FLEXIBLE SENSES

Yale Center for British Art
Book of Urizen
Copy C, Plate 12

When man is enclosed in a material body he loses the fluctuating sensation he enjoyed in Eternity and acquires characteristics of solidity and inflexibility. The restraints and limitations which we endure in our physical bodies will fall away when we reenter our spiritual bodies. We will once again experience time and space as fluid movements which respond to our ability to perceive without restriction. Our senses will no longer be narrow chinks in our caverned skull but panoramic receptors of infinite worlds of delight.   

Urizen, Plate 3, (E 71)
1. Earth was not: nor globes of attraction
The will of the Immortal expanded
Or contracted his all flexible senses.
Death was not, but eternal life sprung

Europe, Plate 1, (E 60)
"Preludium

The nameless shadowy female rose from out the breast of Orc:
Her snaky hair brandishing in the winds of Enitharmon,
And thus her voice arose.
...
Plate 2
Unwilling I look up to heaven! unwilling count the stars!
Sitting in fathomless abyss of my immortal shrine.
I sieze their burning power
And bring forth howling terrors, all devouring fiery kings.

Devouring & devoured roaming on dark and desolate mountains      
In forests of eternal death, shrieking in hollow trees.
Ah mother Enitharmon!
Stamp not with solid form this vig'rous progeny of fires.

I bring forth from my teeming bosom myriads of flames.
And thou dost stamp them with a signet, then they roam abroad    
And leave me void as death:
Ah! I am drown'd in shady woe, and visionary joy."

Urizen, Plate 4, (E 71)    
"4: From the depths of dark solitude. From
The eternal abode in my holiness,
Hidden set apart in my stern counsels
Reserv'd for the days of futurity,
I have sought for a joy without pain,                   

For a solid without fluctuation
Why will you die O Eternals?
Why live in unquenchable burnings?"

Four Zoas, Night V, Page 57, (E 338)
"Infected Mad he dancd on his mountains high & dark as heaven
Now fixd into one stedfast bulk his features stonify
From his mouth curses & from his eyes sparks of blighting
Beside the anvil cold he dancd with the hammer of Urthona
Terrific pale. Enitharmon stretchd on the dreary Earth   
Felt her immortal limbs freeze stiffning pale inflexible
His feet shrink withring from the deep shrinking & withering 
And Enitharmon shrunk up all their fibres withring beneath
As plants witherd by winter leaves & stems & roots decaying
Melt into thin air while the seed drivn by the furious wind      
Rests on the distant Mountains top. So Los & Enitharmon
Shrunk into fixed space stood trembling on a Rocky cliff
Yet mighty bulk & majesty & beauty remaind but unexpansive
As far as highest Zenith from the lowest Nadir. so far shrunk 
Los from the furnaces a Space immense & left the cold           
Prince of Light bound in chains of intellect among the furnaces
But all the furnaces were out & the bellows had ceast to blow"