Page:Life of William Blake, Gilchrist.djvu/173



So rapid was the production of this class of Blake's writings that, notwithstanding their rich and elaborate decoration, and the tedious process by which the whole had to be, with his own hand, engraved and afterwards coloured, the same year witnessed the completion of another, and the succeeding year, of two more 'prophetic books.' The Book of Urizen (1794), was the title of the next. The same may be said of it as of its predecessors. Like them, the poem is shapeless, unfathomable; but in the heaping up of gloomy and terrible images, the America and Europe are even exceeded.

The following striking passage, which describes the appearing of the first woman, will serve as an example of Urizen:—