Thus Albion sat, studious of others in his pale disease: Brooding on evil: but when Los opend the Furnaces before him: He saw that the accursed things were his own affections, And his own beloveds: then he turn'd sick! his soul died within him 5Also Los sick & terrified beheld the Furnaces of Death And must have died, but the Divine Saviour descended Among the infant loves & affections, and the Divine Vision wept Like evening dew on every herb upon the breathing ground
Albion spoke in his dismal dreams: O thou deceitful friend 10Worshipping mercy & beholding thy friend in such affliction: Los! thou now discoverest thy turpitude to the heavens. I demand righteousness & justice. O thou ingratitude! Give me my Emanations back[,] food for my dying soul! My daughters are harlots! my sons are accursed before me. 15Enitharmon is my daughter: accursed with a fathers curse! O! I have utterly been wasted! I have given my daughters to devils
So spoke Albion in gloomy majesty, and deepest night Of Ulro rolld round his skirts from Dover to Cornwall.
Los answerd. Righteousness & justice I give thee in return 20For thy righteousness! but I add mercy also, and bind Thee from destroying these little ones: am I to be only Merciful to thee and cruel to all that thou hatest[?] Thou wast the Image of God surrounded by the Four Zoa's Three thou hast slain! I am the Fourth: thou canst not destroy me. 25Thou art in Error; trouble me not with thy righteousness. I have innocence to defend and ignorance to instruct: I have no time for seeming; and little arts of compliment, In morality and virtue: in self-glorying and pride. There is a limit of Opakeness, and a limit of Contraction; 30In every Individual Man, and the limit of Opakeness, Is named Satan: and the limit of Contraction is named Adam. But when Man sleeps in Beulah, the Saviour in mercy takes Contractions Limit, and of the Limit he forms Woman: That Himself may in process of time be born Man to redeem 35But there is no Limit of Expansion! there is no Limit of Translucence. In the bosom of Man for ever from eternity to eternity. Therefore I break thy bonds of righteousness; I crush thy messengers! That they may not crush me and mine: do thou be righteous, And I will return it; otherwise I defy thy worst revenge:
40Consider me as thine enemy: on me turn all thy fury But destroy not these little ones, nor mock the Lords anointed: Destroy not by Moral Virtue, the little ones whom he hath chosen! The little ones whom he hath chosen in preference to thee. He hath cast thee off for ever; the little ones he hath anointed! 45Thy Selfhood is for ever accursed from the Divine presence So Los spoke: then turn'd his face & wept for Albion.
Albion replied. Go! Hand & Hyle! sieze the abhorred friend: As you Have siezd the Twenty-four rebellious ingratitudes; To atone for you, for spiritual death! Man lives by deaths of Men 50Bring him to justice before heaven here upon London stone, Between Blackheath & Hounslow, between Norwood & Finchley All that they have is mine: from my free genrous gift, They now hold all they have: ingratitude to me! To me their benefactor calls aloud for vengeance deep.
55Los stood before his Furnaces awaiting the fury of the Dead: And the Divine hand was upon him, strengthening him mightily.
The Spectres of the Dead cry out from the deeps beneath Upon the hills of Albion; Oxford groans in his iron furnace Winchester in his den & cavern; they lament against 60Albion: they curse their human kindness & affection They rage like wild beasts in the forests of affliction In the dreams of Ulro they repent of their human kindness.
Come up, build Babylon, Rahab is ours & all her multitudes With her in pomp and glory of victory. Depart 65Ye twenty-four into the deeps! let us depart to glory! Their Human majestic forms sit up upon their Couches Of death: they curb their Spectres as with iron curbs They enquire after Jerusalem in the regions of the dead, With the voices of dead men, low, scarcely articulate, 70And with tears cold on their cheeks they weary repose. O when shall the morning of the grave appear, and when Shall our salvation come? we sleep upon our watch We cannot awake! and our Spectres rage in the forests O God of Albion where art thou! pity the watchers!
75Thus mourn they. Loud the Furnaces of Los thunder upon The clouds of Europe & Asia, among the Serpent Temples!
And Los drew his Seven Furnaces around Albions Altars And as Albion built his frozen Altars, Los built the Mundane Shell, In the Four Regions of Humanity East & West & North & South,
80Till Norwood & Finchley & Blackheath & Hounslow, coverd the whole Earth. This is the Net & Veil of Vala, among the Souls of the Dead.
