'The vast of Nature' shrinks up before the 'shrunken eyes' of men, till it is finally enclosed in the 'philosophy of the five senses,' the philosophy of Newton and Locke. 'The Kings of Asia,' the cruelties of the heathen, the ancient powers of evil, call on 'famine from the heath, pestilence from the fen,'
'To turn man from his path,
To restrain the child from the womb,
To cut off the bread from the city,
That the remnant may learn to obey,
That the pride of the heart may fail,
That the lust of the eyes may be quench'd,
That the delicate ear in its infancy
May be dull'd, and the nostrils clos'd up:
To teach mortal worms the path
That leads from the gates of the grave.'
But, in the darkness of their 'ancient woven dens,' they are startled by 'the thick-flaming, thought-creating fires of Orc'; and at their cry Urizen comes forth to meet and challenge the liberating spirit; he thunders against the pillar of fire that rises out of the darkness of Europe; and at the clash of their mutual onset 'the Grave shrieks aloud.' But 'Urizen wept,' the cold pity of reason which, as we have seen in the
