9. A Song Of Liberty

[plates 25-27]
[1.] The eternal female groan'd! It was heard all over the earth.
[2.] Albion's coast is sick silent; the American meadows faint!
[3.] Shadows of prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers
and mutter across the ocean: France, rend down thy dungeon;
[4.] Golden Spain burst the barriers of old Rome;
[5.] Cast thy keys, O Rome, into the deep falling, even to eternity down falling,
[6.] And weep [and bow thy reverend locks.]
[7.] In her trembling hands she took the new born terror, howling;
[8.] On those infinite mountains of light, now barr'd out by the Atlantic sea,
the new born fire stood before the starry king!
[9.] Flag'd with grey brow'd snows and thunderous visages, the jealous wings wav'd over the deep.
[10.] The speary hand burned aloft, unbuckled was the shield;
forth went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair,
and hurl'd the new born wonder thro' the starry night.
[11.] The fire, the fire is falling!
[12.] Look up! Look up! O citizen of London, enlarge thy countenance:
O Jew. Leave counting gold! Return to thy oil and wine. O African!
Black African! (Go, winged thought, widen his forehead)
[13.] The fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun into the western sea.
[14.] Wak'd from his eternal sleep, the hoary element roaring fled away;
[15.] Down rush'd, beating his wings in vain, the jealous king; his grey brow'd councellors,
thunderous warriors, curl'd veterans, among helms, and shields,
and chariots, horses, elephants: banners, castles, slings, and rocks.
[16.] Falling, rushing, ruining! Buried in the ruins, on Urthona's dens;
[17.] All night beneath the ruins, then, their sullen flames faded,
emerge round the gloomy king.
[18.] With thunder and fire, leading his starry hosts thro' the waste
wilderness, he promulgates his ten commands, glancing his beamy eyelids
over the deep in dark dismay,
[19.] where the son of fire in his eastern cloud,
while the morning plumes her golden breast,
[20.] spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust,
loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying: empire is no more!
And now the lion & wolf shall cease.

Let the priests of the raven of dawn, no longer
in deadly black with hoarse note curse the sons of joy.
Nor his accepted brethren, whom, tyrant,
he calls free: lay the bound or build the roof.
Nor pale religious letchery call the virginity that wishes but acts not!
For every thing that lives is holy

cursed in his name all the deities of surrounding nations and asserted
that they had rebelled; from this opinions the vulgar came to thin that
all nations would at last be subjected to the Jews. 'This' he said 'like
all firm perswasions, is come to pass; for all nations belive the Jews'
code and worship the Jews' God, and what the greater subjection can be? 'I
heard this with some wonder,& must confess my own convivtion. After dinner
I ask'd Isaiah to favour the world with his lost works; he said none of
equal value was lost. Ezekiel the same of his. I also asked Isaiah what
made him go naked and bare foot three years? He answer'd: 'The same that
made our friend Diogenes, the Grecian. 'I then asked Ezekiel why he eat
dung,& lay so long on his right & left side? He answer'd 'The desire of
raising other men into perception of the infinite: this the North American
tribes practise,& is he honest who resists his genius or conscience for
this sake of present ease or gratification? (plate 14) The ancient
tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six
thousand years is true, as I have heard from hell. For the Cherub with his
flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and
when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and
holy, whereas it now appears finite & corrupt. This will come to pass by
an improvement of sensual enjoyment, but first the notion that man has a
body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this I shall do by printing
in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in hell are salutary and in
medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite
which was hid. If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would
appear to man as it is. Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he
sees things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern

6. A Memorable Fancy 3

[plate 15]
I was in a printing house in hell & saw the method in which knowledge is
transmitted from generation to generation. In the first chamber was a
dragon-man, clearing away the rubbish from a cave's mouth; within, a
number of dragons were hollowing the cave. In the second chamber was a
viper folding round the rock & the cave, and others were adorning it
with gold, silver and precious stones. In the third chamber was an eagle
with wings and feathers of air: he caused the inside of the cave to be
infinite; around were numbers of eagle-like men, who built palaces in the
immense cliffs. In the fourth chamber were lions of flaming fire, raging
around & melting the metals into living fluids. In the fifth chamber were
unnam'd forms, which cast the metals into the expanse. There they receiv'd
by men who occupied the sixth chamber, and took the forms of book & were
arranged in libraries.

[plates 16-17]
The giants who formed this world
into its sensual existence and now seem to live in it in chains, are in
truth the causes of its life & the sources of all activity; but the chains
are the cunning of weak and tame minds which have power to resist energy,
according to the proverb, the weak in courage is strong in cunning. Thus
one portion of beings is the prolific, the other the devouring: to the
devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains: but it is no so,
he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the whole. But the
prolific would cease to be prolific unless the devourer, as a sea received
the excess of his delights. Some will say: 'Is not God alone the prolific?
' I answer: 'God only acts & is, in existing beings or men'. These two
classes of men are always upon earth,& they should be enemies: whoever
tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence. Religion is an
endeavour to reconcile the two. Note: Jesus Christ did not wish to unite,
but to seperate them, as in the parable of sheep and goats!& He says: 'I
came not to send peace, but a sword. ' Messiah or Satan or tempter was
formerly thought to be one of the antediluvians who are our energies.