William Blake

The Book of Ahania: Chapter I

1. Fuzon, on a chariot iron-wing’d, On spikèd flames rose; his hot visage Flam’d furious; sparkles his hair and beard Shot down his wide bosom and shoulders. On clouds of smoke rages his chariot, And his right hand burns red in its cloud, Moulding into a vast Globe his wrath, As the thunder-stone is moulded, Son of Urizen’s silent burnings. 2. ‘Shall we worship this Demon of smoke,’ Said Fuzon, ‘this abstract Nonentity, This cloudy God seated on waters, Now seen, now obscur’d, King of Sorrow? ’ 3. So he spoke in a fiery flame, On Urizen frowning indignant, The Globe of wrath shaking on high. Roaring with fury, he threw The howling Globe; burning it flew, Length’ning into a hungry beam. Swiftly 4. Oppos’d to the exulting flam’d beam, The broad Disk of Urizen upheav’d Across the Void many a mile. 5. It was forg’d in mills where the winter Beats incessant: ten winters the disk, Unremitting, endur’d the cold hammer. 6. But the strong arm that sent it remember’d The sounding beam: laughing, it tore through That beaten mass, keeping its direction, The cold loins of Urizen dividing. 7. Dire shriek’d his invisible Lust! Deep groan’d Urizen; stretching his awful hand, Ahania (so name his parted Soul) He seiz’d on his mountains of Jealousy. He groan’d, anguish’d, and callèd her Sin, Kissing her and weeping over her; Then hid her in darkness, in silence, Jealous, tho’ she was invisible. 8. She fell down, a faint Shadow, wand’ring In Chaos, and circling dark Urizen, As the moon, anguish’d, circles the earth, Hopeless! abhorr’d! a death-shadow, Unseen, unbodièd, unknown, The mother of Pestilence! 9. But the fiery beam of Fuzon Was a pillar of fire to Egypt, Five hundred years wand’ring on earth, Till Los seiz’d it, and beat in a mass With the body of the sun. Blake engraved this poem in 1795