BLAKE'S FAITH

 Larry posted this in April 2015. It is a portion of  Ram Horn'd with Gold by Larry Clayton.

"This book is an introduction to William Blake's thought with primary emphasis on its spiritual dimension. Recent Blake literature has come largely from secular interpreters. The religious community for the most part have totally ignored Blake. Nevertheless he was a profoundly spiritual man.

My introduction to Blake focuses on his spiritual life as expressed in his aesthetics, politics, and psychology. "

Faith 2

God

that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them
and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.
(John 17)

      The theologues of the forties and fifties learned from Paul Tillich that everyone has an ultimate concern, his God. People in Alcoholics Anonymous have told some of their theologically confused members that, lacking any better God, they may worship a 'pot on the mantle', anything at all to break that devotion to the bottle which is actually the worship of a lower form of the self. To remain sober one must believe in a Higher Power of some sort.

       

     The important thing is that one's Higher Power be not a projection of some lower form of self; that's idolatry. The person seriously interested in ultimate reality engages in a life long search for the most real image he can discover, the image of his God. A person's best image of God nurtures his spirit as he goes through life.

       

      The Bible contains a multiplicity of images of God. For example we read about the finger of God, the nostrils of God, even the backside of God. All his life Blake maintained a high level of respect for the Bible as vision. Nevertheless he refused to worship other men's visions of God:

"I (you!) must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's (Jerusalem, 10.21; E153)". 

      He's saying that we have a choice: to adhere to the conventions (whatever conventions may be for us) or to create our own values from our own experience. Blake did this for a lifetime, creating his own myth of meaning, and with his creative works he expressed it over and over again.

       The only thing Blake really trusted was his own immediate direct vision, and he possessed his soul in varying degrees of patience until that vision clarified (and you may be sure that it was criticized, corrected and amended over and over again. The 'Felpham Moment' marks the decisive clarification of Blake's vision of God. Even then the Father remained for Blake a symbol of subjection to the other man's vision, of spiritual tyranny. His own vision came to center upon Jesus.

       Nobodaddy, Father of Jealousy, Urizen, all the creator and authority figures that filled the young Blake's mind, represented in essence his rejection of other men's images of God.

The "Vision of Ahania" (4Z: chapter 3, 39.13ff; E327) expressed Blake's dawning awareness of a fundamental spiritual truth: the transcendental image which had dominated institutional religion is most often a projection of man's primitive negativities. The ultimate negativities, repressed into the unconscious, irupt into consciousness as the ultimate positivity, a God built upon sand, a "shadow from his wearied intellect". This passage, probably as much as anything else in his experience, inspired Thomas Altizer in the sixties to launch his Death of God movement.

       Blake depreciated the God of Law and Wrath in order to exalt the God of Forgiveness. He believed that the far off, elusive, mysterious, transcendental image of God freezes man into spiritual immobility. He wanted to liberate men's minds from this imposture and put them in touch with the true source of creativity:

"Seek not thy heavenly father then beyond the skies,
There Chaos dwells & ancient Night & Og & Anak old. " (Milton 20:33-34)

"I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend;
Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me:
Lo! we are One, forgiving all Evil, Not seeking recompense.
Ye are my members...."
       (Jerusalem 4:18-21)

       The prophetic poems which Blake wrote prior to 1800 concern his efforts to know, describe and deal with the old, jealous, wrathful, creator image; he finally dismissed it as a "shadow from his wearied intellect" (FZ3-40.3). The later, major prophecies, Milton and Jerusalem, also contain this theme, happily outweighed by the new vision.

Prior to the Felpham Moment Blake had worshipped his own visionary endowment, his Pot on the Mantle; he called it the Poetic Genius and later the Imagination. 

The evolving figure of Los building Golgonooza personified what we might call a pre-Christian God. When grace fell upon Blake, he came to see the true embodiment of God in Jesus.

       

      In a letter to his friend and patron, Thomas Butts, he described the experience of redemption that had come to him:

       "And now let me finish with assuring you that tho I have been very unhappy I am so no longer I am again Emerged into the light of Day I still & shall to Eternity Embrace Christianity and Adore him who is the Express image of God."  

Letters, Novr. 22: 18O2, (E 720)

       Following John and Paul quite literally Blake believed that all things belong to Jesus. He is in them (us) and they (we) are in him. All his life Blake had kept a firm grip on the oneness of humanity and its identity with God. At the Moment of Grace he came to see all as One Man and his own forgiven and accepted place in that Man's bosom. In the poem the Man refers to the All as "My Fold" and names the awakened Blake as his herald: "Thou Ram horn'd with gold".

       Blake sent this poem to the one faithful Christian he knew who had befriended and loved him. The circumstances leave no doubt as to the identity of the One Man. The poem poetically expresses Blake's faith as it relates to God, Man and the relationship between the two. It expresses what the Christian faith has to say about the relationship as well as it can be expressed verbally. It also expresses with vivid eloquence the child like nature of the entrance to the kingdom of God. Blake here celebrates and confesses it. 

      To interpret Blake's experience we could use any number of hackneyed phrases representing the various dialects of the language of Zion; suffice it to say that for most of them as for Blake this is the main event, the center of the Moment of Grace. At this point Jesus became and forever afterward remained the One and the ever present Reality which Blake had formerly known as the Infinite or Eternal. For Blake Jesus was a Man, the Reality of Life, and most ultimately the All. In all three instances Blake strictly followed Johannine and Pauline strains of the New Testament.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

BLAKE & WORD OF GOD

  First posted Dec 2010

Wikipedia Commons

Victoria and Albert Museum

All Religions Are One

Title Page

Jonathan Roberts and Christopher Rowland contributed a chapter to the Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature in which they present their views on Blake's use of the Bible. On page 375-76 they write:

"Blake was influenced by a view of the Bible which has a long history in Christianity and may have been a part of the radical religious underground of which he was an inheritor. In this view the Word of God is not a book but a person: Christ ( see John 1:14. "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" and Hebrews 1:1-2. "God...Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son"). In short, the Bible bears witness to the Word of God (that is Christ), but is not in itself the Word of God. Blake manifests this view when he writes:

'The Bible or Word of God, [when read] exclusive of conscience or the Word of God Universal, is that Abomination which like the Jewish ceremonies is for ever removed & henceforth every man may converse with God & be a King & Priest in his own house.' (Erdman, p.614) [Annotations to Bishop Watson]

"Here Blake exalts 'the Word of God Universal' (Christ, or conscience) over the 'Peculiar Word of God' (the Bible as the exclusive mode of divine communication). This distinction between the two 'Words' (Christ and the Bible) means that an individual inspired by the former (through conscience, the Divine Spirit within) may contest and criticize the latter."
End of Quote

Rowland and Roberts are right that this view has a long history and is apparent in Blake's writing. The view of placing the Living Word (acting through the Holy Spirit) above the Written Word (recorded in books) opens up the possibility of continuing revelation which Blake wholeheartedly affirmed. Placing complete and final trust in the recorded Word limits further revelation of Divine Truth. This obstacle to the possibility of the evolution of spiritual consciousness through the work of Imagination is removed through placing trust in the Living word of Christ. Rowland and Roberts were conveying their view that Blake most trusted the word that came to him in thought, and Vision and the expressions of the Imagination.

GARDEN

We turn to Northrop Frye's last major work Words With Power: Being a Second Study of "The Bible and Literature."  Frye states his central thesis as: "every human society possesses a mythology which is inherited, transmitted and diversified by literature." (page xiii) In Part 2 of his book Frye devotes the four chapters to four metaphoric topics : the Mountain, the Garden, the Cave and the Furnace. He calls these chapters "essays on comparative mythology, organized around four primary concerns: the concern to make and create, the concern to love, the concern to sustain oneself and assimilate the environment, with its metaphorical kernal of food, and the concern to escape from slavery and restraint." (Page 139) 

According to Genesis chapter two, before God created the Mountain, the Cave, or the Furnace, God created the Garden for the man whom he had formed.

[8] And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.  

From Words with Power, by Northrop Frye - Chapter 6 -The Garden we read:

"Romantic poets use the same metaphor. In Blake we have the conception of the 'Emanation' or 'concentering vision,' the feminine principle that expands into the totality of what is loved: 

He plants himself in all her Nerves 

Just as a Husbandman his mould 

And She becomes his dwelling place 

And Garden fruitful Seventy fold
The Mental Traveller, (E 484)

 
In this symbolism 'he' means humanity, whether the individuals are male or female, and 'she' is the natural enviornment. The point is that the union with the environment, as it develops in the human attitude to nature, is not simple sublimation but an expansion of sexual emotions...In our day Jungian psychology has developed the conception of the anima, or female element of the male psyche...

Before Jung had had clarified his conception (of the Anima) however, Rilke had produced a poem called Wendung (turning) where he says that he has internalized a large body of images in his earlier work, and that these images now form a single creature or 'maiden within.' ...

I have been dealing with the common tradition in which the poet is a male who begins with the expression of his love for a female, and expands from there into a vision of symbolically female nature. ...The sublimating process starts from the beginning, but it goes in the same general direction, up to a vision with the form of beauty." (Page 199)

Turning Point, Rainer Maria Rilke

"The road from intensity to greatness passes thro sacrifice — Kassner

For a long time he attained it in looking.

Stars would fall to their knees
beneath his compelling vision.
Or as he looked on, kneeling,
his urgency’s fragrance
tired out a god until
it smiled at him in its sleep.

Towers he would gaze at so
that they were terrified:
building them up again, suddenly, in an instant!
But how often the landscape,
overburdened by day,
came to rest in his silent awareness, at nightfall.

Animals trusted him, stepped
into his open look, grazing,
and the imprisoned lions
stared in as if into an incomprehensible freedom;
birds, as it felt them, flew headlong
thro it; and flowers, as enormous
as they are to children, gazed back
into it, on and on.
And the rumour that there was someone
who knew how to look,
stirred those less
visible creatures:
stirred the women.

Looking how long?
For how long now, deeply deprived,
beseeching in the depths of his glance?

When he, whose vocation was Waiting, sat far from home-
the hotel’s distracted unnoticing bedroom
moody around him, and in the avoided mirror
once more the room, and later
from the tormenting bed
once more:
then in the air the voices
discussed, beyond comprehension,
his heart, which could still be felt;
debated what thro the painfully buried body
could somehow be felt – his heart;
debated and passed their judgement:
that it did not have love.

(And denied him further communions.)

For there is a boundary to looking.
And the world that is looked at so deeply
wants to flourish in love.

Work of the eyes is done, now
go and do heart-work
on all the images imprisoned within you; for you
overpowered them: but even now you don’t know them.
Learn, inner man, to look on your inner woman,
the one attained from a thousand

natures, the merely attained but not yet beloved form." [tr. stephen mitchell]

Jerusalem,Plate 86, (E 245)
"Thus Los sings upon his Watch walking from Furnace to Furnace.
He siezes his Hammer every hour, flames surround him as
He beats: seas roll beneath his feet, tempests muster
Around his head. the thick hail stones stand ready to obey
His voice in the black cloud, his Sons labour in thunders
At his Furnaces; his Daughters at their Looms sing woes
His Emanation separates in milky fibres agonizing
Among the golden Looms of Cathedron sending fibres of love
From Golgonooza with sweet visions for Jerusalem, wanderer.
Nor can any consummate bliss without being Generated
On Earth; of those whose Emanations weave the loves
Of Beulah for Jerusalem & Shiloh, in immortal Golgonooza
Concentering in the majestic form of Erin in eternal tears
Viewing the Winding Worm on the Desarts of Great Tartary
Viewing Los in his shudderings, pouring balm on his sorrows
So dread is Los's fury, that none dare him to approach
Without becoming his Children in the Furnaces of affliction
And Enitharmon like a faint rainbow waved before him
Filling with Fibres from his loins which reddend with desire
Into a Globe of blood beneath his bosom trembling in darkness
Of Albions clouds. he fed it, with his tears & bitter groans
Hiding his Spectre in invisibility from the timorous Shade
Till it became a separated cloud of beauty grace & love
Among the darkness of his Furnaces dividing asunder till
She separated stood before him a lovely Female weeping
Even Enitharmon separated outside, & his Loins closed
And heal'd after the separation: his pains he soon forgot:
Lured by her beauty outside of himself in shadowy grief.
Two Wills they had; Two Intellects: & not as in times of old.
Silent they wanderd hand in hand like two Infants wandring
From Enion in the desarts, terrified at each others beauty
Envying each other yet desiring, in all devouring Love,"

NATIVITY ODE 6

Repost from December 2009 

Wikipedia Commons

On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

Object 6, Butts Set

The Night of Peace

Generation to Blake was a gift from God to prevent the part of Eternity that separated from the whole, from falling into nonentity. Each birth is a reenactment of that mercy which gives a new opportunity for a return to the wholeness of Eternity.

The entry of the immortal spirit into the physical world, is what the images of nativity attempt to portray. Incorporation of the spiritual in the physical is a movement that sets off a process of evolving awareness of incarnation: the unity of body and spirit.

In Blake's words, the Nativity is concerned with the 'mortal birth.' Blake's primary interest was in the birth to immortality. Blake added TO TIRZAH to Songs of Experience in later copies of Songs as his affirmation of the raising of the spiritual body. But just as 'generation is the image of regeneration', birth is the image of rebirth, and the child is the image of the new man.

Here is a passage from Jung in which consciousness itself is the child which is born daily, or moment by moment out of the inner depths.

"Consciousness does not create itself-it wells up from unknown depths. In childhood it awakens gradually, and all through life it wakes each morning out of the depths of sleep from an unconscious condition. It is like a child that is born daily out of the primordial womb of the unconscious. . . . It is not only influenced by the unconscious but continually emerges out of it in the form of numberless spontaneous ideas and sudden flashes of thought." ["The Psychology of Eastern Meditation," CW 11, par. 935.]

The consciousness that Blake tried to convey was that of being a part of the one body; and being open to a direct connection to the world which is unseen but always present: Eternity.

Songs of Innocence and Experience, Song 52 (E30)
TO TIRZAH
"Whate'er is Born of Mortal Birth,
Must be consumed with the Earth
To rise from Generation free;
Then what have I to do with thee?

The Sexes sprung from Shame & Pride
Blow'd in the morn: in evening died
But Mercy changd Death into Sleep;
The Sexes rose to work & weep.

Thou Mother of my Mortal part.
With cruelty didst mould my Heart.
And with false self-decieving tears,
Didst bind my Nostrils Eyes & Ears.

Didst close my Tongue in senseless clay
And me to Mortal Life betray:
The Death of Jesus set me free,
Then what have I to do with thee?"

[text on illustration: It is Raised a Spiritual Body]

Jerusalem, Plate 7 (E149)
"And the Religion of Generation which was meant for the destruction
Of Jerusalem, become her covering, till the time of the End.
O holy Generation! [Image] of regeneration!
O point of mutual forgiveness between Enemies!

Birthplace of the Lamb of God incomprehensible!" 

On the Mornig of Christ's Nativity by John Milton

V

But peacefull was the night
Wherin the Prince of light
His raign of peace upon the earth began:
The Windes, with wonder whist,

XXVII

But see the Virgin blest,
Hath laid her Babe to rest.
Time is our tedious Song should here have ending,
Heav'ns youngest-teemed Star 
Hath fixt her polisht Car,
Her sleeping Lord with Handmaid Lamp attending.
And all about the Courtly Stable,
Bright-harnest Angels sit in order serviceable.

Smoothly the waters kist,
Whispering new joyes to the milde Ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

NATIVITY ODE 5

 Repost from December 2010

In December 2009 I posted four times on the nativity using Blake's illustrations to Milton's On the Morning of Christ's Nativity. The fifth illustration of the series "The Flight of Molock" faithfully presents these lines from Milton's ode:

XXIII
And sullen Moloch fled,
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning Idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with Cymbals' ring
They call the grisly king,
In dismal dance about the furnace blue,

Wikipedia Commons

On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

Object 5, Butts Set

The Flight of Moloch

Moloch, the second of Blake's Seven Eyes of God, called the executioner, required child sacrifice. Blake presents the theme of sacrificing children by showing the infant Jesus emerging from a 'fiery furnace.' Daniel tells of three men who emerged from such a furnace unscathed having met in the furnace a fourth who appeared as the 'Son of God.'

On plate 31 (E 177) of Jerusalem Blake tells us that:
"And the appearance of a Man was seen in the Furnaces;
Saving those who have sinned from the punishment of the Law,
(In pity of the punisher whose state is eternal death,)
And keeping them from Sin by the mild counsels of his love."

Two women (cf.1st Kings 3:16ff) are touching the child emerging from the furnace. One appears to be Jerusalem, the other Vala or Rahab. Both turn away from the child as they reach out to touch him. In The Mental Traveller we read of a babe whom none could touch:

The Mental Traveller, (E 484)
"Till from the fire on the hearth
A little Female Babe does spring

And she is all of solid fire
And gems & gold that none his hand
Dares stretch to touch her Baby form
Or wrap her in his swaddling-band"

Blake and Milton have added to the picture of the child who was laid in the manger as provided by Luke. They have called attention to earlier visions of God which will be replaced by the vision brought by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

NATIVITY ODE 4

 Repost from December 2009

Wikipedia Commons

Illustration to Milton's Nativity Ode 

Object 4, Thomas Set

The Overthrow of Apollo and the Pagan Gods

It was in 1629 when John Milton was 21 years old that he wrote the first of his poems in English. His earlier poems were written in Latin or Greek. The first and last sections of On the Morning of Christ's Nativity  deal with the birth of the Christ Child and the longer middle section gives accounts of the expulsion of pagan gods. This represents a movement in Milton's interest, and in the subject matter of his study and reading. His academic career had emphasized classical literature although he was well acquainted with the Bible. Reaching the age of maturity, he turned away from pagan religious figures which had been objects of devotionion in earlier civilizations, and toward describing the life of Christ, 

Blake made two sets of six illustration for On the Morning of Christ's Nativity In 1809 he was comissioned to make a set for Rev. Joseph Thomas; between 1811 and 1820 he completed a set for his most loyal patron, Thomas Butts.

Blake in his characteristic way, saw the birth of Christ as part of the larger picture, as did Milton. The Bible, John Milton, the history of religion, cosmology, and his own myth; each play a role in Blake's response to Jesus' birthday.

"On the Morning of Christ's Nativity"

The Blake Archive provides this in its introduction to "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity:"
"Blake's interest in the 'Nativity Ode' began some years before his execution of these water colors. His illuminated book, Europe a Prophecy (1794), clearly shows the influence of Milton's ode. By 1809, Blake may have taken a renewed interest in the poem because of his increasingly Christocentric theological views. His harsh criticism of classical civilization resonates with two of the 'Nativity' designs, 'The Old Dragon' and 'The Overthrow of Apollo and the Pagan Gods' (objects 3 and 4). Modern critics have been hard pressed to find Blake dissenting from Milton's own iconography and perspectives in the ode."

Milton, Nativity Ode

XIX.

The Oracles are dumm,
No voice or hideous humm
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shreik the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathed spell,
Inspires the pale-ey'd Priest from the prophetic cell.

...

The brutish gods of Nile as fast, 

Isis and Orus, and the Dog Anubis hast.

XXIV 

Nor is Osiris seen 

In Memphian Grove, or Green, 

Trampling the unshowr'd 

Grasse with lowings loud: 

Nor can he be at rest 

Within his sacred chest, 

Naught but profoundest 

Hell can be his shroud: 

In vain with Timbrel'd Anthems dark 

The sable-stoled Sorcerers bear his worshipt Ark. 

---

Europe a Prohecy,  Plate 2, (E61)

"Ah! I am drown'd in shady woe, and visionary joy.

And who shall bind the infinite with an eternal band?
To compass it with swaddling bands? and who shall cherish it
With milk and honey?                                       
I see it smile & I roll inward & my voice is past.

She ceast & rolld her shady clouds
Into the secret place.
Plate 3
              A PROPHECY
The deep of winter came;                              
What time the secret child,
Descended thro' the orient gates of the eternal day:
War ceas'd, & all the troops like shadows fled to their abodes."

Jerusalem, Plate 55, (E 205)

"Then far the greatest number were about to make a Separation     
And they Elected Seven, calld the Seven Eyes of God;
Lucifer, Molech, Elohim, Shaddai, Pahad, Jehovah, Jesus.
They namd the Eighth. he came not, he hid in Albions Forests"
Jerusalem, Plate 37 [41], (E 137)
"And these their Names & their Places within the Mundane Shell
In Tyre & Sidon I saw Baal & Ashtaroth. In Moab Chemosh          
In Ammon, Molech: loud his Furnaces rage among the Wheels
Of Og, & pealing loud the cries of the Victims of Fire!
And pale his Priestesses infolded in Veils of Pestilence, border'd
With War; Woven in Looms of Tyre & Sidon by beautiful Ashtaroth.
In Palestine Dagon, Sea Monster! worshipd o'er the Sea.      
Thammuz in Lebanon & Rimmon in Damascus curtaind
Osiris: Isis: Orus: in Egypt: dark their Tabernacles on Nile
Floating with solemn songs, & on the  Lakes of Egypt nightly
With pomp, even till morning break & Osiris appear in the sky
But Belial of Sodom & Gomorrha, obscure Demon of Bribes
And secret Assasinations, not worshipd nor adord; but 
With the finger on the lips & the back turnd to the light
And Saturn Jove & Rhea of the Isles of the Sea remote
These Twelve Gods. are the Twelve Spectre Sons of the Druid Albion "

NATIVITY ODE 3

Wikipedia Commons

Illustration to Milton's Nativity Ode 

Object 3, Butts Set

The Old Dragon

Seven Headed Dragon

Revelation 12

[1] And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:
[2] And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
[3] And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
[4] And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
[5] And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
[6] And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.
[7] And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
[8] And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.
[9] And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
[10] And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.

Milton and Blake affirm the tale told by John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation. The birth of the Christ child initiated the coming of salvation, however the opposition to God's initative would continue until God makes 'all things new'. The Dragon as a form of Satan was followed by a third of the angels out of heaven. The defeat of the forces of Satan by Michael and his angels forced them into the earth but did not destroy them. 

John's account of the struggle continued until the new Jerusalem came down from God out of heaven. Only those whose names are 'written in the Lamb's book of life' would enter therein.

Revelation Chapter 21

[22] And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.
[23] And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.
[24] And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.
[25] And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there.
[26] And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it.
[27] And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.

On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, XVIII

"And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
   But now begins; for from this happy day
Th'old Dragon under ground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurped sway,
And wroth to see his Kingdom fail,
Swings the scaly Horror of his folded tail."

Four Zoas, Page 120, (E 390)

"I will cast thee out              
If thou repentest not & leave thee as a rotten branch to be burnd
With Mystery the Harlot & with Satan for Ever & Ever
Error can never be redeemd in all Eternity
But Sin Even Rahab is redeemd in blood & fury & jealousy
That line of blood that stretchd across the windows of the morning 
Redeemd from Errors power. Wake thou dragon of the Deeps
Page 121 
Urizen wept in the dark deep anxious his Scaly form
To reassume the human & he wept in the dark deep

Saying O that I had never drank the wine nor eat the bread 

Of dark mortality nor cast my view into futurity"