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; and longings that make her womb
To the abhorred birth of cherubs in the human form
That live a pestilence and die a meteor, and are no more?
Till the child dwell with one he hates, and do the deed he loaths,
And the impure scourge force his seed into its unripe birth,
Ere yet his eyelids can behold the arrows of the day.
⚫ 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
But the mole knoweth what is there, and the worm shall tell it thee.
Does not the worm erect a pillar in the mouldering churchyard,
And a palace of eternity in the jaws of the hungry grave?
Over his porch these words are written: "Take thy bliss, O
And sweet shall be thy taste, and sweet thy infant joys renew !'
'Infancy, fearless, lustful, happy, nestling for delight
In laps of pleasure! Innocence, honest, open, seeking
The vigorous joys of morning light, open to virgin bliss!
Who taught thee modesty, subtile modesty? Child of night and
sleep,
When thou awakest wilt thou dissemble all thy secret joys?
Or wert thou not awake when all this mystery was disclosed?
Then cam'st thou forth a modest virgin knowing to dissemble,
With nets found under thy night pillow to catch virgin joy,
And brand it with the name of whore; and sell it in the night,
In silence, even without a whisper, and in seeming sleep.
Religious dreams and holy vespers, light thy smoky fires-
Once were thy fires lighted by the eyes of honest morn.
And does my Theotormon seek this hypocrite modesty?
This knowing, artful, secret, fearful, cautious, trembling
Then is Oothoon a whore indeed! and all the virgin joys
Of life are harlots; and Theotormon is a sick man's dream,
And Oothoon is the crafty slave of selfish holiness.
'But Oothoon is not so, a virgin filled with virgin fancies,
Open to joy and to delight wherever beauty appears.
If in the morning sun I find it, there my eyes are fixed
In happy copulation; if in evening mild, wearied with work,
Sit on a bank and draw the pleasures of this free-born joy.
•The moment of desire! the moment of desire! The virgin That pines for man shall awaken her womb to enormous joys, In the secret shadows of her chamber; the youth shut up from The lustful joy shall forget to generate and create an amorous image
In the shadows of his curtains and in the folds of his silent pillow.
Are not these the places of religion, the rewards of continence, The self-enjoyings of self-denial? Why dost thou seek religion? 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 nonentity.
'I cry, Love! Love! Love! happy, happy Love! free as the mountain wind!
Can that be Love that drinks another as a sponge drinks water,
That clouds with jealousy his night, with weepings all the day,
To spin a web of age around him grey and hoary, dark,
Till his eyes sicken at the fruit that hangs before his sight?
Such is self-love that envies all; a creeping skeleton,
With lamplike eyes, watching around the frozen marriage bed.
But silken nets and traps of adamant will Oothoon spread,
And catch for thee girls of mild silver or of furious gold;
I'll be beside thee on a bank, and view their wanton play
In lovely copulation, bliss on bliss with Theotormon.
Red as the rosy morning, lustful as the first-born beam,
Oothoon shall view his dear delight, nor e'er with jealous cloud
Come in the heaven of generous love, nor selfish blightings
bring.
'Does the sun walk in glorious raiment on the secret floor Where the cold miser spreads his gold? Or does the bright cloud drop
On his stone threshold; does his eye behold the beam that brings
Expansion to the eye of pity? Or will he bind himself
Beside the ox to thy hard furrow? Does not that mild beam blot
The bat, the owl, the glowing tiger, and the King of night;
The sea-fowl takes the wintry blast for a cooling 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.
FUZON on a chariot iron-winged,
On spiked flames rose: his hot visage
Flamed furious; sparkles his hair and beard;
Shot down his wide bosom and shoulders;
On clouds of smoke rages his chariot,
•And his right hand burns red in its cloud,
Moulding into a vast globe his wrath,
As the thunder-stone is moulded :
Son of Urizen's silent burnings.
Dire shrieked his invisible lust,
Deep groaned Urizen. Stretching his awful hand, Ahania (so name his parted soul)
He seized on his mountains of jealousy;
He groaned anguished and called her Sin,
Kissing her and weeping over her,
Then hid her in darkness, in silence;
Jealous, though she was invisible.
She fell down, a faint shadow wandering
In chaos, and circling dark Urizen,
As the moon anguished circles the earth,
Hopeless, abhorred, a death shadow !
Unseen, unbodied, unknown,
The mother of Pestilence.
But the fiery beam of Fuzon
Was a pillar of fire to Egypt,
Five hundred years wandering on earth,
Till Los seized it and beat in a mass
With the body of the sun.
But the forehead of Urizen gathering,
And his eyes pale with anguish, his lips
Blue and changing, in tears and bitter
Contrition he prepared his bow,
Formed of ribs, that in his dark solitude
When obscured in his forests fell monsters
Arose. For his dire contemplations `
Rushed down like floods from his mountains
In torrents of mud, settling thick,
With eggs of unnatural production
Forthwith hatching; some howled on his hills
Some in vales, some aloft flew in air.
Of these, an enormous dread serpent,
Scaled, and poisonous-horned,
Approached Urizen, even to his knees,
As he sat on his dark-rooted oak.
With his horns he pushed furious.
Great the conflict and great the jealousy
In cold poisons; but Urizen smote him.
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