Blake seeks to provide the Golden String which can lead us through the labyrinth of our experience or his own poetry.

Friday, July 10, 2015

JERUSALEM SLUMBERS [21]



British Library
Four Zoas Manuscript
Page 21
 
Four Zoas, Night I, PAGE 22 [21], (E 313)
"The Daughters of Beulah beheld the Emanation they pitied
They wept before the Inner gates of Enitharmons bosom
And of her fine wrought brain & of her bowels within her loins
Three gates within Glorious & bright open into Beulah 
From Enitharmons inward parts but the bright female terror       
Refusd to open the bright gates she closd and barrd them fast
Lest Los should enter into Beulah thro her beautiful gates

The Emanation stood before the Gates of Enitharmon    
Weeping. the Daughters of Beulah silent in the Porches
Spread her a couch unknown to Enitharmon here reposd             
Jerusalem in slumbers soft lulld into silent rest
Terrific ragd the Eternal Wheels of intellect terrific ragd
The living creatures of the wheels in the Wars of Eternal life
But perverse rolld the wheels of Urizen & Luvah back reversd
Downwards & outwards consuming in the wars of Eternal Death" 

As the fall progressed Albion's emanation Jerusalem descended to Ulro with Albion. She finds herself barred from reentering Beulah as is Los. Enitharmon has substituted her vision of the world under female control for the Vision held by Jerusalem and Los. She blocks the gates of heart, and brain and loins forcing the avenue of return to be diverted through a long detour.

Jerusalem with her vision of the divine order is removed from the field of activity by causing her to sleep as Urizen and Luvah alter the direction in which the mechanism of creation moves. The intellect is induced to direct its efforts toward moving away from the eternal, invisible and toward the temporal, material.


Wikimedia Commons
Jerusalem
Plate 37, detail

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