- Title:
- "Los answer'd sighing like the Bellows of his Furnaces..." (Plate 88)
- 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 1/4 x 5 7/8 inches (21 x 15 cm)
- Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Inscribed in orange ink, upper right: "88"
Lettered inside image: "Los answer'd, sighing like the Bellows of his Furnaces. | I care not! the swing of my Hammer shall measure the starry round. | When in Eternity Man converses with Man they enter | Into each others Bosom (which are Universes of delight) | In mutual interchange, and first their Emanations meet | Surrounded by their Children: if they embrace & comingle | The Human Four-fold Forms mingle also in thunders of Intellect. | But if the Emanations mingle not: with storms & agitations | Of earthquakes & consuming fires they roll apart in fear. | For Man cannot unite with Man but by their Emanations, | Which stand both Male & Female at the Gates of each Humanity. | How then can I ever again be united as Man with Man | While thou, my Emanation, refusest my Fibres of dominion? | When Souls mingle & join thro' all the Fibres of Brotherhood | Can there be any secret joy on Earth greater than this? | Enitharmon answer'd: This is Woman's World, nor need she any | Spectre to defend her from Man. I will Create secret places, | And the masculine names of the places, Merlin & Arthur. | A triple Female Tabernacle for Moral Law I weave | That he who loves Jesus may loathe terrified Female love, | Till God himself become a Male subservient to the Female. | She spoke in scorn & jealousy, alternate torments; and | So speaking she sat down on Sussex shore, singing lulling | Cadences, & playing in sweet intoxication among the glistening | Fibres of Los: sending them over the Ocean eastward into | The realms of dark death ; O perverse to thyself, contrarious | To thy own purposes! for when she began to weave, | Shooting out in sweet pleasure, her bosom in milky Love | Flow'd into the aching fibres of Los, yet contending against him, | In pride sendinding his Fibres over to her objects of jealousy, | In the little lovely Allegoric Night of Albion's Daughters | Which stretch'd abroad, expanding east & west & north & south, | Thro' all the World of Erin & of Los & all their Children. | A sullen smile broke from the Spectre in mockery & scorn: | Knowing himself the author of their divisions & shrinkings, gratified | At their contentions, he wiped his tears, he wash'd his visage. | The Man who respects Woman shall be despised by Woman: | And deadly cunning, & mean abjectness only, shall enjoy them. | For I will make their places of joy & love, excrementitious, | Continually building, continually destroying in Family feuds. | While you are under the dominion of a jealous Female, | Unpermanent for ever because of love & jealousy, | You shall want all the Minute Particulars of Life. | Thus joy'd the Spectre in the dusky fires of Los's Forge, eyeing | Enitharmon who at her shining Looms sings lulling cadences, | While Los stood at his Anvil in wrath, the victim of their love | And hate: dividing the Space of Love with brazen Compasses | In Golgonooza & in Udan-Adan & in Entuthon of Urizen. | The blow of his Hammer is Justice, the swing of his Hammer Mercy, | The force of Los's Hammer is eternal Forgiveness; but | His rage or his mildness were vain, she scatter'd his love on the wind | Eastward into her own Center, creating the Female Womb | In mild Jerusalem around the Lamb of God. Loud howl | The Furnaces of Los! loud roll the Wheels of Enitharmon! | The Four Zoas in all their faded majesty burst out in fury | And fire. Jerusalem took the Cup which foam'd in Vala's hand, | Like the red Sun upon the mountains in the bloody day, | Upon the Hermaphroditic Wine-presses of Love & Wrath."
- Credit Line:
- Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
- Copyright Status:
- Public Domain
- Accession Number:
- B1992.8.1(88)
- Classification:
- Prints
- Collection:
- Prints and Drawings
- Subject Terms:
- literary theme | religious and mythological subject | text | vines
- Access:
- Accessible in the Study Room [Request]
- Link:
- https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:3523
- Export:
- XML
- IIIF Manifest:
- JSON
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