The Poetry and Prose of William Blake :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Globe shook; and Urizen seated
On black clouds his sore wound anointed
The ointment flow'd down on the void
Mix'd with blood; here the snake gets her poison[.]

2

With difficulty & great pain; Urizen
Lifted on high the dead corse:
On his shoulders he bore it to where
A Tree hung over the Immensity

3

For when Urizen shrunk away
From Eternals, he sat on a rock
Barren; a rock which himself
From redounding fancies had petrified[.]
Many tears fell on the rock,
Many sparks of vegetation;
Soon shot the pained root
Of Mystery, under his heel:
It grew a thick tree; he wrote
In silence his book of iron:

Till the horrid plant bending its boughs
Grew to roots when it felt the earth
And again sprung to many a tree.

4

Amaz'd started Urizen! when
He beheld himself compassed round
And high roofed over with trees
He arose but the stems stood so thick
He with difficulty and great pain
Brought his Books, all but the Book
Of iron, from the dismal shade

PLATE 4

5

The Tree still grows over the Void
Enrooting itself all around
An endless labyrinth of woe!

6

The corse of his first begotten
On the accursed Tree of Mystery:
On the topmost stem of this Tree
Urizen nail'd Fuzon's corse.