- Title:
- "My tents are fall'n! my pillars are in ruins!..." (Plate 79)
- Part Of:
Collective Title: Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion, Copy E
- Date:
- 1804 to 1820
- Materials & Techniques:
- Relief etching printed in orange ink, with watercolor and pen and black ink on moderately thick, smooth, cream wove paper
- Dimensions:
- Sheet: 13 1/2 x 10 3/8 inches (34.3 x 26.4 cm), Plate: 8 3/4 x 6 3/8 inches (22.2 x 16.2 cm)
- Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Inscribed in orange ink, upper right: "79"
Lettered inside image: "My tents are fall'n! my pillars are in ruins! my children dash'd | Upon Egypt's iron floors, & the marble pavements of Assyria! | I melt my soul in reasonings among the towers of Heshbon: | Mount Zion is become a cruel rock, & no more dew | Nor rain: no more the spring of the rock appears: but cold, | Hard & obdurate are the furrows of the mountain of wine & oil; | The mountain of blessing is itself a curse & an astonishment: | The hills of Judah are fallen with me into the deepest hell, | Away from the Nations of the Earth, & from the Cities of the Nations; | I walk to Ephraim, I seek for Shiloh; I walk like a lost sheep | Among precipices of despair: in Goshen I seek for light | In vain: and in Gilead for a physician and a comforter. | Goshen hath follow'd Philistea: Gilead hath join'd with Og: | They are become narrow places in a little and dark land: | How distant far from Albion! his hills & his valleys no more | Recieve the feet of Jerusalem : they have cast me quite away : | And Albion is himself shrunk to a narrow rock in the midst of the sea! | The plains of Sussex & Surrey, their hills of flocks & herds, | No more seek to Jerusalem nor to the sound of my Holy-ones. | The Fifty-two Counties of England are harden'd against me | As if I was not their Mother, they despise me & cast me out. | London cover'd the whole Earth, England encompass'd the Nations, | And all the Nations of the Earth were seen in the Cities of Albion. | My pillars reach'd from sea to sea; London beheld me come | From my east & from my west, he blessed me and gave | His children to my breasts, his sons & daughters to my knees. | His aged parents sought me out in every city & village: | They discern'd my countenance with joy; they shew'd me to their sons, | Saying, Lo Jerusalem is here! she sitteth in our secret chambers. | Levi and Judah & Issachar: Ephram, Manasseh, Gad and Dan | Are seen in our hills & valleys: they keep our flocks & herds: | They watch them in the night; and the Lamb of God appears among us. | The river Severn stay'd his course at my command: | Thames poured his waters into my basons and baths: | Medway mingled with Kishon: Thames reciev'd the heavenly Jordan. | Albion gave me to the whole Earth to walk up & down; to pour | Joy upon every mountain, to teach songs to the shepherd & plowman. | I taught the ships of the sea to sing the songs of Zion. | Italy saw me, in sublime astonishment: France was wholly mine, | As my garden & as my secret bath: Spain was my heavenly couch, | I slept in his golden hills ; the Lamb of God met me there, | There we walked as in our secret chamber among our little ones. | They looked upon our loves with joy: they beheld our secret joys: | With holy raptures of adoration rap'd sublime in the visions of God. | Germany, Poland & the North wooed my footsteps, they found | My gates in all their mountains & my curtains in all their vales: | The furniture of their houses was the furniture of my chamber. | Turkey & Grecia saw my instr[u]ments of music, they arose, | They siez'd the harp, the flute, the mellow horn of Jerusalem's joy, | They sounded thanksgivings in my courts: Egypt & Lybia heard, | The swarthy sons of Ethiopia stood round the Lamb of God | Enquiring for Jerusalem: he led them up my steps to my altar. | And thou, America! I once beheld thee but now behold no more | Thy golden mountains where my Cherubim & Seraphim rejoic'd | Together among my little-ones. But now, my Altars run with blood, | My fires are corrupt, my incense is a cloudy pestilence | Of seven diseases! Once a continual cloud of salvation rose | From all my myriads: once the Four-fold World rejoic'd among | The pillars of Jerusalem, between my winged Cherubim: | But now I am clos'd out from them in the narrow passages | Of the valleys of destruction, into a dark land of pitch & bitumen, | From Albion's Tomb afar and from the four-fold wonders of God, | Shrunk to a narrow doleful form in the dark land of Cabul ; | There is Reuben & Gad & Joseph & Judah & Levi, clos'd up | In narrow vales; I walk & count the bones of my beloveds | Along the Valley of Destruction, among these Druid Temples | Which overspread all the Earth in patriarchal pomp & cruel pride. | Tell me, O Vala, thy purposes; tell me wherefore thy shuttles | Drop with the gore of the slain; why Euphrates is red with blood; | Wherefore in dreadful majesty & beauty outside appears | Thy Masculine from thy Feminine, hardening against the heavens | To devour the Human! Why dost thou weep upon the wind among | These cruel Druid Temples? O Vala! Humanity is far above | Sexual organization, & the Visions of the Night of Beulah, | Where Sexes wander in dreams of bliss among the Emanations, | Where the Masculine & Feminine are nurs'd into Youth & Maiden | By the tears and smiles of Beulah's Daughters till the time of Sleep is past: | Wherefore then do you realize these nets of beauty & delusion | In open day to draw the souls of the Dead into the light, | Till Albion is shut out from every Nation under Heaven? | En"
- Credit Line:
- Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
- Copyright Status:
- Public Domain
- Accession Number:
- B1992.8.1(79)
- Classification:
- Prints
- Collection:
- Prints and Drawings
- Subject Terms:
- bird | fruits | grapes | leaf | literary theme | religious and mythological subject | text | vines
- Access:
- Accessible in the Study Room [Request]
- Link:
- https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:3513
- Export:
- XML
- IIIF Manifest:
- JSON
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