the marriage of heaven and hell - poem by william blake

8/16/2019 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - Poem by William Blake

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The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell - Poem by William Blake

THE ARGUMENT

RINTRAH roars and shakes hisfires in the burdenM air,

Hungry clouds swag on the deep.

Once meek, and in a perilous path

The just man kept his course along

The Vale of Death.

Roses are planted where thorns grow,

And on the barren heath

Sing the honey bees.

Then the perilous path was planted,And a river and a springOn every cliff and tomb;

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And on the bleached bones

Red clay brought forth:Till the villain left the paths of easeTo walk in perilous paths, and driveThe just man into barren climes.

Now the sneaking serpent walksIn mild humility ;

And the just man rages in the wildsWhere Uons roam.

Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in

the burdened air,Hungry clouds swag on the deep.

As a new heaven is begun, and it isnow thirty-three years since its advent,the Eternal Hell revives. And lo!Swedenborg is the angel sitting atthe tomb: his writings are the Unenclothes folded up. Now is the domin-ion of Edom, and the return of Adaminto Paradise. See Isaiah xxxiv. andXXXV. chap.

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HEAVEN AND HELL

Without contraries is no progres-sion. Attraction and repulsion, rea-son and energy, love and hate, are

necessary to human existence.

From these contraries spring whatthe religious call Good and Evil.Good is the passive that obeys reason;Evil is the active springing fromEnergy.

Good is heaven. Evil is hell.

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THE VOICE OF THE DEVIL

All Bibles or sacred codes have beenthe cause of the following errors :

1. That man has two real existingprinciples, viz., a Body and a Soul.

2. That Energy, called Evil, is alone

from the Body ; and that Reason, calledGood, is alone from the Soul.

3. That God will torment man inEternity for following his Energies.

But the following contraries tothese are true :

1 . Man has no Body distinct from hisSoul. For that called Body is a por-tion of Soul discerned by the five senses,the chief inlets of Soul in this age.

2 . Energy is the only life , and is fromthe Body; and Reason is the boundor outward circumference of Energy.

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3. Energy is Eternal Delight.

Those who restrain desire, do sobecause theirs is weak enough to be



restrained; and the restrainer orreason usurps its place and governsthe unwilling.

And being restrained, it by degreesbecomes passive, till it is only theshadow of desire.

The history of this is written inParadise Lost, and the Governor orReason is called Messiah.

And the original Archangel or pos-sessor of the command of the heavenlyhost is called the Devil, or Satan, andhis children are called Sin and Death.

But in the book of Job, Milton'sMessiah is called Satan.

For this history has been adopted byboth parties.

It indeed appeared to Reason as if

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desire was cast out, but the Devil's

account is, that the Messiah fell, andformed a heaven of what he stole fromthe abyss.

This is shown in the Gospel, wherehe prays to the Father to send theComforter or desire that Reason mayhave ideas to build on, the Jehovahof the Bible being no other than hewho dwells in flaming fire. Knowthat after Christ's death he becameJehovah.

But in Milton, the Father is Destiny,the Son a ratio of the five senses, andthe Holy Ghost vacuum !

Note. The reason Milton wrotein fetters when he wrote of Angelsand God, and at Uberty when ofDevils and Hell, is because he wasa true poet, and of the Devil's partywithout knowing it.

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HEAVEN AND HELL

A MEMORABLE FANCY

As I was walking among the firesof Hell, delighted with the enjoymentsof Genius, which to Angels look liketorment and insanity, I collected someof their proverbs, thinking that as thesayings used in a nation mark itscharacter, so the proverbs of Hell showthe nature of infernal wisdom betterthan any description of buildings orgarments.

When I came home, on the abyssof the five senses, where a flat-sidedsteep frowns over the present world, Isaw a mighty Devil folded in blackclouds hovering on the sides of therock; with corroding fires he wrotethe following sentence now perceivedby the minds of men, and read bythem on earth :

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'How do you know but every birdthat cuts the airy wayIs an immense world of delight,closed by your senses five?'

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PROVERBS OF HELL

In seed-time learn, in harvest teach,in winter enjoy.

Drive your cart and your ploughover the bones of the dead.

The road of excess leads to thepalace of wisdom.



Prudence is a rich ugly old maidcourted by Incapacity.

He who desires, but acts not, breedspestilence.

The cut worm forgives the plough.

Dip him in the river who loveswater.

A fool sees not the same tree that awise man sees.

He whose face gives no light shallnever become a star.

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Eternity is in love with the produc-tions of time.

The busy bee has no time for sor-row.

The hours of folly are measured bythe clock, but of wisdom no clock can

measure.

All wholesome food is caught with-out a net or a trap.

Bring out number, weight, andmeasure in a year of dearth.

No bird soars too high if he soarswith his own wings.

A dead body revenges not injuries.

The most sublime act is to set an-other before you.

If the fool would persist in his follyhe would become wise.

Folly is the cloak of knavery.

Shame is Pride's cloak.

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Prisons are built with stones of law,brothels with bricks of religion.

The pride of the peacock is theglory of God.

The lust of the goat is the bountyof God.

The wrath of the lion is the wisdomof God.

The nakedness of woman is thework of God.

Excess of sorrow laughs, excess ofjoy weeps.

The roaring of lions, the howling ofwolves, the raging of the stormy sea,and the destructive sword, are por-tions of Eternity too great for the eyeof man.

The fox condemns the trap, nothimself.

Joys impregnate, sorrows bringforth.

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Let man wear the fell of the lion,woman the fleece of the sheep.

The bird a nest, the spider a web,man friendship.

The selfish smiling fool and thesullen frowning fool shall be boththought wise that they may be a rod.

What is now proved was once onlyimagined.

The rat, the mouse, the fox, therabbit watch the roots; the Hon, thetiger, the horse, the elephant watchthe fruits.

The cistern contains, the fountainoverflows.

One thought fills immensity.



Always be ready to speak yourmind, and a base man will avoid you.

Everything possible to be believedis an image of truth.

The eagle never lost so much time

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as when he submitted to learn of thecrow.

The fox provides for himself, butGod provides for the lion.

Think in the morning, act in thenoon, eat in the evening, sleep in thenight.

He who has suffered you to imposeon him knows you.

As the plough follows words, soGod rewards prayers.

The tigers of wrath are wiser thanthe horses of instruction.

Expect poison from the standingwater.

You never know what is enoughunless you know what is more thanenough.

Listen to the fool's reproach; it is akingly title.

The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air,

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the mouth of water, the beard ofearth.

The weak in courage is strong incunning.

The apple tree never asks the beechhow he shall grow, nor the lion thehorse how he shall take his prey.



The thankful receiver bears a plenti-ful harvest.

If others had not been foolish weshould have been so.

The soul of sweet delight can neverbe defiled.

When thou seest an eagle, thouseest a portion of Genius. Lift up thyhead!

As the caterpillar chooses the fairestleaves to lay her eggs on, so the priestlays his curse on the fairest joys.

To create a little flower is the labour

of ages.

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Damn braces; bless relaxes.

The best wine is the oldest, the bestwater the newest.

Prayers plough not; praises reapnot; joys laugh not; sorrows weepnot.

The head Sublime, the heart Pathos,the genitals Beauty, the hands andfeet Proportion.

As the air to a bird, or the seato a fish, so is contempt to the con-temptible.

The crow wished everything wasblack; the owl that everything waswhite.

Exuberance is Beauty.

If the lion was advised by the fox,he would be cunning.

Improvement makes straight roads,but the crooked roads without Improve-ment are roads of Genius.

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Sooner murder an infant in itscradle than nurse unacted desires.

Where man is not, nature is barren.

Truth can never be told so as to beunderstood and not to be believed.

Enough! or Too much.

The ancient poets animated all sen-sible objects with Gods or Geniuses,calling them by the names and adorn-ing them with properties of woods,rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, na-tions, and whatever their enlarged

and numerous senses could perceive.And particularly they studied theGenius of each city and country,placing it under its mental deity. Tilla system was formed, which sometook advantage of and enslaved thevulgar by attempting to realize orabstract the mental deities from theirobjects. Thus began Priesthood.

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Choosing forms of worship frompoetic tales. And at length they pro-nounced that the Gods had orderedsuch things. Thus men forgot thatall deities reside in the human breast.

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A MEMORABLE FANCY

The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekieldined with me, and I asked them howthey dared so roundly to assert thatGod spoke to them, and whether they

did not think at the time that theywould be misunderstood, and so bethe cause of imposition.



Isaiah answered: 'I saw no God,nor heard any, in a finite organicalperception: but my senses discoveredthe infinite in everything; and as Iwas then persuaded, and remainedconfirmed, that the voice of honest

indignation is the voice of God, I carednot for consequences, but wrote.'*

Then I asked: 'Does a firm per-suasion that a thing is so, make itso?'

He replied: 'All poets believe that

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it does, and in ages of imaginationthis firm persuasion removed moun-tains; but many are not capable of afirm persuasion of anything.'

Then Ezekiel said : ' The philosophyof the East taught the first principlesof human perception; some nationsheld one principle for the origin, andsome another. We of Israel taught

that the Poetic Genius (as you nowcall it) was the first principle, and allthe others merely derivative, whichwas the cause of our despising thePriests and Philosophers of othercountries, and prophesying that allGods would at last be proved to origi-nate in ours, and to be the tributariesof the Poetic Genius. It was this thatour great poet King David desired sofervently, and invokes so pathetically,saying by this he conquers enemiesand governs kingdoms; and we soloved our Ggd that we cursed in His

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name all the deities of surroundingnations, and asserted that they hadrebelled. From these opinions thevulgar came to think that all nations

would at last be subject to the Jews.

'This,' said he, 'like all firm per-



suasions, is come to pass, for allnations believe the Jews' code, andworship the Jews' God; and whatgreater subjection can be?'

I heard this with some wonder, andmust confess my own conviction.

After dinner I asked Isaiah to favourthe world with his lost works; he saidnone of equal value was lost. Ezekielsaid the same of his.

I also asked Isaiah what made himgo naked and barefoot three years.He answered: 'The same that madeour friend Diogenes the Grecian.'

I then asked Ezekiel why he atedung, and lay so long on his right and

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left side. He answered: 'The desireof raising other men into a perceptionof the infinite. This the North Ameri-can tribes practise. And is he honestwho resists his genius or conscience,only for the sake of present ease or

gratification?'

The ancient tradition that the worldwill be consumed in fire at the end ofsix thousand years is true, as I haveheard from Hell.

For the cherub with his flamingsword is hereby commanded to leavehis guard at [the] tree of life, andwhen he does, the whole creation willbe consumed and appear infinite andholy, whereas it now appears finiteand corrupt.

This will come to pass by an im-provement of sensual enjoyment.

But first the notion that man has

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a body distinct from his soul is to beexpunged; this I shall do by printing



in the infernal method by corrosives,which in Hell are salutary and medici-nal, melting apparent surfaces away,and displaying the infinite which washid.

If the doors of perception were

cleansed everything would appear toman as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up, tillhe sees all things through narrowchinks of his cavern.

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HEAVEN AND HELL

A MEMORABLE FANCY

I was in a printing-house in Hell,and saw the method in which knowl-edge is transmitted from generationto generation.

In the first chamber was a dragon-

man, clearing away the rubbish froma cave's mouth; within, a number ofdragons were hollowing the cave.

In the second chamber was a viperfolding round the rock and the cave,and others adorning it with gold, silver,and precious stones.

In the third chamber was an eaglewith wings and feathers of air; hecaused the inside of the cave to beinfinite; around were numbers ofeagle-like men, who built palaces inthe immense cliffs.

In the fourth chamber were lions

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of flaming fire raging around and

melting the metals into living fluids.

In the fifth chamber were unnamed



forms, which cast the metals into theexpanse.

There they were received by menwho occupied the sixth chamber, andtook the forms of books, and werearranged in libraries.

The Giants who formed this worldinto its sensual existence and nowseem to live in it in chains are intruth the causes of its life and thesources of all activity, but the chainsare the cunning of weak and tameminds, which have power to resistenergy, according to the proverb,'The weak in courage is strong incunning.'

Thus one portion of being is the

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Prolific, the other the Devouring. Tothe devourer it seems as if the pro-ducer was in his chains; but it is notso, he only takes portions of existence,and fancies that the whole.

But the Prolific would cease to beprolific unless the Devourer as a seareceived the excess of his delights.

Some will say, 'Is not God alonethe Prolific?' I answer: 'God onlyacts and is in existing beings ormen.'

These two classes of men are alwaysupon earth, and they should be ene-mies: whoever tries to reconcile themseeks to destroy existence.

Religion is an endeavour to recon-cile the two.

Note. Jesus Christ did not wishto unite but to separate them, as inthe parable of sheep and goats; and

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He says : ' I came not to send peace,but a sword.'

Messiah, or Satan, or Tempter, wasformerly thought to be one of theantediluvians who are our Energies.

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A MEMORABLE FANCY

An Angel came to me and said: '0pitiable foolish young man! hor-rible, dreadful state! Consider thehot burning dungeon thou art prepar-ing for thyself to all Eternity, to whichthou art going in such career.'

I said : ' Perhaps you will be willingto show me my eternal lot, and wewill contemplate together upon it, andsee whether your lot or mine is mostdesirable.'*

So he took me through a stable, andthrough a church, and down into thechurch vault, at the end of v/hich wasa mill; through the mill we went, andcame to a cave; down the windingcavern we groped our tedious way,till a void boundless as a nether skyappeared beneath us, and we held by

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the roots of trees, and hung over thisimmensity; but I said: 'If you please,we will commit ourselves to this void,and see whether Providence is herealso; if you will not, I will.' But heanswered : ' Do not presume, youngman; but as we here remain, beholdthy lot, which will soon appear whenthe darkness passes away.'

So I remained with him sitting inthe twisted root of an oak; he wassuspended in a fungus, which hung



with the head downward into thedeep.

By degrees we beheld the infiniteabyss, fiery as the smoke of a burningcity; beneath us at an immense dis-tance was the sun, black but shining;

round it were fiery tracks on whichrevolved vast spiders, crawling aftertheir prey, which flew, or ratherswum, in the infinite deep, in the most

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terrific shapes of animals sprung from

corruption; and the air was full ofthem, and seemed composed of them.These are Devils, and are called powersof the air. I now asked my com-panion which was my eternal lot.He said: 'Between the black andwhite spiders.''

But now, from between the blackand white spiders, a cloud and fireburst and rolled through the deep,blackening all beneath so that thenether deep grew black as a sea, and

rolled with a terrible noise. Beneathus was nothing now to be seen but ablack tempest, till looking East be-tween the clouds and the waves, wesaw a cataract of blood mixed withfire, and not many stones' throw fromus appeared and sunk again the scalyfold of a monstrous serpent. At lastto the East, distant about three degrees,appeared a fiery crest above the waves ;

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slowly it reared like a ridge of goldenrocks, till we discovered two globesof crimson fire, from which the seafled away in clouds of smoke; andnow we saw it was the head of Le-viathan. His forehead was dividedinto streaks of green and purple, likethose on a tiger's forehead; soon we

saw his mouth and red gills hang justabove the raging foam, tinging theblack deeps with beams of blood, ad-



vancing toward us with all the furyof a spiritual existence.

My friend the Angel climbed upfrom his station into the mill. Iremained alone, and then this ap-pearance was no more; but I found

myself sitting on a pleasant bank besidea river by moonlight, hearing a harperwho sung to the harp; and his themewas: 'The man who never alters hisopinion is like standing water, andbreeds reptiles of the mind.'

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But I arose, and sought for themill, and there I found my Angel,who, surprised, asked me how Iescaped.

I answered: 'All that we saw wasowing to your metaphysics; for whenyou ran away, I found myself on abank by moonlight, hearing a harper.But now we have seen my eternallot, shall I show you yours?' Helaughed at my proposal; but I by

force suddenly caught him in myarms, and flew Westerly through thenight, till we were elevated above theearth's shadow; then I flung myselfwith him directly into the body of thesun; here I clothed myself in white,and taking in my hand Swedenborg*svolumes, sunk from the glorious clime,and passed all the planets till we cameto Saturn. Here I stayed to rest, andthen leaped into the void betweenSaturn and the fixed stars.

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'Here,' said I, 'is your lot; in thisspace, if space it may be called.'Soon we saw the stable and the church,and I took him to the altar and openedthe Bible, and lo! it was a deep pit,into which I descended, driving the

Angel before me. Soon we saw sevenhouses of brick. One we entered. Init were a number of monkeys, baboons,



he imagines that all are religious, andhimself the single one on earth thatever broke a net.

'Now hear a plain fact: Sweden-borg has not written one new truth.Now hear another: he has written all

the old falsehoods.

'And now hear the reason: he con-versed with Angels who are all re-ligious, and conversed not with Devilswho all hate reUgion, for he wasincapable through his conceited no-tions.

'Thus Swedenborg's writings area recapitulation of all superficial

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opinions, and an analysis of the moresublime, but no further.

'Have now another plain fact: anyman of mechanical talents may fromthe writings of Paracelsus or JacobBehmen produce ten thousand volumes

of equal value with Swedenborg's, andfrom those of Dante or Shakespeare aninfinite number.

'But when he has done this, lethim not say that he knows better thanhis master, for he only holds a candlein sunshine.'

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A MEMORABLE FANCY

Once I saw a Devil in a flame offire, who arose before an Angel thatsat on a cloud, and the Devil utteredthese words: 'The worship of God is,

honouring His gifts in other men eachaccording to his genius, and lovingthe greatest men best. Those who



envy or calumniate great men hateGod, for there is no other God.'

The Angel hearing this becamealmost blue, but mastering himself hegrew yellow, and at last white-pinkand smiling, and then replied: 'Thou

idolater, is not God One? and is notHe visible in Jesus Christ? and hasnot Jesus Christ given His sanction tothe law of ten commandments? andare not all other men fools, sinners,and nothings?'

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The Devil answered: 'Bray a foolin a mortar with wheat, yet shall nothis folly be beaten out of him. IfJesus Christ is the greatest man, youought to love Him in the greatestdegree. Now hear how He has givenHis sanction to the law of ten com-mandments. Did He not mock at theSabbath, and so mock the Sabbath'sGod? murder those who were mur-dered because of Him? turn away thelaw from the woman taken in adultery,

steal the labour of others to supportHim? bear false witness when Heomitted making a defence beforePilate? covet when He prayed for Hisdisciples, and when He bid themshake off the dust of their feet againstsuch as refused to lodge them? I tellyou, no virtue can exist without break-ing these ten commandments. Jesuswas all virtue, and acted from im-pulse, not from rules.'

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When he had so spoken, I beheldthe Angel, who stretched out his armsembracing the flame of fire, and hewas consumed, and arose as Elijah.

Note. This Angel, who is nowbecome a Devil, is my particular

friend; we often read the Bible to-gether in its infernal or diabolicalsense, which the world shall have if



they behave well.

I have also the Bible of Hell, whichthe world shall have whether theywill or no.

One law for the lion and ox is Op-

pression.

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A SONG OF LIBERTY

1. The Eternal Female groan'd; itwas heard over all the earth:

2. Albion's coast is sick silent; theAmerican meadows faint.

3. Shadows of prophecy shiveralong by the lakes and the rivers, andmutter across the ocean. France,rend down thy dungeon!

4. Golden Spain, burst the barriersof old Rome !

5. Cast thy keys, Rome, intothe deep down falling, even toeternity down falling;

6. And weep!

7. In her trembling hands she tookthe new-born terror, howling.

8. On those infinite mountainsof light now barr'd out by the Atlantic

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sea, the new-born fire stood before thestarry king.

9. Flagg'd with grey-browM snows

and thunderous visages, the jealouswings wavM over the deep.



10. The speary hand burn'd aloft;unbuckled was the shield; forth wentthe hand of jealousy among the flam-ing hair, and hurl'd the new-bornwonder through the starry night.

11. The fire, the fire is falling !

12. Look up! look up! citizenof London, enlarge thy countenance!O Jew, leave counting gold; return tothy oil and wine! African, blackAfrican! (Go, winged thought, widenhis forehead.)

13. The fiery limbs, the flaming hairshot like the sinking sun into theWestern sea.

14. WakM from his eternal sleep,the hoary element roaring fled away.

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15. Down rush'd, beating his wingsin vain, the jealous king, his grey-brow'd councillors, thunderous war-riors, curl'd veterans, among helms

and shields, and chariots, horses, ele-phants, banners, castles, slings, androcks.

16. Falling, rushing, ruining;buried in the ruins, on Urthona'sdens.

17. All night beneath the ruins;then their sullen flames, faded, emergeround the gloomy king.

18. With thunder and fire, leadinghis starry hosts through the wastewilderness, he promulgates his tencommandments, glancing his beamyeyelids over the deep in dark dismay.

19. Where the Son of Fire in hisEastern cloud, while the Morningplumes her golden breast,

20. Spuming the clouds written

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with curses, stamps the stony law todust, loosing the eternal horses fromthe dens of night, crying: 'Empire isno more! and now the lion and wolfshall cease.'

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CHORUS

Let the Priests of the Raven ofDawn, no longer in deadly black, withhoarse note curse the Sons of Joy.Nor his accepted brethren whom,tyrant, he calls free, lay the bound orbuild the roof. Nor pale religiouslechery call that virginity that wishes,but acts not !

For everything that lives is holy.

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the marriage of heaven and hell - poem by william blake

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