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Inscribed in orange ink, upper right: "43"

Lettered inside image: "They saw their Wheels rising up poisonous against Albion. | Urizen, cold & scientific; Luvah, pitying & weeping; | Tharmas, indolent & sullen; Urthona, doubting & despairing; | Victims to one another & dreadfully plotting against each other | To prevent Albion walking about in the Four Complexions. | They saw America clos'd out by the Oaks of the western shore: | And Tharmas dash'd on the Rocks of the Altars of Victims in Mexico. | If we are wrathful Albion will destroy Jerusalem with rooty Groves, | If we are merciful, ourselves must suffer destruction on his Oaks: | Why should we enter into our Spectres, to behold our own corruptions? | O God of Albion, descend! deliver Jerusalem from the Oaken Groves! | Then Los grew furious raging: Why stand we here trembling around | Calling on God for help; and not ourselves in whom God dwells | Stretching a hand to save the falling Man: are we not Four | Beholding Albion upon the Precipice ready to fall into Non-Entity: | Seeing these Heavens & Hells conglobing in the Void. Heavens over Hells | Brooding in holy hypocritic lust, drinking the cries of pain | From howling victims of Law: building Heavens Twenty-seven-fold. | Swell'd & bloated General Forms, repugnant to the Divine- | Humanity, who is the Only General and Universal Form, | To which all Lineaments tend & seek with love & sympathy, | All broad & general principles belong to benevolence, | Who protects minute particulars, every one in their own identity. | But here the affectionate touch of the tongue is clos'd in by deadly teeth, | And the soft smile of friendship & the open dawn of benevolence | Become a net & a trap, & every energy render'd cruel, | Till the existence of friendship & benevolence is denied: | The wine of the Spirit & the vineyards of the Holy-One | Here turn into poisonous stupor & deadly intoxication, | That they may be condemn'd by Law & the Lamb of God be slain. | And the two Sources of Life in Eternity, Hunting and War, | Are become the Sources of dark & bitter Death & of corroding Hell: | The open heart is shut up in integuments of frozen silence | That the spear that lights it forth may shatter the ribs & bosom. | A pretence of Art, to destroy Art, a pretence of Liberty | To destroy Liberty, a pretence of Religion to destroy Religion. | Oshea and Caleb fight: they contend in the valleys of (of) Peor, | In the terrible Family Contentions of those who love each other: | The Armies of Balaam weep no women come to the field : | Dead corses lay before them, & not as in Wars of old. | For the Soldier who fights for Truth, calls his enemy his brother: | They fight & contend for life, & not for eternal death! | But here the Soldier strikes, & a dead corse falls at his feet, | Nor Daughter nor Sister nor Mother come forth to embosom the Slain ! | But Death! Eternal Death! remains in the Valleys of Peor. | The English are scatter'd over the face of the Nations: are these | Jerusalem's children? Hark! hear the Giants of Albion cry at night. | We smell the blood of the English! we delight in their blood on our Altars: | The living & the dead shall be ground in our rumbling Mills | For bread of the Sons of Albion: of the Giants Hand & Scofield. | Scofeld & Kox are let loose upon my Saxons! they accumulate | A World in which Man is by his Nature the Enemy of Man, | In pride of Selfhood unwieldy stretching out into Non Entity, | Generalizing Art & Science till Art & Science is lost. | Bristol & Bath, listen to my words, & ye Seventeen: give ear! | It is easy to acknowledge a man to be great & good while we | Derogate from him in the trifles & small articles of that goodness: | Those alone are his friends, who admire his minutest powers. | Instead of Albion's lovely mountains & the curtains of Jerusalem, | I see a Cave, a Rock, a Tree deadly and poisonous, unimaginative: | Instead of the Mutual Forgivenesses, the Minute Particulars, I see | Pits of bitumen ever burning, artificial Riches of the Canaanite | Like Lakes of liquid lead, instead of heavenly Chapels, built | By our dear Lord: I see Worlds crusted with snows & ice: | I see a Wicker Idol woven round Jerusalem's children. I see | The Canaanite, the Amalekite, the Moabite, the Egyptian: | By Demonstrations the cruel Sons of Quality & Negation, | Driven on the Void in incoherent despair into Non Entity. | I see America clos'd apart, & Jerusalem driven in terror | Away from Albion's mountains, far away from London's spires: | I will not endure this thing: I alone withstand to death, | This outrage! Ah me! how sick & pale you all stand round me! | Ah me! pitiable ones! do you also go to death's vale? | All you my Friends & Brothers, all you my beloved Companions: | Have you also caught the infection of Sin & stern Repentance? | I see Disease arise upon you! yet speak to me and give | Me some comfort! why do you all stand silent? I alone | Remain in permanent strength. Or is all this goodness & pity, only | That you may take the greater vengeance in your Sepulcher? | So Los spoke. Pale they stood around the House of Death : | In the midst of temptations & despair: among the rooted Oaks: | Among reared Rocks of Albion's Sons: at length they rose | With"