3.—Chapter I of Blake’s Book of Urizendetails

Chap: I

1. Lo, a shadow of horror is risen
In Eternity! Unknown, unprolific?
Self-clos’d, all-repelling: what Demon
Hath form’d this abominable void
This soul-shudd’ring vacuum? – Some said
“It is Urizen”, But unknown, abstracted
Brooding secret, the dark power hid.

2. Tunes on times he divided, & measur’d
Space by space in his ninefold darkness
Unseen, unknown: changes appeard
In his desolate mountains risond [?] furious.
By the black winds of perturbation.

3. For he strove in battles dire
In unseen conflictions with shapes
Bred from his forsaken wilderness.
Of beast, bird, fish, serpent & element
Combustion, blast, vapour and cloud.

4. Dark revolving in silent activity:
Unseen in tormenting passions;
An activity unknown and horrible;
A self-contemplating shadow,
In enormous labours occupied

5. But Eternals beheld his vast forests
Age on ages he lay, clos’d, unknown,
Brooding shut in the deep; all avoid
The petrific abominable chaos

6. His cold horrors silent, dark Urizen
Prepar’d: his ten thousands of thunders
Rang’d in gloom’d array stretch out across
The dread world, & the rolling of wheels
As of swelling seas, sound in his clouds
In his hills of stor’d snows, in his windstorms
Of hail & ice: voices of terror,
Are heard, like thunders of autumn,
When the cloud blazes over the harvests.

Chap: II.

1. Earth was not: nor globes of attraction
The will of the Immortal expanded
Or contracted his all flexible senses.
Death was not, but eternal life sprung.

2. The sound of a trumpet the heavens
Awoke & vast clouds of blood roll’d
Round the dim rocks of Urizen, so nam’d
That solitary one in Immensity

Shrill the trumpet: & myriads of Eternity