Page:The prophetic books of William Blake, Milton.djvu/72

 Urizen lay in darkness and solitude in chains of the mind locked up.

Los seized his hammer and tongs; he laboured at his resolute anvil

Among indefinite Druid rocks, and snows of doubt and reasoning.

Refusing all definite form the Abstract Horror roofed, stony hard;

And a first age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

Down sunk with fright a red hot globe, round, burning, deep,

Deep down into the abyss, panting, conglobing, trembling;

And a second age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

Rolling round into two little orbs, and closed in two little caves,

The ages beheld the Abyss, lest bones of solitude freeze all over;

And a third age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

From beneath his orbs of vision two ears in close volutions

Shot spiring out in the deep darkness and petrified as they grew;

And a fourth age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

Hanging upon the wind two nostrils bent down into the deep,

And a fifth age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

In ghastly torment sick, a tongue of hunger and thirst flamed out,

And a sixth age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

Enraged and stifled without and within, in terror and woe he threw his

Right arm to the north, his left arm to the south, and his feet

Stamped the nether abyss in trembling and howling and dismay.

And a seventh age passed over, and a state of dismal woe.

Terrified, Los stood in the abyss, and his immortal limbs

Grew deadly pale. He became what he beheld, for a red

Round globe sunk down from his Bosom into the Deep. In pangs

He hovered, it trembling and weeping. Trembling it shook

The nether abyss in tremblings. He wept over it, he cherished it

In deadly, sickening pain, till separated into a female pale

As the cloud that brings the snow. All the while from his Back

A blue fluid exuded in sinews, hardening in the abyss,

Till it separated into a male form howling in jealousy,

Within, labouring; beholding without,—from particulars to generals

Subduing his Spectre. They builded the Looms of Generation;

They builded great Golgonooga, Time on Times, ages on ages.

First Orc was born, then the Shadowy Female, then all Los's family.

At last Enitharmon brought forth Satan, refusing Form. In vain

The Miller of Eternity made subservient to the Great Harvest, 48