Page:The prophetic books of William Blake, Milton.djvu/69

 Indefinite or paltry Rhymes: or paltry Harmonies:

Who creeps into State Government like a catterpiller to destroy,

To cast off the idiot Questioner who is always questioning,

But never capable of answering, who sits with a sly grin

Silent plotting when to question like a thief in a cave:

Who publishes doubt & calls it knowledge: whose Science is Despair:

Whose pretence to knowledge is Envy: whose whole Science is

To destroy the wisdom of ages to gratify ravenous Envy,

That rages round him like a Wolf day & night without rest.

He smiles with condescension: he talks of Benevolence & Virtue:

And those who act with Benevolence & Virtue they murder time on time.

These are the destroyers of Jerusalem, those are the murderers

Of Jesus, who deny the Faith & mock at Eternal Life:

Who pretend to Poetry that they may destroy Imagination,

By imitation of Nature's Images drawn from Remembrance.

These are the Sexual Garments, the Abomination of Desolation,

Hiding the Human Lineaments as with an Ark & Curtains

Which Jesus rent: & now shall wholly purge away with Fire

Till Generation is swallow'd up in Regeneration.

Then trembled the Virgin Ololon & reply'd in clouds of despair:

Is this our Femin[in]e Portion, the Six-fold Miltonic Female?

Terribly this Portion trembles before thee, O awful Man.

Altho' our Human Power can sustain the severe contentions

Of Friendship, our Sexual cannot: but flies into the Ulro.

Hence arose all our terrors in Eternity: & now remembrance

Returns upon us: are we contraries, O Milton, Thou & I,

O Immortal? how were we led to War the Wars of Death?

Is this the Void Outside of Existence, which if enter'd into

P. 44 BECOMES a Womb? & is this the Death Couch of Albion?

Thou goest to Eternal Death & all must go with thee.

So saying the Virgin divided Six-fold, & with a shriek

Dolorous that ran thro' all Creation, a Double Six-fold Wonder:

Away from Ololon she divided & fled into the depths

Of Milton's Shadow as a Dove upon the stormy Sea.

Then as a Moony Ark Ololon descended to Felpham's Vales,

In clouds of blood, in streams of gore, with dreadful thunderings,

Into the Fires of Intellect that rejoic'd in Felpham's Vale

Around the Starry Eight: with one accord the Starry Eight became

One Man, Jesus the Saviour, wonderful! round his limbs 45