Four Zoas, Night IX, Page 138, (E 406)
"The Sun has left his blackness & has found a fresher morning
And the mild moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night
And Man walks forth from midst of the fires the evil is all consumd
His eyes behold the Angelic spheres arising night & day
The stars consumd like a lamp blown out & in their stead behold
The Expanding Eyes of Man behold the depths of wondrous worlds
One Earth one sea beneath nor Erring Globes wander but Stars
Of fire rise up nightly from the Ocean & one Sun
Each morning like a New born Man issues with songs & Joy
Calling the Plowman to his Labour & the Shepherd to his rest
He walks upon the Eternal Mountains raising his heavenly voice
Conversing with the Animal forms of wisdom night & day
That risen from the Sea of fire renewd walk oer the Earth"
From Page 307 of
Fearful Symmetry by Northrop .jpg) |
| Wikimedia Commons The Four and Twenty Elders |
"Urizen so far has taken the lead, for the apocalypse is the clearing of the human brain, which is Urizen's rightful place. The imagination sees the physical world as the underground or Platonic cave of the real world, the den of Urthona. Men have just beaten their swords into plowshares, and by the ingenious modulation of the 'harrowing of Hell' symbol Blake has Urizen plow up the surface of this cemetery of buried seeds. An imaginative spring is approaching, and the seeds begin to push upward into eternal daylight. Man may now recover, in order, the world of Luvah or unfallen Generation, the eternal soil, and the world of Tharmas or Beulah, the eternal garden. As this represents the recovery of innocence, a long and very beautiful interlude in pastoral symbolism deals with it. The last spring has now gone through the last summer and is waiting for the harvest of the last autumn, a season which can no longer be called 'fall.'
As Urizen reaches into the stars for the sickle all creation begins to pour out human life. The sea, the home of the daughters of Oceanus who fell with Prometheus, gives up its dead; slaves and all kinds of crushed and denied life grow into maturity; and animals and plants take on human character. The 'metamorphoses' in Ovid, in which nymphs collapse into vegetable and watery existences, are images of the Fall; and in the resurrection they change back to human forms. Luvah gathers the vintage, Tharmas threshes the corn and Los, now Urthona, grinds the corn. The entire imagination of Man is made into bread and wine, and as the poem dies away a second winter approaches, a winter not of death but of repose and of the storing of food, an untroubled sleep before Man awakens for the eternal feast with the other Gods in the hall of reconquered stars."
Revelation 14
[13]And I heard a voice from heaven saying, "Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth." "Blessed indeed," says the Spirit, "that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!"
[14]Then I looked, and lo, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand.
[15] And another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to him who sat upon the cloud, "Put in your sickle, and reap, for the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe."
[16] So he who sat upon the cloud swung his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.
[17]And another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle.
[18] Then another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has power over fire, and he called with a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, "Put in your sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe."
[19] So the angel swung his sickle on the earth and gathered the vintage of the earth, and threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God;
[20] and the wine press was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the wine press, as high as a horse's bridle, for one thousand six hundred stadia.
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