Jerusalem. The Emanation of the Giant Albion/Plate 39a
Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion, copy E, object 39, "By Satans Watch-fiends..."
By Satans Watch-fiends tho' they search numbering every grainOf sand on Earth every night, they never find this Gate.It is the Gate of Los. Withoutside is the Mill, intricate, dreadfulAnd fill'd with cruel tortures; but no mortal man can find the Mill5Of Satan, in his mortal pilgrimage of seventy years
For Human beauty knows it not: nor can Mercy find it! ButIn the Fourth region of Humanity, Urthona namd[,]Mortality begins to roll the billows of Eternal DeathBefore the Gate of Los. Urthona here is named Los.10And here begins the System of Moral Virtue, named Rahab.Albion fled thro' the Gate of Los, and he stood in the Gate.
Los was the friend of Albion who most lov'd him. In CambridgeshireHis eternal station, he is the twenty-eighth, & is four-fold.Seeing Albion had turn'd his back against the Divine Vision,15Los said to Albion, Whither fleest thou? Albion reply'd.
I die! I go to Eternal Death! the shades of deathHover within me & beneath, and spreading themselves outsideLike rocky clouds, build me a gloomy monument of woe:Will none accompany me in my death? or be a Ransom for me20In that dark Valley? I have girded round my cloke, and on my feetBound these black shoes of death, & on my hands, death's iron gloves:God hath forsaken me, & my friends are become a burdenA weariness to me, & the human footstep is a terror to me.
Los answerd, troubled: and his soul was rent in twain:25Must the Wise die for an Atonement? does Mercy endure Atonement?No! It is Moral Severity, & destroys Mercy in its Victim.So speaking, not yet infected with the Error & Illusion,