Engraved 1804-(?)1820
SHEEP
To the Public
GOATS
After my three years' slumber on the banks of the Ocean,
I again display my Giant forms to the Public. My former Giants and Fairies
having receiv'd the highest reward possible, the . . . and . . . of those
with whom to be connected is to be . . ., I cannot doubt that this more
consolidated and extended Work will be as kindly received. The Enthusiasm
of the following Poem, the Author hopes . . . I also hope the Reader will
be with me wholly one in Jesus our Lord, Who is the God . . . and Lord . .
. to Whom the Ancients look'd, and saw His day afar off, with trembling
and amazement.
The Spirit of Jesus is continual Forgiveness of Sin: he
who waits to be righteous before he enters into the Saviour's Kingdom, the
Divine Body, will never enter there. I am perhaps the most sinful of men:
I pretend not to holiness; yet I pretend to love, to see, to converse with
daily, as man with man, and the more to have an interest in the Friend of
Sinners. Therefore . . . Reader . . . what you do not approve, and . . me
for this energetic exertion of my talent.
Reader! . . . of books . . . of Heaven,
And of that God from whom . . .
Who in mysterious Sinai's awful cave
To Man the wondrous art of writing gave;
Again He speaks in thunder and in fire,
Thunder of Thought and flames of fierce Desire.
Even from the depths of Hell His voice I hear
Within the unfathom'd caverns of my Ear.
Therefore I print: nor vain my types shall be.
Heaven, Earth, and Hell, henceforth shall live in harmony
Of the Measure in which
the following Poem is written.
We who dwell on Earth can do nothing of ourselves;
everything, is conducted by Spirits, no less than Digestion or Sleep. . .
When this Verse was first dictated to me, I consider'd a
monotonous cadence like that used by Milton and Shakspeare, and all
writers of English Blank Verse, derived from the modern bondage of Riming,
to be a necessary and indispensable part of Verse. But I soon found that
in the mouth of a true Orator such monotony was not only awkward, but as
much a bondage as rime itself. I therefore have produced a variety in
every line, both of cadences and number of syllables. Every word and every
letter is studied and put into its fit place; the terrific numbers are
reserved for the terrific parts, the mild and gentle for the mild and
gentle parts, and the prosaic for inferior parts; all are necessary to
each other. Poetry fetter'd fetters the Human Race. Nations are destroy'd
or flourish, in proportion as their Poetry, Painting, and Music are
destroy'd or flourish. The Primeval State of Man was Wisdom, Art, and
Science.
This theme calls me in sleep night after night, and
ev'ry morn
Awakes me at sunrise; then I see the Saviour over me
Spreading His beams of love, and dictating the words of this mild song:
`Awake! Awake! O sleeper of the Land of Shadows, wake! expand!
I am in you, and you in Me, mutual in Love Divine,
Fibres of love from man to man thro' Albion's pleasant land.'
And this is the manner of the Sons of Albion in their
strength:
They take the Two Contraries which are call'd Qualities, with which
Every Substance is clothèd; they name them Good and Evil.
From them they make an Abstract, which is a Negation
Not only of the Substance from which it is derivèd,
A murderer of its own Body, but also a murderer
Of every Divine Member. It is the Reasoning Power,
An Abstract objecting power, that negatives everything.
This is the Spectre of Man, the Holy Reasoning Power,
And in its Holiness is closèd the Abomination of Desolation!
I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's;
I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create.
What are those Golden Builders doing? Where was the
burying-place
Of soft Ethinthus? near Tyburn's fatal Tree? Is that
Mild Zion's hill's most ancient promontory, near mournful
Ever-weeping Paddington? Is that Calvary and Golgotha
Becoming a building of Pity and Compassion? Lo!
The stones are Pity, and the bricks well-wrought Affections
Enamell'd with Love and Kindness; and the tiles engraven gold,
Labour of merciful hands; the beams and rafters are Forgiveness,
The mortar and cement of the work, tears of Honesty, the nails
And the screws and iron braces are well-wrought Blandishments
And well-contrivèd words, firm fixing, never forgotten,
Always comforting the remembrance; the floors Humility,
The ceilings Devotion, the hearths Thanksgiving.
Prepare the furniture, O Lambeth, in thy pitying looms!
The curtains, woven tears and sighs, wrought into lovely forms
For Comfort; there the secret furniture of Jerusalem's chamber
Is wrought. Lambeth! the Bride, the Lamb's Wife loveth thee;
Thou art one with her, and knowest not of Self in thy supreme joy.
Go on, Builders in hope! tho' Jerusalem wanders far away
Without the Gate of Los, among the dark Satanic wheels.
I see the Fourfold Man; the Humanity in deadly sleep,
And its fallen Emanation, the Spectre and its cruel Shadow.
I see the Past, Present, and Future existing all at once
Before me. O Divine Spirit! sustain me on thy wings,
That I may awake Albion from his long and cold repose;
For Bacon and Newton, sheath'd in dismal steel, their terrors hang
Like iron scourges over Albion. Reasonings like vast Serpents
Enfold around my limbs, bruising my minute articulations.
I turn my eyes to the Schools and Universities of
Europe,
And there behold the Loom of Locke, whose Woof rages dire,
Wash'd by the Water-wheels of Newton: black the cloth
In heavy wreaths folds over every Nation: cruel Works
Of many Wheels I view, wheel without wheel, with cogs tyrannic,
Moving by compulsion each other; not as those in Eden, which,
Wheel within wheel, in freedom revolve, in harmony and peace.
Why should Punishment weave the veil with Iron Wheels of
War,
When Forgiveness might it weave with Wings of Cherubim?
O what is Life and what is Man? O what is Death?
Wherefore
Are you, my Children, natives in the Grave to where I go?
Or are you born to feed the hungry ravenings of Destruction,
To be the sport of Accident, to waste in Wrath and Love a weary
Life, in brooding cares and anxious labours, that prove but chaff?
O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! I have forsaken thy courts,
Thy pillars of ivory and gold, thy curtains of silk and fine
Linen, thy pavements of precious stones, thy walls of pearl
And gold, thy gates of Thanksgiving, thy windows of Praise,
Thy clouds of Blessing, thy Cherubims of Tender Mercy,
Stretching their Wings sublime over the Little Ones of Albion.
O Human Imagination! O Divine Body, I have crucifièd!
I have turnèd my back upon thee into the Wastes of Moral Law:
There Babylon is builded in the Waste, founded in Human desolation.
O Babylon! thy Watchman stands over thee in the night;
Thy severe Judge all the day long proves thee, O Babylon,
With provings of Destruction, with giving thee thy heart's desire.
But Albion is cast forth to the Potter, his Children to the Builders
To build Babylon, because they have forsaken Jerusalem.
The walls of Babylon are Souls of Men; her gates the Groans
Of Nations; her towers are the Miseries of once happy Families;
Her streets are pavèd with Destruction; her houses built with Death;
Her Palaces with Hell and the Grave; her Synagogues with Torments
Of ever-hardening Despair, squar'd and polish'd with cruel skill.
Such Visions have appear'd to me,
As I my order'd course have run:
Jerusalem is nam'd Liberty
Among the Sons of Albion.
Jerusalem, the Emanation of the Giant Albion! Can it be?
Is it a truth that the learned have explored? Was Britain the primitive
seat of the Patriarchal Religion? If it is true, my title page is also
true, that Jerusalem was, and is, the Emanation of the Giant Albion. It is
true, and cannot be controverted. Ye are united, O ye inhabitants of
Earth, in One Religion -- the Religion of Jesus, the most ancient, the
Eternal, and the Everlasting Gospel. The Wicked will turn it to
Wickedness, the Righteous to Righteousness. Amen! Huzza! Selah!
`All things begin and end in Albion's ancient Druid
rocky shore.'
Your Ancestors derived their origin from Abraham, Heber,
Shem, and Noah, who were Druids, as the Druid Temples (which are the
patriarchal pillars and oak groves) over the whole Earth witness to this
day.
You have a tradition that Man anciently contain'd in his
mighty limbs all things in Heaven and Earth: this you received from the
Druids.
`But now the starry Heavens are fled from the mighty
limbs of Albion.'
Albion was the Parent of the Druids, and, in his Chaotic
State of Sleep, Satan and Adam and the whole World was created by the
Elohim.
The fields from Islington to Marybone,
To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood,
Were builded over with pillars of gold;
And there Jerusalem's pillars stood.
Her Little Ones ran on the fields,
The Lamb of God among them seen,
And fair Jerusalem, His Bride,
Among the little meadows green.
Pancras and Kentish Town repose
Among her golden pillars high,
Among her golden arches which
Shine upon the starry sky.
The Jew's-harp House and the Green Man,
The Ponds where boys to bathe delight,
The fields of cows by William's farm,
Shine in Jerusalem's pleasant sight.
She walks upon our meadows green;
The Lamb of God walks by her side;
And every English child is seen,
Children of Jesus and His Bride;
Forgiving trespasses and sins,
Lest Babylon, with cruel Og,
With Moral and Self-righteous Law,
Should crucify in Satan's Synagogue.
What are those Golden Builders doing
Near mournful ever-weeping Paddington,
Standing above that mighty ruin,
Where Satan the first victory won;
Where Albion slept beneath the fatal Tree,
And the Druid's golden knife
Rioted in human gore,
In offerings of Human Life?
They groan'd aloud on London Stone,
They groan'd aloud on tyburn's Brook:
Albion gave his deadly groan,
And all the Atlantic mountains shook.
Albion's Spectre, from his loins,
Tore forth in all the pomp of War;
Satan his name; in flames of fire
He stretch'd his Druid pillars far.
Jerusalem fell from Lambeth's vale,
Down thro' Poplar and Old Bow,
Thro' Malden, and across the sea,
In war and howling, death and woe.
The Rhine was red with human blood;
The Danube roll'd a purple tide;
On the Euphrates Satan stood,
And over Asia stretch'd his pride.
He wither'd up sweet Zion's hill
From every nation of the Earth;
He wither'd up Jerusalem's Gates,
And in a dark land gave her birth.
He wither'd up the Human Form
By laws of sacrifice for Sin,
Till it became a Mortal Worm,
But O! translucent all within.
The Divine Vision still was seen,
Still was the Human Form Divine;
Weeping, in weak and mortal clay,
O Jesus! still the Form was Thine!
And Thine the Human Face; and Thine
The Human Hands, and Feet, and Breath,
Entering thro' the Gates of Birth,
And passing thro' the Gates of Death.
And O Thou Lamb of God! whom I
Slew in my dark self-righteous pride,
Art Thou return'd to Albion's land,
And is Jerusalem Thy Bride?
Come to my arms, and nevermore
Depart; but dwell for ever here;
Create my spirit to Thy love;
Subdue my Spectre to Thy fear.
Spectre of Albion! warlike Fiend!
In clouds of blood and ruin roll'd,
I here reclaim thee as my own,
My Selfhood -- Satan arm'd in gold!
Is this thy soft Family-love,
Thy cruel patriarchal pride;
Planting thy Family alone,
Destroying all the World beside?
A man's worst Enemies are those
Of his own House and Family;
And he who makes his Law a curse,
By his own Law shall surely die!
In my Exchanges every land
Shall walk; and mine in every land,
Mutual shall build Jerusalem,
Both heart in heart and hand in hand.
If Humility is Christianity, you, O Jews! are the true
Christians. If your tradition that Man contained in his limbs all animals
is true, and they were separated from him by cruel sacrifices, and when
compulsory cruel sacrifices had brought Humanity into a Feminine
Tabernacle in the loins of Abraham and David, the Lamb of God, the Saviour,
became apparent on Earth as the Prophets had foretold! The return of
Israel is a return to mental sacrifice and war. Take up the Cross, O
Israel! and follow Jesus.
What may Man be? who can tell? But what may Woman be,
To have power over Man from Cradle to corruptible Grave?
There is a Throne in every Man: it is the Throne of God.
This, Woman has claim'd as her own; and Man is no more:
Albion is the Tabernacle of Vala and her Temple,
And not the Tabernacle and Temple of the Most High.
O Albion! why wilt thou create a Female Will,
To hide the most evident God in a hidden covert, even
In the shadows of a Woman and a secluded Holy Place,
That we may pry after him as after a stolen treasure,
Hidden among the Dead and murèd up from the paths of Life?
Our Wars are wars of life, and wounds of love,
With intellectual spears, and long wingèd arrows of thought.
Mutual in one another's love and wrath all renewing,
We live as One Man: for, contracting our Infinite senses,
We behold multitude; or, expanding, we behold as One,
As One Man all the Universal Family; and that One Man
We call Jesus the Christ. And He in us, and we in Him,
Live in perfect harmony in Eden, the land of Life,
Giving, receiving, and forgiving each other's trespasses.
He is the Good Shepherd, He is the Lord and Master;
He is the Shepherd of Albion, He is all in all,
In Eden, in the garden of God, and in heavenly Jerusalem.
If we have offended, forgive us! take not vengeance against us!
Each Man is in his Spectre's power
Until the arrival of that hour,
When his Humanity awake,
And cast his Spectre into the Lake.
A pretence of Art to destroy Art; a pretence of Liberty
To destroy Liberty; a pretence of Religion to destroy Religion.
The Visions of Eternity,
by reason of narrowèd perceptions,
Are become weak Visions of Time and Space, fix'd into furrows of Death;
Till deep dissimulation is the only defence an honest man has left.
Come, O thou Lamb of God, and take away the remembrance
of Sin!
To sin, and to hide the Sin in sweet deceit, is lovely:
To sin in the open face of day is cruel and pitiless; but
To record the Sin for a reproach, to let the Sun go down
In a remembrance of the Sin, is a woe and a horror,
A brooder of an Evil Day, and a Sun rising in blood.
Come then, O Lamb of God, and take away the remembrance of Sin!
Rahab is an Eternal State.
The Spiritual States of
the Soul are all Eternal.
Distinguish between the
Man and his present State.
He never can be a friend to the Human Race who is the
preacher of Natural Morality or Natural Religion; he is a flatterer who
means to betray, to perpetuate tyrant Pride and the Laws of that Babylon
which, he foresees, shall shortly be destroyed with the Spiritual and not
the Natural Sword. He is in the State named Rahab; which State must be put
off before he can be the Friend of Man.
You, O Deists! profess yourselves the enemies of
Christianity, and you are so: you are also the enemies of the Human Race
and of Universal Nature. Man is born a Spectre, or Satan, and is
altogether an Evil, and requires a new Selfhood continually, and must
continually be changed into his direct Contrary. But your Greek
Philosophy, which is a remnant of Druidism, teaches that Man is righteous
in his Vegetated Spectre -- an opinion of fatal and accursed consequence
to Man, as the Ancients saw plainly by Revelation, to the entire
abrogation of Experimental Theory; and many believed what they saw, and
prophesied of Jesus.
Man must and will have some religion; if he has not the
religion of Jesus, he will have the religion of Satan, and will erect the
synagogue of Satan, calling the Prince of this World `God', and destroying
all who do not worship Satan under the name of God. Will any one say:
`Where are those who worship Satan under the name of God?' Where are they?
Listen! Every religion that preaches Vengeance for Sin is the religion of
the Enemy and Avenger, and not of the Forgiver of Sin, and their God is
Satan, named by the Divine Name. Your Religion, O Deists! Deism is the
worship of the God of this World by the means of what you call Natural
Religion and Natural Philosophy, and of Natural Morality or
Self-Righteousness, the selfish virtues of the Natural Heart. This was the
religion of the Pharisees who murdered Jesus. Deism is the same, and ends
in the same.
Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, Hume charge the spiritually
Religious with hypocrisy; but how a Monk, or a Methodist either, can be a
hypocrite, I cannot conceive. We are Men of like passions with others, and
pretend not to be holier than others; therefore, when a Religious Man
falls into sin, he ought not to be call'd a hypocrite: this title is more
properly to be given to a player who falls into sin, whose profession is
virtue and morality, and the making men self-righteous. Foote, in calling
Whitefield hypocrite, was himself one; for Whitefield pretended not to be
holier than others, but confessed his sins before all the world. Voltaire!
Rousseau! you cannot escape my charge that you are Pharisees and
hypocrites; for you are constantly talking of the virtues of the human
heart, and particularly of your own; that you may accuse others, and
especially the Religious, whose errors you, by this display of pretended
virtue, chiefly design to expose. Rousseau thought Men good by nature: he
found them evil, and found no friend. Friendship cannot exist without
Forgiveness of Sins continually. The book written by Rousseau, call'd his
Confessions, is an apology and cloak for his sin, and not a confession.
But you also charge the poor Monks and Religious with
being the causes of war, while you acquit and flatter the Alexanders and
Caesars, the Louises and Fredericks, who alone are its causes and its
actors. But the Religion of Jesus, Forgiveness of Sin, can never be the
cause of a war, nor of a single martyrdom.
Those who martyr others, or who cause war, are Deists,
but never can be Forgivers of Sin. The glory of Christianity is to conquer
by Forgiveness. All the destruction, therefore, in Christian Europe has
arisen from Deism, which is Natural Religion.
I saw a Monk of Charlemaine
Arise before my sight:
I talk'd with the Grey Monk as we stood
In beams of infernal light.
Gibbon arose with a lash of steel,
And Voltaire with a racking wheel;
The Schools, in clouds of learning roll'd,
Arose with War in iron and gold.
`Thou lazy Monk!' they sound afar,
`In vain condemning glorious War;
And in your cell you shall ever dwell:
Rise, War, and bind him in his cell!'
The blood red ran from the Grey Monk's side,
His hands and feet were wounded wide,
His body bent, his arms and knees
Like to the roots of ancient trees.
When Satan first the black bow bent
And the Moral Law from the Gospel rent,
He forg'd the Law into a sword,
And spill'd the blood of Mercy's Lord.
Titus! Constantine! Charlemaine!
O Voltaire! Rousseau! Gibbon! Vain
Your Grecian mocks and Roman sword
Against this image of his Lord;
For a Tear is an Intellectual thing;
And a Sigh is the sword of an angel king;
And the bitter groan of a Martyr's woe
Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow.
But the Spectre, like a hoar-frost and a mildew, rose
over Albion,
Saying: `I am God, O Sons of Men! I am your Rational Power!
Am I not Bacon and Newton and Locke, who teach Humility to Man,
Who teach Doubt and Experiment? and my two wings, Voltaire, Rousseau?
Where is that Friend of Sinners, that Rebel against my Laws,
Who teaches Belief to the Nations and an unknown Eternal Life?
Come hither into the desert and turn these stones to bread!
Vain, foolish Man! wilt thou believe without Experiment,
And build a World of Phantasy upon my great Abyss,
A World of Shapes in craving lust and devouring appetite?'
And many conversèd on these things as they labour'd at
the furrow,
Saying `It is better to prevent misery than to release from misery;
It is better to prevent error than to forgive the criminal.
Labour well the Minute Particulars: attend to the Little Ones,
And those who are in misery cannot remain so long,
If we do but our duty: labour well the teeming Earth. . .
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars.
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer;
For Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars,
And not in generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational Power:
The Infinite alone resides in Definite and Determinate Identity.
Establishment of Truth depends on destruction of Falsehood continually,
On Circumcision, not on Virginity, O Reasoners of Albion!
Behold! in the Visions of Elohim Jehovah, behold Joseph
and Mary!
And be comforted, O Jerusalem! in the Visions of Jehovah Elohim.
She lookèd and saw Joseph the Carpenter in Nazareth, and
Mary,
His espousèd Wife. And Mary said: `If thou put me away from thee
Dost thou not murder me?' Joseph spoke in anger and fury: `Should I
Marry a harlot and an adulteress?' Mary answer'd: `Art thou more pure
Than thy Maker, Who forgiveth Sins and calls again her that is lost?
Tho' she hates, He calls her again in love. I love my dear Joseph,
But he driveth me away from his presence; yet I hear the voice of God
In the voice of my husband: tho' he is angry for a moment he will not
Utterly cast me away: if I were pure, never could I taste the sweets
Of the Forgiveness of Sins; if I were holy, I never could behold the tears
Of love, of him who loves me in the midst of his anger in furnace of
fire.'
`Ah, my Mary,' said Joseph, weeping over and embracing her closely in
His arms, `doth He forgive Jerusalem and not exact Purity from her who is
Polluted? I heard His voice in my sleep and His Angel in my dream,
Saying: "Doth Jehovah forgive a Debt only on condition that it shall
Be payèd? Doth He forgive Pollution only on conditions
of Purity?
That Debt is not forgiven! That Pollution is not forgiven!
Such is the Forgiveness of the Gods, the Moral Virtues of the
Heathen, whose tender Mercies are Cruelty. But Jehovah's Salvation
Is without Money and without Price, in the Continual Forgiveness of
Sins,
In the Perpetual Mutual Sacrifice in Great Eternity. For behold!
There is none that liveth and sinneth not! And this is the Covenant
Of Jehovah: `If you forgive one another, so shall Jehovah forgive you;
That He Himself may dwell among you.' Fear not then to take
To thee Mary, thy Wife, for she is with Child by the Holy Ghost."'
Then Mary burst forth into a song! she flowèd like a
river of
Many streams in the arms of Joseph, and gave forth her tears of joy
Like many waters, and emanating into gardens and palaces upon
Euphrates, and to forests and floods and animals, wild and tame, from
Gihon to Hiddekel, and to corn-fields and villages, and inhabitants
Upon Pison and Arnon and Jordan. And I heard the voice among
The Reapers, saying: `Am I Jerusalem, the lost Adulteress? or am I
Babylon come up to Jerusalem?' And another voice answer'd, saying:
`Does the voice of my Lord call me again? am I pure thro' his Mercy
And Pity? Am I become lovely as a Virgin in his sight, who am
Indeed a Harlot drunken with the Sacrifice of Idols? Does He
Call her pure, as he did in the days of her Infancy, when she
Was cast out to the loathing of her person? The Chaldean took
Me from my cradle; the Amalekite stole me away upon his camels
Before I had ever beheld with love the face of Jehovah, or known
That there was a God of Mercy. O Mercy! O Divine Humanity!
O Forgiveness and Pity and Compassion! If I were pure I should never
Have known Thee: if I were unpolluted I should never have
Glorifièd Thy Holiness, or rejoicèd in thy great Salvation.'
Mary leanèd her side against Jerusalem: Jerusalem receivèd
The Infant into her hands in the Visions of Jehovah. Times passèd on.
Jerusalem fainted over the Cross and Sepulchre. She heard the voice:--
`Wilt thou make Rome thy Patriarch Druid, and the Kings of Europe his
Horsemen? Man in the Resurrection changes his Sexual Garments at will:
Every Harlot was once a Virgin, every Criminal an infant Love.'
`O thou poor Human Form!' said she. `O thou poor child
of woe!
Why wilt thou wander away from Tirzah, why me compel to bind thee?
If thou dost go away from me, I shall consume upon these Rocks.
These fibres of thine eyes, that usèd to beam in distant heavens
Away from me, I have bound down with a hot iron:
These nostrils, that expanded with delight in morning skies,
I have bent downward with lead, melted in my roaring furnaces
Of affliction, of love, of sweet despair, of torment unendurable.
My soul is seven furnaces, incessant roars the bellows
Upon my terribly flaming heart; the molten metal runs
In channels thro' my fiery limbs -- O love! O pity! O fear!
O pain! O the pangs, the bitter pangs of love forsaken!'
Look! the beautiful Daughter of Albion sits naked upon
the Stone,
Her panting Victim beside her; her heart is drunk with blood,
Tho' her brain is not drunk with wine; she goes forth from Albion
In pride of beauty, in cruelty of holiness, in the brightness
Of her tabernacle, and her ark and secret place. The beautiful Daughter
Of Albion delights the eyes of the Kings; their hearts and the
Hearts of their Warriors glow hot before Thor and Friga. O Moloch!
O Chemosh! O Bacchus! O Venus! O Double God of Generation!
The Heavens are cut like a mantle around from the Cliffs of Albion,
Across Europe, across Africa, in howlings and deadly War.
A sheet and veil and curtain of blood is let down from Heaven
Across the hills of Ephraim, and down Mount Olivet to
The Valley of the Jebusite . . .
O beautiful Daughter of Albion, cruelty is thy delight!
O Virgin of terrible eyes, who dwellest by Valleys of springs
Beneath the Mountains of Lebanon, in the City of Rehob in Hamath,
Taught to touch the harp, to dance in the circle of Warriors
Before the Kings of Canaan, to cut the flesh from the Victim,
To roast the flesh in fire, to examine the Infant's limbs
In cruelties of holiness, to refuse the joys of love, to bring
The Spies from Egypt to raise jealousy in the bosoms of the twelve
Kings of Cannan; then to let the Spies depart to Meribah
Kadesh,
To the place of the Amalekite. I am drunk with unsatiated love;
I must rush again to War, for the Virgin has frown'd and refus'd.
Sometimes I curse, and sometimes bless thy fascinating beauty.
Once Man was occupièd in intellectual pleasures and energies;
But now my Soul is harrow'd with grief and fear, and love and desire,
And now I hate, and now I love, and Intellect is no more:
There is no time for anything but the torments of love and desire:
The Feminine and Masculine Shadows, soft, mild, and ever varying
In beauty, are Shadows now no more, but Rocks in Horeb.
As the Pilgrim passes while the Country permanent
remains,
So Men pass on, but States remain permanent for ever.
Devils are False Religions.
Saul! Saul! why persecutest thou me?
I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,
Built in Jerusalem's wall.
We are told to abstain from fleshly desires that we may
lose no time from the Work of the Lord. Every moment lost is a moment that
cannot be redeemed: every pleasure that intermingles with the duty of our
station is a folly unredeemable, and is planted like the seed of a wild
flower among our wheat. All the tortures of repentance are tortures of
self-reproach on account of our leaving the Divine Harvest to the Enemy,
the struggles of entanglement with incoherent roots. I know of no other
Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body and mind
to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination -- Imagination, the real and
Eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow, and
in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these
Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more. The Apostles knew of no other Gospel.
What were all their spiritual gifts? What is the Divine Spirit? Is the
Holy Ghost any other than an Intellectual Fountain? What is the harvest of
the Gospel and its labours? What is that talent which it is a curse to
hide? What are the treasures of Heaven which we are to lay up for
ourselves? Are they any other than mental studies and performances? What
are all the gifts of the Gospel? Are they not all mental gifts? Is God a
Spirit who must be worshipped in spirit and in truth? And are not the
gifts of the Spirit everything to Man? O ye Religious, discountenance
every one among you who shall pretend to despise Art and Science! I call
upon you in the name of Jesus! What is the life of Man but Art and
Science? Is it meat and drink? Is not the Body more than raiment? What is
Mortality but the things relating to the Body, which dies? What is
Immortality but the things relating to the Spirit, which lives eternally?
What is the Joy of Heaven but improvement in the things of the Spirit?
What are the Pains of Hell but Ignorance, Bodily Lust, Idleness, and
devastation of the things of the Spirit? Answer this to yourselves, and
expel from among you those who pretend to despise the labours of Art and
Science, which alone are the labours of the Gospel. Is not this
plain and manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, and not pronounce
heartily: that to labour in knowledge is to build up Jerusalem; and to
despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem and her Builders. And remember:
He who despises and mocks a mental gift in another, calling it pride and
selfishness and sin, mocks Jesus, the giver of every mental gift, which
always appear to the ignorance-loving hypocrite as sins; but that which is
a sin in the sight of cruel Man, is not so in the sight of our kind God.
Let every Christian, as much as in him lies, engage himself openly and
publicly, before all the World, in some mental pursuit for the Building up
of Jerusalem.
I stood among my valleys of the south,
And saw a flame of fire, even as a Wheel
Of fire surrounding all the heavens: it went
From west to east against the current of
Creation, and devour'd all things in its loud
Fury and thundering course round Heaven and Earth
By it the Sun was roll'd into an orb;
By it the Moon faded into a globe,
Travelling thro' the night; for from its dire
And restless fury Man himself shrunk up
Into a little root a fathom long.
And I askèd a Watcher and a Holy One
Its name. He answer'd: `It is the Wheel of Religion.'
I wept and said: `Is this the law of Jesus,
This terrible devouring sword turning every way?'
He answer'd: `Jesus died because He strove
Against the current of this Wheel: its name
Is Caiaphas, the dark Preacher of Death,
Of sin, of sorrow, and of punishment,
Opposing Nature. It is Natural Religion.
But Jesus is the bright Preacher of Life,
Creating Nature from this fiery Law
By self-denial and Forgiveness of Sin.
Go, therefore, cast out devils in Christ's name,
Heal thou the sick of spiritual disease,
Pity the evil; for thou art not sent
To smite with terror and with punishments
Those that are sick, like to the Pharisees,
Crucifying, and encompassing sea and land,
For proselytes to tyranny and wrath.
But to the Publicans and Harlots go:
Teach them true happiness, but let no curse
Go forth out of thy mouth to blight their peace.
For Hell is open'd to Heaven; thine eyes beheld
The dungeons burst, and the prisoners set free.'
England! awake! awake! awake!
Jerusalem thy sister calls!
Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death,
And close her from thy ancient walls?
Thy hills and valleys felt her feet
Gently upon their bosoms move:
Thy gates beheld sweet Zion's ways;
Then was a time of joy and love.
And now the time returns again:
Our souls exult, and London's towers
Receive the Lamb of God to dwell
In England's green and pleasant bowers.
I see thy Form, O lovely, mild Jerusalem! Wing'd with
Six Wings
In the opacous Bosom of the Sleeper, lovely, threefold
In Head and Heart and Reins, three Universes of love and beauty.
Thy forehead bright, Holiness to the Lord! with gates of pearl
Reflects Eternity beneath thy azure wings of feathery down,
Ribb'd, delicate, and cloth'd with feather'd gold and azure and purple,
From thy white shoulders shadowing purity in holiness;
Thence, feather'd with soft crimson of the ruby, bright as fire,
Spreading into the azure wings which, like a canopy,
Bends over thy immortal Head in which Eternity dwells,
Albion! belovèd Land, I see thy mountains and thy hills
And valleys, and thy pleasant Cities, Holiness to the Lord!
I see the Spectres of thy Dead, O Emanation of Albion!
Thy Bosom white, translucent, cover'd with immortal
gems,
A sublime ornament not obscurring the outlines of beauty,
Terrible to behold, for thy extreme beauty and perfection:
Twelvefold here all the Tribes of Israel I behold
Upon the Holy Land: I see the River of Life and Tree of Life
I see the New Jerusalem descending out of Heaven
Between thy Wings of gold and silver, feather'd immortal,
Clear as the rainbow, as the cloud of the Sun's tabernacle.
Thy Reins cover'd with Wings translucent, sometimes
covering
And sometimes spread abroad, reveal the flames of holiness
Which like a robe covers, and like a Veil of Seraphim
In flaming fire unceasing burns from Eternity to Eternity.
Twelvefold I there behold Israel in her Tents;
A Pillar of a Cloud by day, a Pillar of Fire by night
Guides them; there I behold Moab and Ammon and Amalek,
There Bells of silver round thy knees, living, articulate
Comforting sounds of love and harmony; and on thy feet
Sandals of gold and pearl; and Egypt and Assyria before me,
The Isles of Javan, Philistia, Tyre, and Lebanon.
It is easier to forgive an Enemy than to forgive a
Friend.
The man who permits you to injure him deserves your vengeance;
He also will receive it. Go, Spectre! obey my most secret desire,
Which thou knowest without my speaking. Go to these Fiends of
Righteousness,
Tell them to obey their Humanities, and not pretend Holiness,
When they are murderers. As far as my Hammer and Anvil permit,
Go tell them that the Worship of God is honouring His gifts
In other men, and loving the greatest men best, each according
To his Genius, which is the Holy Ghost in Man: there is no other
God than that God who is the intellectual fountain of Humanity.
He who envies or calumniates, which is murder and cruelty,
Murders the Holy One. Go tell them this, and overthrow their cup,
Their bread, their altar-table, their incense, and their oath,
Their marriage and their baptism, their burial and consecration.
I have tried to make friends by corporeal gifts, but have only
Made enemies; I never made friends but by spiritual gifts,
By severe contentions of friendship, and the burning fire of thought.
He who would see the Divinity must see Him in His Children,
One first in friendship and love, then a Divine Family, and in the midst
Jesus will appear. So he who wishes to see a Vision, a perfect Whole,
Must see it in its Minute Particulars, organized; and not as thou,
O Fiend of Righteousness, pretendest! thine is a disorganized
And snowy cloud, brooder of tempests and destructive War.
You smile with pomp and rigour, you talk of benevolence and virtue;
I act with benevolence and virtue, and get murder'd time after time;
You accumulate Particulars, and murder by analysing, that you
May take the aggregate, and you call the aggregate Moral Law;
And you call that swell'd and bloated Form a Minute Particular.
But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars; and every
Particular is a Man, a Divine Member of the Divine Jesus.
I care not whether a man is Good or Evil; all that I
care
Is whether he is a Wise man or a Fool. Go! put off Holiness,
And put on Intellect; or my thund'rous hammer shall drive thee
To wrath, which thou condemnest, till thou obey my voice.
Albion cold lays on his Rock; storms and snows beat
round him,
Beneath the Furnaces and the Starry Wheels and the Immortal Tomb;
Howling winds cover him; roaring seas dash furious against him;
In the deep darkness broad lightnings glare, long thunders roll.
The weeds of Death enwrap his hands and feet, blown incessant,
And wash'd incessant by the for-ever restless sea-waves, foaming abroad
Upon the white Rock. England, a Female Shadow, as deadly damps
ba5 Of the Mines of Cornwall and Derbyshire, lays upon his bosom heavy,
Movèd by the wind in volumes of thick cloud returning, folding round
His loins and bosom, unremovable by swelling storms and loud rending
Of enragèd thunders. Around them the Starry Wheels of their Giant Sons
Revolve, and over them the Furnaces of Los and the Immortal Tomb, around,
Erin sitting in the Tomb, to watch them unceasing night and day:
And the Body of Albion was closèd apart from all Nations.
Over them the famish'd Eagle screams on bony wings, and around
Them howls the Wolf of famine; deep heaves the Ocean, black, thundering
Around the wormy Garments of Albion, then pausing in deathlike silence.
Time was Finishèd!
The Breath Divine went forth over the morning hills.
Albion rose
In anger, the wrath of God, breaking bright, flaming on all sides around
His awful limbs: into the Heavens he walkèd, clothèd in flames,
Loud thund'ring, with broad flashes of flaming lightning and pillars
Of fire, speaking the Words of Eternity in Human Forms, in direful
Revolutions of Action and Passion, thro' the Four Elements on all sides
Surrounding his awful Members. Thou seest the Sun in heavy clouds
Struggling to rise above the Mountains; in his burning hand
He takes his Bow, then chooses out his arrows of flaming gold;
Murmuring, the Bowstring breathes with ardour; clouds roll round the
Horns of the wide Bow; loud sounding winds sport on the mountain brows,
Compelling Urizen to his Furrow, and Tharmas to his Sheepfold,
And Luvah to his Loom.
Jesus said: `Wouldest thou love one who never died
For thee, or ever die for one who had not died for thee?
And if God dieth not for Man, and giveth not Himself
Eternally for Man, Man could not exist; for Man is Love,
As God is Love: every kindness to another is a little Death
In the Divine Image; nor can Man exist but by Brotherhood.'
All Human Forms identifièd, even Tree, Metal, Earth, and
Stone; all
Human Forms identifièd, living, going forth and returning wearied
Into the Planetary lives of Years, Months, Days and Hours; reposing,
And then awaking into His bosom in the Life of Immortality.
And I heard the Name of their Emanations: they are namèd Jerusalem.
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