Page:The letters of William Blake (1906).djvu/177

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So I spoke, and struck in my wrath

The old man weltering upon my path.

Then Los appeared in all his power:

In the sun he appeared, descending before

My face in fierce flames; in my double sight,

'Twas outward a Sun, inward Los in his might.

"My hands are labour'd day and night,

And Ease comes never in my sight.

My Wife has no indulgence given,

Except what comes to her from heaven.

We eat little, we drink less;

This Earth breeds not our happiness.

Another Sun feeds our life's streams, —

We are not warmed with thy beams;

Thou measurest not the Time to me,

Nor yet the space that I do see;

My Mind is not with thy light array'd,

Thy terrors shall not make me afraid."

When I had my Defiance given,

The Sun stood trembling in heaven;

The Moon, that glow'd remote below,

Became leprous & white as snow;

And every soul of man on the Earth

Felt affliction, & sorrow, & sickness, & death.

Los flam'd in my path, and the sun was hot

With the bows of my Mind and the Arrows of Thought —

My bowstring fierce with Ardour breathes,

My arrows glow in their golden sheaves;

My brother & father march before;

The heavens drop with human gore.

Now I a fourfold vision see.

And a fourfold vision is given to me;