YCBA Collections Search

Inscribed in orange ink, upper right: "66"

Lettered inside image: "In awful pomp & gold, in all the precious unhewn stones of Eden, | They build a stupendous Building on the Plain of Salisbury: with chains | Of rocks round London Stone, of Reasonings, of unhewn Demonstrations, | In labyrinthine arches, (Mighty Urizen the Architect,) thro' which | The Heavens might revolve & Eternity be bound in their chain. | Labour unparall[el]ed! a wondrous rocky World of cruel destiny, | Rocks piled on rocks reaching the stars, stretching from pole to pole. | The Building is Natural Religion & its Altars Natural Morality: | A building of eternal death, whose proportions are eternal despair. | Here Vala stood turning the iron Spindle of destruction | From heaven to earth, howling, invisible: but not invisible | Her Two Covering Cherubs, afterwards named Voltaire & Rousseau: | Two frowning Rocks, on each side of the Cove & Stone of Torture, | Frozen Sons of the feminine Tabernacle of Bacon, Newton & Locke. | For Luvah is France; the Victim of the Spectres of Albion. | Los beheld in terror; he pour'd his loud storms on the Furnaces: | The Daughters of Albion clothed in garments of needle work | Strip them off from their shoulders and bosoms, they lay aside | Their garments, they sit naked upon the Stone of trial. | The knife of flint passes over the howling Victim: his blood | Gushes & stains the fair side of the fair Daug[h]ters of Albion. | They put aside his curls: they divide his seven locks upon | His forehead: they bind his forehead with thorns of iron, | They put into his hand a reed, they mock, Saying: Behold | The King of Canaan, whose are seven hundred chariots of iron ! | They take off his vesture whole with their Knives of flint: | But they cut asunder his inner garments: searching with | Their cruel fingers for his heart, & there they enter in pomp, | In many tears: & there they erect a temple & an altar: | They pour cold water on his brain in front, to cause | Lids to grow over his eyes in veils of tears: and caverns | To freeze over his nostrils, while they feed his tongue from cups | And dishes of painted clay. Glowing with beauty & cruelty, | They obscure the sun & the moon: no eye can look upon them. | Ah! alas! at the sight of the Victim, & at sight of those who are smitten, | All who see, become what they behold: their eyes are cover'd | With veils of tears and their nostrils & tongues shrunk up, | Their ear bent outwards, as their Victim, so are they in the pangs | Of unconquerable fear! amidst delights of revenge Earth-shaking! | And as their eye & ear shrunk, the heavens shrunk away : | The Divine Vision became first a burning flame, then a column | Of fire, then an awful fiery wheel surrounding earth & heaven, | And then a globe of blood wandering distant in an unknown night: | Afar into the unknown night the mountains fled away : | Six months of mortality, a summer: & six months of mortality, a winter: | The Human form began to be alter'd by the Daughters of Albion, | And the perceptions to be dissipated into the Indefinite. Becoming | A mighty Polypus nam'd Albion's Tree: they tie the Veins | And Nerves into two knots: & the Seed into a double knot: | They look forth: the Sun is shrunk: the Heavens are shrunk | Away into the far remote: and the Trees & Mountains wither'd | Into indefinite cloudy shadows in darkness & separation. | By Invisible Hatreds adjoin'd, they seem remote and separate | From each other; and yet are a Mighty Polypus in the Deep! | As the Misletoe grows on the Oak, so Albion's Tree on Eternity: Lo! | He who will not comingle in Love, must be adjoin'd by Hate. | They look forth from Stone-henge: from the Cove round London Stone | They look on one another: the mountain calls out to the mountain: | Plinlimmon shrunk away: Snowdon trembled: the mountains | Of Wales & Scotland beheld the descending War, the routed flying. | Red run the streams of Albion: Thames is drunk with blood. | As Gwendolen cast the Shuttle of war, as Cambel return'd the beam, | The Humber & the Severn are drunk with the blood of the slain: | London feels his brain cut round: Edinburgh's heart is circumscribed: | York & Lincoln hide among the flocks, because of the griding knife. | Worcester & Hereford, Oxford & Cambridge reel & stagger, | Overwearied with howling: Wales & Scotland alone sustain the fight! | The inhabitants are sick to death: they labour to divide into Days | And Nights, the uncertain Periods: and into Weeks & Months. In vain | They send the Dove & Raven, & in vain the Serpent over the mountains, | And in vain the Eagle & Lion over the four-fold wilderness. | They return not: but generate in rocky places desolate. | They return not: but build a habitation separate from Man. | The Sun forgets his course, like a drunken man he hesitates, | Upon the Cheselden hills, thinking to sleep on the Severn. | In vain: he is hurried afar into an unknown Night. | He bleeds in torrents of blood as he rolls thro' heaven above, | He chokes up the paths of the sky: the Moon is leprous as snow: | Trembling & descending down, seeking to rest on high Mona: | Scattering her leprous snows in flakes of disease over Albion. | The Stars flee remote: the heaven is iron, the earth is sulphur, | And all the mountains & hills shrink up like a withering gourd: | As the Senses of Men shrink together under the Knife of flint, | In the hands of Albion's Daughters, among the Druid Temples."