'I weep!-my turban of thick clouds around my lab'ring head;
And fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs.
Yet the red sun and moon

And all the overflowing stars rain down prolific pains.

Unwilling I look up to heaven: unwilling count the stars,
Sitting in fathomless abyss of my immortal shrine.

'I seize their burning power,

And bring forth howling terrors and devouring fiery kings!

'Devouring and 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 fire!

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.

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, and I roll inward, and my voice is past.'

She ceas'd; and rolled her shady clouds

Into the secret place.

So rapid was the production of this class of Blake's writings, that notwithstanding their rich and elaborate decoration, and the tedious process by which the whole had to be, with his own hand, engraved and afterwards coloured, the same year witnessed the completion of another, and the succeeding year, of two more 'prophetic books.' The Book of Urizen (1794), was the title of the next. The same may be said of it as of its predecessors. Like them, the poem is shapeless, unfathomable; but in the heaping up of gloomy and terrible images, the America and Europe are even exceeded. It throws however, some vivid though confused glimpses of light upon the speculative conceptions of Blake himself-conceptions not essentially

undevout, but much the reverse, in their own audacious, iconoclastic

way.

The following striking passage, which describes the appearing of the first woman, will serve as an example of Urizen :

At length, in tears and cries, embodied

A female form trembling and pale

Waves before his deathly face.

All Eternity shudder'd at sight

Of the first female form, now separate,
Pale as a cloud of snow,

Waving before the face of Los!

Wonder, awe, fear, astonishment,

Petrify the eternal myriads

At the first female form now separate.

They call'd her Pity, and fled!

Spread a tent with strong curtains around them :

Let cords and stakes bind in the Void,

'That Eternals may no more behold them!'

They began to weave curtains of darkness.

They erected large pillars round the void;

With golden hooks fastened in the pillars;

With infinite labour, the Eternals

A woof wove, and called it Science.

The design, like the text, is characterized by a monotony of horror. Every page may be said as a furnace mouth to

Cast forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame,'

in the midst of which are figures howling, weeping, writhing, or chained to rocks, or hurled headlong into the abyss. There are grand things among them. Of the more striking, we recal a figure that stoops over and seems breathing upon a globe enveloped in flames, the lines of fire flowing into those of his drapery and hair; an old, amphibious-looking giant, with rueful visage, letting himself

sink slowly through the waters like a frog; a skeleton coiled round, resembling a fossil giant imbedded in the rock, &c. The colouring is rich, a little overcharged perhaps in the copy I have seen,—and gold-leaf has been freely used, to heighten the effect.

Still another volume bears date 1794,-a small quarto, consisting of twenty-three engraved and coloured designs, without letter-press, explanation, or key of any kind. The designs are of various size, all fine in colour, all extraordinary, some beautiful, others monstrous, abounding in forced attitudes, and suspicious anatomy. The frontispiece, adopted from Urizen, is inscribed Lambeth, printed by Will. Blake, 1794, and has the figure of an aged man, naked, with white beard sweeping the ground, and extended arms, each hand resting on a pile of books, and each holding a pen, wherewith he writes. The volume seems to be a carefully finished selection of favourite compositions from his portfolios and engraved books. Four are recognisable as the principal designs of the Book of Thel, modified in outline, and in colour richer and deeper. One occurs in the Visions of the Daughters of Albion. Another will hereafter re-appear in the illustrations to The Grave The spirit of the strong wicked man going forth.'

The Song of Los (1795), is in metrical prose, and is divided into two portions, one headed Africa, the other Asia. In it, we again, as in the America, seem to catch a thread of connected meaning. It purports to show the rise and influence of different religions and philosophies upon mankind; but, according to Blake's wont, both action and dialogue are carried on, not by human agents, but by shadowy immortals, Orc, Sotha, Palamabron, Rintrah, Los, and many

more :

Then Rintrah gave abstract philosophy to Brama in the East; (Night spoke to the cloud

'So these human-formed spirits in smiling hypocrisy war

'Against one another: so let them war on!

'Slaves to the eternal elements !')

Next, Palamabron gave an 'abstract law' to Pythagoras; then also to Socrates and Plato:

Times roll'd on o'er all the sons of men,

Till Christianity dawns. Monasticism is spoken of:

Afterwards as becoming a fruitful source of spiritual corruption :

Then were the churches, hospitals, castles, palaces,

Like nets and gins and traps to catch the joys of eternity;

And all the rest a desert,

Till like a dream, eternity was obliterated and erased.

Prior to this, however

Antamon call'd up Leutha from her valleys of delight,
And to Mahomet a loose Bible gave.

But in the North to Odin, Sotha gave a code of war.

A gradual debasement of the human race goes on

Till a philosophy of five senses was complete!

Urizen wept, and gave it into the hands of Newton and Locke.

Clouds roll heavy upon the Alps round Rousseau and Voltaire.
And on the mountains of Lebanon round the deceas'd gods of Asia,
And on the deserts of Africa round the Fallen Angels.

The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent !

Under the symbol of the kings of Asia, the Song describes the misery of the old philosophies and despotisms; their bitter lament and prayer that by pestilence and fire the race may be saved; 'that a remnant may learn to obey':

The Kings of Asia heard

The howl rise up from Europe!

And each ran out from his web,

From his ancient woven den:

For the darkness of Asia was startled

At the thick-flaming, thought-creating fires of Orc.

And the Kings of Asia stood

And cried in bitterness of soul :

'Shall not the King call for Famine from the heath?

'Nor the Priest for Pestilence from the fen?

Urizen heard their cry:-
:-

And stretched his clouds over Jerusalem :

For Adam, a mouldering skeleton,

Lay bleached on the garden of Eden;

And Noah, as white as snow,

On the mountains of Ararat.

He thunders desolately from the heavens; Orc rises like a pillar of fire above the Alps,' the earth shrinks, the resurrection of dry bones is described, and the poem concludes.

Orc, that spirit of most volcanic nature whom we hear of so frequently throughout the Prophetic Books,' seems (for a too positive assertion were unwise) to represent the wild energies of nature, and more especially of man: the natural man' in a state of permanent revolt and protest against the tyranny of Urizen, Theotormon, &c.

Of the illustrations, two are separate pictures occupying the full page; the rest surround and blend with the text in the usual manner; and if they have not all the beauty, they share a full measure of the spirit and force of Blake. The colour is laid on with an impasto which gives an opaque and heavy look to some of them, and the medium being oil, the surface and tints have suffered. Here, as elsewhere, the designs seldom directly embody the subjects of the poem, but are independent though kindred conceptions-the right method perhaps.

As if the artist himself were at length beginning to grow weary,