stretching neck is
bestridden by a spirit looking eagerly back as he clutches the rein;
eagles that devour the dead on a stormy sea-beach, while underneath fierce
pikes and sharks make towards a wrecked corpse that has sunk without
drifting, and sea-snakes wind about it in soft loathsome coils; women and
children embrace in bitter violence of loving passion among ripples of
fruitful flame, out of which rise roots and grasses of the field and laden
branches of the vine. Of all these we cannot hope to speak duly; nor can
we hope to give more than a glimpse of the work they illustrate.