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

The Catterpiller on the Leaf
Reminds thee of thy Mothers Grief
My Eternal Man set in Repose
The Female from his darkness rose
And She found me beneath a Tree
A Mandrake & in her Veil hid me
Serpent Reasonings us entice
Of Good & Evil: Virtue & Vice

[See Plate:] 2

Doubt Self Jealous Watry folly

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Struggling thro Earths Melancholy

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Naked in Air in Shame & Fear

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Blind in Fire with shield & spear
Two Horn'd Reasoning Cloven Fiction
In Doubt which is Self contradiction
A dark Hermaphrodite We stood
Rational Truth Root of Evil & Good
Round me flew the Flaming Sword
Round her snowy Whirlwinds roard
Freezing her Veil the Mundane Shell

[See Plate:] 6

I rent the Veil where the Dead dwell

When weary Man enters his Cave
He meets his Saviour in the Grave
Some find a Female Garment there

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And some a Male, woven with care
Lest the Sexual Garments sweet
Should grow a devouring Winding sheet

[See Plate] 7

One Dies! Alas! the Living & Dead
One is slain & One is fled

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In Vain-glory hatcht & nurst
By double Spectres Self Accurst
My Son! my Son! thou treatest me
But as I have instructed thee

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On the shadows of the Moon
Climbing thro Nights highest noon

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In Times Ocean falling drownd
In Aged Ignorance profound

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Holy & cold I clipd the Wings
Of all Sublunary Things

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And in depths of my Dungeons
Closed the Father & the Sons

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But when once I did descry
The Immortal Man that cannot Die

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Thro evening shades I haste away
To close the Labours of my Day

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The Door of Death I open found
And the Worm Weaving in the Ground

[See Plate] 16

Thou'rt my Mother from the Womb
Wife, Sister, Daughter to the Tomb
Weaving to Dreams the Sexual strife
And weeping over the Web of Life