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The Book of Ahania
* * *
CHAP: 1ST
1. Fuzon, on a chariot iron-wing’d,
On spiked flames rose; his hot visage
Flam’d furious; sparkles his hair & beard
Shot down his wide bosom and shoulders.
On clouds of smoke rages his chariot,
And his right hand burns red in its cloud,
Moulding into a vast globe his wrath
As the thunder-stone is moulded,
Son of Urizen’s silent burnings.
2. ‘Shall we worship this Demon of smoke,’
Said Fuzon, ‘this abstract non-entity,
This cloudy God seated on waters,
Now seen, now obscur’d, King of Sorrow?’
3. So he spoke, in a fiery flame,
On Urizen frowning indignant,
The Globe of wrath shaking on high.
Roaring with fury, he threw
The howling Globe; burning it flew,
Length’ning into a hungry beam. Swiftly
4. Oppos’d to the exulting flam’d beam
the broad Disk of Urizen uphav’d
Across the Void many a mile.
5. It was forg’d in mills where the winter
Beats incessant; ten winters the disk
Unremitting endur’d the cold hammer.
6. But the strong arm that sent it remember’d
The sounding beam; laughing it tore through
That beaten mass, keeping its direction,
The cold loins of Urizen dividing.
7. Dire shriek’d his invisible Lust.
Deep groan’d Urizen! Stretching his awful hand,
Ahania (so name his parted soul)
He seiz’d on his mountains of Jealousy.
He groan’d, anguish’d, & called her Sin,
Kissing her and weeping over her;
Then hid her in darkness, in silence,
Jealous tho’ she was invisible.
8. She fell down, a faint shadow wand’ring
In chaos and circling dark Urizen,
As the moon, anguish’d, circles the earth:
Hopeless! Abhorr’d! a death-shadow,
Unseen, unbodied, unknown,
The mother of Pestilence.
9. But the fiery beam of Fuzon
Was a pillar of fire to Egypt,
Five hundred years wand’ring on earth,
Till Los seiz’d it and beat in a mass
With the body of the sun.
CHAP: IID
1. But the forehead of Urizen gathering,
And his eyes pale with anguish, his lips
Blue & changing, in tears and bitter
Contrition he prepar’d his Bow,
2. Form’d of Ribs, that in his dark solitude
When obscur’d in his forests fell monsters
Arose. For his dire Contemplations
Rush’d down like floods from his mountains,
In torrents of mud settling thick,
With Eggs of unnatural production
Forthwith hatching; some howl’d on his hills,
Some in vales, some aloft flew in air.
3. Of these, an enormous dread Serpent,
Scaled and poisonous horned,
Approach’d Urizen even to his knees
As he sat on his dark rooted Oak.
4. With his horns he push’d furious.
Great the conflict & Great the jealousy
In cold poisons; but Urizen smote him.
5. First he poison’d the rocks with his blood;
Then polish’d his ribs, and his sinews
Dried; laid them apart till winter;
Then a Bow black prepar’d; on this Bow
A poisoned rock plac’d in silence.
He utter’d these words to the Bow:
6. ‘O Bow of the clouds of secrecy,
O nerve of that lust form’d monster!
Send this rock swift, invisible thro’
The black clouds, on the bosom of Fuzon.’
7. So saying, in torment of his wounds,
He bent the enormous ribs slowly:
A circle of darkness! Then fixed
The sinew in its rest; then the Rock,
Poisonous source, plac’d with art, lifting difficult
Its weighty bulk; silent the rock lay,
8. While Fuzon, his tigers unloosing,
Thought Urizen slain by his wrath.
‘I am God,’ said he, ‘eldest of things!’
9. Sudden sings the rock; swift & invisible
On Fuzon flew; enter’d his bosom.
His beautiful visage, his tresses
That gave light to the mornings of heaven
Were smitten with darkenss, deform’d
And outstretch’d on the edge of the forest.
10. But the rock fell upon the Earth,
Mount Sinai in Arabia.
CHAP: III
1. The Globe shook; and Urizen, seated
On black clouds, his sore wound anointed.
The ointment flow’d down on the void
Miz’d with blood – here the snake gets her poison.
