# The Song of Los
## The Song of Los

* Africa
* I will sing you a song of Los, the Eternal Prophet:
* He sung it to four harps at the tables of Eternity.
* In heart-formed Africa.
* Urizen faded! Ariston shudder’d!
* And thus the Song began:
* ADAM stood in the garden of Eden
* And Noah on the mountains of Ararat;
* They saw Urizen give his Laws to the Nations
* By the hands of the children of Los.
* Adam shudder’d! Noah faded! Black grew the sunny African
* When Rintrah gave Abstract Philosophy to Brama in the East.
* (Night spoke to the Cloud:
* ‘Lo, these Human form’d spirits, in smiling hypocrisy Way
* Against one another; so let them War on, slaves to the eternal Elements.’)
* Noah shrunk beneath the wathers;
* Abram fled in fires from Chaldea;
* Moses beheld upon Mount Sinai forms of dark delusion.
* To Trismegistur Palamabroon gave an abstract Law,
* To Pythagoras, Socrates & Plato.
* Time rolled on o’er all the sons of Har; time after time
* Orc on Mount Atlas howl’d, chain’d down with the Chain of Jealousy.
* Then Oothoon hover’d over Judah & Jerusalem,
* And Jesus heard her voice (a man of sorrows); he reciev’d
* A Gospel form wretched Theotormon.
* The human race began to wither, for the healthy built
* Secluded places, fearing the joys of Love,
* And the diseased only propagated.
* So 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,
* Because of Diralada, thinking to reclaim his joy.
* These were the churches, Hospitals, Castles, Palace,
* Like nets & gins & traps to catch the joys of Eternity,
* And all the rest a desart;
* Till like a dream Eternity was obliterated & erased,
* Since that dread day when Har and Heva fled,
* Because their brethren & sisters liv’d in War & Lust;
* And as they fled, they shrunk
* Into two narrow doleful forms,
* Creeping in reptile flesh upon
* The bosom of the ground,
* And all the vast of Nature shrunk
* Before their shrunken eyes.
* Thus the terrible race of Los & Enitharmon gave
* Laws & Religions to the sons of Har, binding them more
* And more to Earth, closing and restraining,
* Till a Philosophy of Five Senses was complete.
* Urizen wept &gave it into the hands of Newton & Locke.
* Clouds roll heavy upon the Alps round Rousseau & Voltaire,
* And on the mountains of Lebanon round the deceased Gods
* Of Asia, & on the desarts of Africa round the Fallen Angels.
* The Guardian Prince of Albion burns in his nightly tent.
* Asia
* 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 or 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?
* To restrain! To dismay! To thin!
* The inhabitants of mountain and plain,
* In the day of full-feeding prosperity
* And the night of delicious songs.
* ‘Shall not the Councellor throw his curb
* Of Poverty on the laborious?
* To fix the price of labour,
* To invent allegoric riches;
* ‘And the privy admonishers of men
* Call for fires in the City,
* For heaps of smoking ruins,
* In the night of prosperity & wantonness?
* ‘To turn man form his path,
* To restrain the child from the womb,
* ‘To cut off the bread from the city,
* That the remnant may learn to obey;
* ‘That the pride of the heart may fail,
* That the lust of the eyes may be quench’d,
* That the delicate ear in its infancy
* May be dull’d, and the nostrils clos’d up,
* To teach mortal worms the path
* That leads form the gates of the Grave.’
* Urizen heard them cry,
* And his shudd’ring waving wings
* Went enormous above the red flames,
* Drawing clouds of despair thro’ the havens
* Of Europe as he went.
* And his Books of brass, iron & gold
* Melted over the land as he flew,
* Heavy-waving, howling, weeping.
* And he stood over Judea,
* And stay’d in his ancient place,
* And stretch’d his clouds over Jerusalem.
* For Adam, a mouldering skeleton,
* Lay bleach’d on the garden of Eden;
* And Noah as whit as snow
* On the mountains of Ararat.
* Then the thunders of Urizen bellow’d aloud
* From his woven darkness above.
* Orc, raging in European darkness,
* Arose like a pillar of fire above the Alps,
* Like a serpent of fiery flame!
* The sullen Earth
* Shrunk!
* Forth from the dead dust rattling bones to bones
* Join; shaking convuls’d, the shiv’ring clay breathes,
* And all flesh naked stands: Fathers and Friends,
* Mothers & Infants, Kings & Warriors.
* The Grave shrieks with delight, & shakes
* Her hollow womb, & clasps the solid stem.
* Her bosom swells with wild desire,
* And milk & blood & glandous wine
* In rivers rush & shout & dance
* On mountain, dale and plain.
* The SONG of LOS is Ended
* Urizen Wept.