|
(Engraved 1793) | The Argument |
| |
| I lovèd Theotormon, |
| And I was not ashamèd; |
| I trembled in my virgin fears, |
| And I hid in Leuthas vale! |
| |
| I pluckèd Leuthas flower, |
| And I rose up from the vale; |
| But the terrible thunders tore |
| My virgin mantle in twain. |
Visions ENSLAVD, the Daughters of Albion weep; a trembling lamentation | |
Upon their mountains; in their valleys, sighs toward America. | |
|
For the soft soul of America, Oothoon, wanderd in woe | |
Along the vales of Leutha, seeking flowers to comfort her; | |
And thus she spoke to the bright Marigold of Leuthas vale: | 5 |
|
Art thou a flower? art thou a nymph? I see thee now a flower, | |
Now a nymph! I dare not pluck thee from thy dewy bed! | |
|
The Golden nymph replied: Pluck thou my flower, Oothoon the mild! | |
Another flower shall spring, because the soul of sweet delight | |
Can never pass away. She ceasd, and closd her golden shrine. | 10 |
|
Then Oothoon pluckd the flower, saying: I pluck thee from thy bed, | |
Sweet flower, and put thee here to glow between my breasts; | |
And thus I turn my face to where my whole soul seeks. | |
|
Over the waves she went in wingd exulting swift delight, | |
And over Theotormons reign took her impetuous course. | 15 |
|
Bromion rent her with his thunders; on his stormy bed | |
Lay the faint maid, and soon her woes appalld his thunders hoarse. | |
|
Bromion spoke: Behold this harlot here on Bromions bed, | |
And let the jealous dolphins sport around the lovely maid! | |
Thy soft American plains are mine, and mine thy north and south: | 20 |
Stampd with my signet are the swarthy children of the sun; | |
They are obedient, they resist not, they obey the scourge; | |
Their daughters worship terrors and obey the violent. | |
Now thou mayst marry Bromions harlot, and protect the child | |
Of Bromions rage, that Oothoon shall put forth in nine moons time. | 25 |
|
Then storms rent Theotormons limbs: he rolld his waves around, | |
And folded his black jealous waters round the adulterate pair. | |
Bound back to back in Bromions caves, terror and meekness dwell: | |
|
At entrance Theotormon sits, wearing the threshold hard | |
With secret tears; beneath him sound like waves on a desert shore | 30 |
The voice of slaves beneath the sun, and children bought with money, | |
That shiver in religious caves beneath the burning fires | |
Of lust, that belch incessant from the summits of the earth. | |
|
Oothoon weeps not; she cannot weep, her tears are lockèd up; | |
But she can howl incessant, writhing her soft snowy limbs, | 35 |
And calling Theotormons Eagles to prey upon her flesh. | |
|
I call with holy voice! Kings of the sounding air, | |
Rend away this defilèd bosom that I may reflect | |
The image of Theotormon on my pure transparent breast. | |
|
The Eagles at her call descend and rend their bleeding prey: | 40 |
Theotormon severely smiles; her soul reflects the smile, | |
As the clear spring, muddied with feet of beasts, grows pure and smiles. | |
|
The Daughters of Albion hear her woes, and echo back her sighs. | |
|
Why does my Theotormon sit weeping upon the threshold, | |
And Oothoon hovers by his side, persuading him in vain? | 45 |
I cry: Arise, O Theotormon! for the village dog | |
Barks at the breaking day; the nightingale has done lamenting; | |
The lark does rustle in the ripe corn, and the eagle returns | |
From nightly prey, and lifts his golden beak to the pure east, | |
Shaking the dust from his immortal pinions to awake | 50 |
The sun that sleeps too long. Arise, my Theotormon! I am pure, | |
Because the night is gone that closd me in its deadly black. | |
They told me that the night and day were all that I could see; | |
They told me that I had five senses to enclose me up; | |
And they enclosd my infinite brain into a narrow circle, | 55 |
And sunk my heart into the Abyss, a red, round globe, hot burning, | |
Till all from life I was obliterated and erasèd. | |
Instead of morn arises a bright shadow, like an eye | |
In the eastern cloud; instead of night a sickly charnel-house, | |
That Theotormon hears me not. To him the night and morn | 60 |
Are both alike; a night of sighs, a morning of fresh tears; | |
And none but Bromion can hear my lamentations. | |
|
With what sense is it that the chicken shuns the ravenous hawk? | |
With what sense does the tame pigeon measure out the expanse? | |
With what sense does the bee form cells? Have not the mouse and frog | 65 |
Eyes and ears and sense of touch? Yet are their habitations | |
And their pursuits as different as their forms and as their joys. | |
Ask the wild ass why he refuses burdens, and the meek camel | |
Why he loves man. Is it because of eye, ear, mouth, or skin, | |
Or breathing nostrils? No! for these the wolf and tiger have. | 70 |
Ask the blind worm the secrets of the grave, and why her spires | |
Love to curl round the bones of death; and ask the ravnous snake | |
Where she gets poison, and the wingd eagle why he loves the sun; | |
And then tell me the thoughts of man, that have been hid of old. | |
|
Silent I hover all the night, and all day could be silent, | 75 |
If Theotormon once would turn his lovèd eyes upon me. | |
How can I be defild when I reflect thy image pure? | |
Sweetest the fruit that the worm feeds on, and the soul preyd on by woe, | |
The new-washd lamb tingd with the village smoke, and the bright swan | |
By the red earth of our immortal river. I bathe my wings, | 80 |
And I am white and pure to hover round Theotormons breast. | |
|
Then Theotormon broke his silence, and he answerèd: | |
|
Tell me what is the night or day to one oerflowd with woe? | |
Tell me what is a thought, and of what substance is it made? | |
Tell me what is a joy, and in what gardens do joys grow? | 85 |
And in what rivers swim the sorrows? And upon what mountains | |
Wave shadows of discontent? And in what houses dwell the wretched, | |
Drunken with woe, forgotten, and shut up from cold despair? | |
|
Tell me where dwell the thoughts, forgotten till thou call them forth? | |
Tell me where dwell the joys of old, and where the ancient loves, | 90 |
And when will they renew again, and the night of oblivion past, | |
That I might traverse times and spaces far remote, and bring | |
Comforts into a present sorrow and a night of pain? | |
Where goest thou, O thought? to what remote land is thy flight? | |
If thou returnest to the present moment of affliction, | 95 |
Wilt thou bring comforts on thy wings, and dews and honey and balm, | |
Or poison from the desert wilds, from the eyes of the envier? | |
|
Then Bromion said, and shook the cavern with his lamentation: | |
|
Thou knowest that the ancient trees seen by thine eyes have fruit; | |
But knowest thou that trees and fruits flourish upon the earth | 100 |
To gratify senses unknowntrees, beasts, and birds unknown; | |
Unknown, not unperceivd, spread in the infinite microscope, | |
In places yet unvisited by the voyager, and in worlds | |
Over another kind of seas, and in atmospheres unknown? | |
Ah! are there other wars, beside the wars of sword and fire? | 105 |
And are there other sorrows beside the sorrows of poverty? | |
And are there other joys beside the joys of riches and ease? | |
And is there not one law for both the lion and the ox? | |
And is there not eternal fire, and eternal chains | |
To bind the phantoms of existence from eternal life? | 110 |
|
Then Oothoon waited silent all the day and all the night; | |
But when the morn arose, her lamentation renewd: | |
The Daughters of Albion hear her woes, and echo back her sighs. | |
|
O Urizen! Creator of men! mistaken Demon of heaven! | |
Thy joys are tears, thy labour vain to form men to thine image. | 115 |
How can one joy absorb another? Are not different joys | |
Holy, eternal, infinite? and each joy is a Love. | |
|
Does not the great mouth laugh at a gift, and the narrow eyelids mock | |
At the labour that is above payment? And wilt thou take the ape | |
For thy counsellor, or the dog for a schoolmaster to thy children? | 120 |
Does he who contemns poverty, and he who turns with abhorrence | |
From usury feel the same passion, or are they movèd alike? | |
How can the giver of gifts experience the delights of the merchant? | |
How the industrious citizen the pains of the husbandman? | |
How different far the fat fed hireling with hollow drum, | 125 |
Who buys whole corn-fields into wastes, and sings upon the heath! | |
How different their eye and ear! How different the world to them! | |
With what sense does the parson claim the labour of the farmer? | |
What are his nets and gins and traps; and how does he surround him | |
With cold floods of abstraction, and with forests of solitude, | 130 |
To build him castle and high spires, where kings and priests may dwell; | |
Till she who burns with youth, and knows no fixèd lot, is bound | |
In spell of law to one she loathes? And must she drag the chain | |
Of life in weary lust? Must chilling, murderous thoughts obscure | |
The clear heaven of her eternal spring; to bear the wintry rage | 135 |
Of a harsh terror, drivn to madness, bound to hold a rod | |
Over her shrinking shoulders all the day, and all the night | |
To turn the wheel of false desire, and longings that wake her womb | |
To the abhorrèd birth of cherubs in the human form, | |
That live a pestilence and die a meteor, and are no more; | 140 |
Till the child dwell with one he hates, and do the deed he loathes, | |
And the impure scourge force his seed into its unripe birth, | |
Ere yet his eyelids can behold the arrows of the day? | |
|
Does the whale worship at thy footsteps as the hungry dog; | |
Or does he scent the mountain prey because his nostrils wide | 145 |
Draw in the ocean? Does his eye discern the flying cloud | |
As the ravens eye; or does he measures the expanse like the vulture? | |
Does the still spider view the cliffs where eagles hide their young; | |
Or does the fly rejoice because the harvest is brought in? | |
Does not the eagle scorn the earth, and despite the treasures beneath? | 150 |
But the mole knoweth what is there, and the worm shall tell it thee. | |
Does not the worm erect a pillar in the mouldering churchyard | |
Over his porch these words are written: Take thy bliss, O Man! | |
And sweet shall be thy taste, and sweet thy infant joys renew! | |
|
Infancy! fearless, lustful, happy, nestling for delight | 155 |
In laps of pleasures: Innocence! honest, open, seeking | |
The vigorous joys of morning light, open to virgin bliss, | |
Who taught thee modesty, subtil modesty, child of night and sleep? | |
When thou awakest wilt thou dissemble thy secret joys, | |
Or wert thou awake when all this mystery was disclosd? | 160 |
|
Then comst thou forth a modest virgin knowing to dissemble, | |
With nets found under thy night pillow, to catch virgin joy | |
And brand it with the name of whore, and sell it in the night | |
In silence, evn without a whisper, and in seeming sleep. | |
Religious dreams and holy vespers light thy smoky fires: | 165 |
Once were thy fires lighted by the eyes of honest morn. | |
And does my Theotormon seek this hypocrite modesty, | |
This knowing, artful, secret, fearful, cautious, trembling hypocrite? | |
Then is Oothoon a whore indeed! and all the virgin joys | |
Of life are harlots; and Theotormon is a sick mans dream; | 170 |
And Oothoon is the crafty slave of selfish holiness. | |
|
But Oothoon is not so, a virgin filld with virgin fancies, | |
Open to joy and to delight wherever beauty appears: | |
If in the morning sun I find it, there my eyes are fixd | |
In happy copulation; if in evening mild, wearièd with work, | 175 |
Sit on a bank and draw the pleasures of this free-born joy. | |
|
The moment of desire! the moment of desire! The virgin | |
That pines for man shall awaken her womb to enormous joys | |
In the secret shadows of her chamber: the youth shut up from, | |
The lustful joy shall forget to generate, and create an amorous image | 180 |
In the shadows of his curtains and in the folds of his silent pillow. | |
Are not these the places of religion, the rewards of continence, | |
The self-enjoyings of self-denial? Why dost thou seek religion? | |
Is it because acts are not lovely that thou seekest solitude, | |
Where the horrible darkness is impressèd with reflections of desire? | 185 |
|
Father of Jealousy, be thou accursèd from the earth! | |
Why hast thou taught my Theotormon this accursèd thing, | |
Till beauty fades from off my shoulders, darkend and cast out, | |
A solitary shadow wailing on the margin of nonentity? | |
|
I cry: Love! Love! Love! happy happy Love! free as the mountain wind! | 190 |
Can that be Love, that drinks another as a sponge drinks water, | |
That clouds with jealousy his nights, with weepings all the day, | |
To spin a web of age around him, grey and hoary, dark; | |
Till his eyes sicken at the fruits that hangs before his sight? | |
Such is self-love that envise all, a creeping skeleton, | 195 |
With lamplike eyes watching around the frozen marriage bed! | |
|
But silken nets and traps of adamant will Oothoon spread, | |
And catch for thee girls of mild silver, or of furious gold. | |
Ill lie beside thee on a bank, and view their wanton play | |
In lovely copulation, bliss on bliss, with Theotormon: | 200 |
Red as the rosy morning, lustful as the first-born beam, | |
Oothoon shall view his dear delight; nor eer with jealous cloud | |
Come in the heaven of generous love, nor selfish blightings bring. | |
|
Does the sun walk, in glorious raiment, on the secret floor | |
Where the cold miser spreads his gold; or does the bright cloud drop | 205 |
On his stone threshold? Does his eye behold the beam that brings | |
Expansion to the eye of pity; or will he bind himself | |
Beside the ox to thy hard furrow? Does not that mild beam blot | |
The bat, the owl, the glowing tiger, and the king of night? | |
The sea-fowl takes the wintry blast for a covring to her limbs, | 210 |
And the wild snake the pestilence to adorn him with gems and gold; | |
And trees, and birds, and men behold their eternal joy. | |
Arise, you little glancing wings, and sing your infant joy! | |
Arise, and drink your bliss, for everything that lives is holy! | |
|
Thus every morning wails Oothoon; but Theotormon sits | 215 |
Upon the morgind ocean conversing with shadows dire. | |
|
The Daughters of Albion hear her woes, and echo back her sighs.
THE END | |
|