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Inscribed in graphite, lower left: "24"

Lettered inside image, left: "The Ox in the slaughter house moans | The Dog at the wintry door | And he wept, & he called it Pity | And his tears flowed down on the windows | 6. Cold he wander'd on high, over | their cities | In weeping & pain & woe! | And where-ever he wanderd in sorrows | Upon the aged heavens | A cold shadow follow'd behind him | Like a spiders web. moist, cold, & dim | Drawing out from his sorrowing soul | The dungeon-like heaven dividing. | Where ever the footsteps of Urizen | Walk'd over the cities in sorrow. | 7. Till a Web dark & cold, throughout all | The tormented element stretch'd | From the sorrows of Urizens soul | And the Web is a Female in embrio | None could break the Web, no wings | of fire. | 8. So twisted the cords, & so knotted | The meshes; twisted like to the | human brain | -gion | 9. And all calld it, The Net of Reli-"; right: "Chap: IX | 1. Then the Inhabitants of those Cities: | Felt their Nerves change into Morrow: | And hardening Bones began | In swift diseases and torments, | In throbbings & shootings & grindings | Thro' all the coasts: till weaken'd | The Senses inward rush'd shrinking, | Beneath the dark net of infection. | 2. Till the shrunken eyes clouded over | Discernd not the woven hipocrisy | But the streaky slime in their heavens | Brought together by narrowing perceptions | Appeard transparent air: for their eyes | Grew small like the eyes of a man | And in reptile forms shrinking together | Of seven feet stature they remaind | 3. Six days they shrunk up from existence | And on the seventh day they rested | And they bless'd the seventh day, in sick | hope: | And forgot their eternal life | 4. And their thirty cities divided | In form of a human heart | No more could they rise at will | In the infinite void, but bound down | To earth by their narrowing perceptions"