| William Blake (1757–1827). The Poetical Works. 1908. | | | | Selections from ‘The Four Zoas’ | | [The Song sung at the Feast of Los and Enitharmon] |
| | (Four Zoas, Night II, ll. 128–43.)
THE MOUNTAIN callèd out to the Mountain: 1 ‘Awake, O Brother Mountain! | |
| Let us refuse the Plough and Spade, the heavy Roller and spikèd | |
| Harrow; burn all these corn-fields; throw down all these fences! | |
| Fatten’d on human blood, and drunk with wine of life is better far | |
| Than all these labours of the harvest and the vintage. See the river, | 5 |
| Red with the blood of Men, swells lustful round my rocky knees: | |
| My clouds are not the clouds of verdant fields and groves of fruit, | |
| But Clouds of Human Souls: my nostrils drink the Lives of Men. | |
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| ‘The Villages lament, they faint, outstretch’d upon the plain: | |
| Wailing runs round the Valleys from the mill and from the barn: | 10 |
| But most the polish’d Palaces, dark, silent, bow with dread, | |
| Hiding their books and pictures underneath the dens of Earth. | |
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| ‘The Cities send to one another saying: “My sons are mad | |
| With wine of cruelty! Let us plait a scourge, O Sister City! | |
| Children are nourish’d for the slaughter. Once the child was fed | 15 |
| With milk; but wherefore now are children fed with blood?”’ | |
| | | Note 1. The Song] 1 The Mountain callèd out to the Mountain changed afterwards to the more symbolic Ephraim callèd out to Zion. [back] | | |
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