# The Book of Ahania
## The Book of Ahania

* CHAP: 1ST
* 1. Fuzon, on a chariot iron-wing’d,
* On spiked flames rose; his hot visage
* Flam’d furious; sparkles his hair & 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 non-entity,
* 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 uphav’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, & called 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, unbodied, 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.
* CHAP: IID
* 1. But the forehead of Urizen gathering,
* And his eyes pale with anguish, his lips
* Blue & changing, in tears and bitter
* Contrition he prepar’d his Bow,
* 2. Form’d of Ribs, that in his dark solitude
* When obscur’d in his forests fell monsters
* Arose. For his dire Contemplations
* Rush’d down like floods from his mountains,
* In torrents of mud settling thick,
* With Eggs of unnatural production
* Forthwith hatching; some howl’d on his hills,
* Some in vales, some aloft flew in air.
* 3. Of these, an enormous dread Serpent,
* Scaled and poisonous horned,
* Approach’d Urizen even to his knees
* As he sat on his dark rooted Oak.
* 4. With his horns he push’d furious.
* Great the conflict & Great the jealousy
* In cold poisons; but Urizen smote him.
* 5. First he poison’d the rocks with his blood;
* Then polish’d his ribs, and his sinews
* Dried; laid them apart till winter;
* Then a Bow black prepar’d; on this Bow
* A poisoned rock plac’d in silence.
* He utter’d these words to the Bow:
* 6. ‘O Bow of the clouds of secrecy,
* O nerve of that lust form’d monster!
* Send this rock swift, invisible thro’
* The black clouds, on the bosom of Fuzon.’
* 7. So saying, in torment of his wounds,
* He bent the enormous ribs slowly:
* A circle of darkness! Then fixed
* The sinew in its rest; then the Rock,
* Poisonous source, plac’d with art, lifting difficult
* Its weighty bulk; silent the rock lay,
* 8. While Fuzon, his tigers unloosing,
* Thought Urizen slain by his wrath.
* ‘I am God,’ said he, ‘eldest of things!’
* 9. Sudden sings the rock; swift & invisible
* On Fuzon flew; enter’d his bosom.
* His beautiful visage, his tresses
* That gave light to the mornings of heaven
* Were smitten with darkenss, deform’d
* And outstretch’d on the edge of the forest.
* 10. But the rock fell upon the Earth,
* Mount Sinai in Arabia.
* CHAP: III
* 1. The Globe shook; and Urizen, seated
* On black clouds, his sore wound anointed.
* The ointment flow’d down on the void
* Miz’d with blood – here the snake gets her poison.
* 2. With difficulty & great pain Urizen
* Lifted on high the dead corse;
* On his shoulders he bore it to where
* A Tree hung over the Immensity.
* 3. For when Urizen shrunk away
* From Eternals, he sat on a rock
* Barren, a rock which himself
* From redounding fancies had petrified.
* Many tears fell on the rock,
* Many sparks of vegetation.
* Soon shot the pained root
* Of Mystery under his heel.
* It grew a thick tree; he wrote
* In silence his book of iron;
* Till the horrid plant, bending its boughs,
* Grew to roots when it felt the earth
* And again sprung to many a tree.
* 4. Amaz’d started Urizen! When
* He beheld himself compassed round
* And high roofed over with trees.
* He arose, but the stems stood so thick
* He with difficulty and great pain
* Brought his Books, all but the Book
* Of iron, form the dismal shade.
* 5. The Tree still grows over the Void,
* Enrooting itself all around,
* An endless labyrinth of woe!
* 6. The corse of his first begotten
* on the accursed Tree of Mystery
* On the topmost stem of this Tree
* Urizen nail’d Fuzon’s corse.
* CHAP: IV
* 1. Forth flew the arrows of pestilence
* Round the pale living Corse on the tree;
* 2. For in Urizen’s slumbers of abstraction
* In the infinite ages of Eternity,
* When his Nerves of joy melted and flow’d
* A white Lake on the dark blue air,
* In perturb’d pain and dismal torment
* Now stretching out, now swift conglobing,
* 3. Effluvia vapor’d above
* In noxious clouds; these hover’d thick
* Over the disorganiz’d Immortal,
* Till petrific pain scruf’d o’er the Lakes
* As the bones of man, solid & dark.
* 4. The clouds of disease hover’d wide
* Around the Immortal in torment,
* Perching around the hurtling bones,
* Disease on disease, shape on shape,
* Winged, screaming in blood & torment.
* 5. The Eternal Prophet beat on his anvils,
* Enrag’d in the desolate darkness;
* he forg’d nets of iron around
* And Los threw them around the bones.
* 6. The shapes, screaming, flutter’d vain;
* Some combin’d into muscles & glands,
* Some organs for craving and lust;
* Most remain’d on the tormented void,
* Urizen’s army of horrors.
* 7. Round the pale living Corse on the Tree
* Forty years flew the arrows of pestilence.
* 8. Wailing and terror and woe
* Ran thro’ all his dismal world;
* Forty yyears all his sons & daughters
* Felt their skulls harden; then Asia
* Arose in the pendulous deep.
* 9. They reptilize upon the Earth.
* 10. Fuzon groan’d on the Tree.
* CHAP: V
* 1. The lamenting voice of Ahania,
* Weeping upon the void
* And round the Tree of Fuzon:
* Distant in solitary night
* Her voice was heard , but no form
* Had she; but her tears from clouds
* Eternal fell round the Tree;
* 2. And the voice cried: ‘Ah, Urizen! Love!
* Flower of morning! I weep on the verge
* Of Non-entity; how wide the Abyss
* Between Ahania and thee!
* 3. ‘I lie on the verge of the deep,
* I see thy dark clouds ascend,
* I see thy black forests and floods,
* A horrible waste to my eyes!
* 4. ‘Weeping I walk over rocks,
* Over dens & thro’ valleys of death.
* Why didst thou despise Ahania,
* To cast me from thy bright presence
* Into the World of Loneness?
* 5. ‘I cannot touch his hand,
* Nor weep on his knees, nor hear
* his voice & bow, nor see his eyes
* And joy, nor hear his footsteps and
* My heart leap at the lovely sound!
* I cannot kiss the place
* Whereon his bright feet have trod,
* But I wander on the rocks
* With hard necessity.
* 6. ‘Where is my golden palace?
* Where my ivory bed?
* Where the joy of my morning hour?
* Where the sons of eternity singing
* 7. ‘To awake bright Urizen, my king,
* To arise to the mountain sport,
* To the bliss of eternal valleys;
* 8. ‘To awake my king in the morn
* To embrace Ahania’s joy
* On the bredth of his open bosom,
* From my soft cloud of dew to fall
* In showers of life on his harvests?
* 9. ‘When he gave my happy soul
* To the sons of eternal joy;
* When he took the daughters of life
* into my chambers of love;
* 10. When I found babes of bless on my beds,
* And bosoms of mild in my chambers
* Fill’d with eternal seed,
* O! eternal births sung round Ahania
* In interchange sweet of their joys.
* 11. “Swell’d with ripeness & fat with fatness,
* Bursting on winds my odors,
* My ripe figs and rich pomegranates
* In infant joy at thy feet,
* O Urizen, sported and sang.
* 12. ‘Then thou with thy lap full of seed,
* With thy hand full of generous fire,
* Walked forth form the clouds of morning,
* On the virgins of springing joy,
* On the human soul to cast
* The seed of eternal science.
* 13. ‘The sweat poured down thy temples;
* To Ahania return’d in evening
* The moisture awoke to birth
* My mother’s-joys, sleeping in bliss.
* 14. ‘But now, alone, over rocks, mountains,
* Cast out form thy lovely bosom.
* Cruel jealousy, selfish fear,
* self-destroying: how can delight
* Renew in these chains of darkness,
* Where bones of beasts are strown
* On the bleak and snowy mountains,
* Where bones form the birth are buried
* Before they see the light?’