Page:The prophetic books of William Blake, Milton.djvu/36

 Or like a human form, a friend with whom he liv'd benevolent.

As the eye of man views both the east & west encompassing

Its vortex: and the north & south, with all their starry host:

Also the rising sun & setting moon he views surrounding

His corn-fields and his valleys of five hundred acres square.

Thus is the earth one infinite plane, and not as apparent

To the weak traveller confin'd beneath the moony shade.

Thus is the heaven a vortex pass'd already, and the earth

A vortex not yet pass'd by the traveller thro' Eternity.

First Milton saw Albion upon the Rock of Ages,

Deadly pale outstretch'd and snowy cold, storm cover'd:

A Giant form of perfect beauty outstretch'd on the rock

In solemn death: the Sea of Time & Space thunder'd aloud

Against the rock, which was inwrapped with the weeds of death.

Hovering over the cold bosom, in its vortex Milton bent down

To the bosom of death: what was underneath soon seem'd above,

A cloudy heaven mingled with stormy seas in loudest ruin:

But as a wintry globe descends precipitant thro' Beulah bursting

With thunders loud and terrible: so Milton's shadow fell

Precipitant loud thund'ring into the Sea of Time & Space.

Then first I saw him in the Zenith as a falling star,

Descending perpendicular, swift as the swallow or swift:

And on my left foot falling on the tarsus, enter'd there,

But from my left foot a black cloud redounding spread over Europe.

Then Milton knew that the Three Heavens of Beulah were beheld

By him on earth in his bright pilgrimage of sixty years

P. 15 IN the three females whom his wives, & these three whom his daughters

Had represented and contain'd, that they might be resum'd

By giving up of Selfhood: & they distant view'd his journey

In their eternal spheres now Human, tho' their Bodies remain clos'd

In the dark Ulro till the Judgment: also Milton knew, they and

Himself was Human, tho' now wandering thro' Death's Vale,

In conflict with those Female forms, which in blood & jealousy

Surrounded him dividing & uniting without end or number.

He saw the Cruelties of Ulro, and he wrote them down

In iron tablets: and his Wives' & Daughters' names were these:

Rahab and Tirzah, & Milcah & Malah & Noah & Hoglah.

They sat rang'd round him as the rocks of Horeb round the land

Of Canaan: and they wrote in thunder, smoke and fire 12